'He pointed to it and then he got up and he pulled it away so the German soldiers could see the trapdoor.' Colette said nothing.
'They opened it. They found Mama. And Nana. They hit Mama on the face. Then the tall one shot Father. Another one shot Nana.' 'What did you do?' she asked quietly
'I ran into the house. Mama was screaming. They were holding her down on the floor, pulling at her dress. One of the Germans hit me, I think. I don't remember anything else. The next morning-'
'Don't,' said Colette, putting her arms around her brother and closing her eyes. 'I know.'
'I didn't want to say anything,' said Luc.
They spoke little for the remainder of the ride. Colette said almost nothing at all. In Younger's coat pocket was the letter from Freud, which he hadn't shown her. Colette therefore hadn't seen the little folded note that Freud had included along with it; nor had she read the letter's last paragraph, which said:
Miss Rousseau is keeping something from her brother as well. I believe I know what it is, but it's not for me to say. She'll tell you in her own time. When she does, give her the enclosed note.
As ever, Freud
After they had arrived at Younger's house in Boston and shown Luc his new bedroom and tucked him in, Younger and Colette went to their own bedroom. She let him undress her, which he liked to do. Then he took off his shirt, revealing the thick white bandaging wrapped round and round his chest.
'Is it painful?' she asked.
'Only if I breathe,' he said. 'I'm joking. I don't feel it at all.'
'Can you?' she whispered.
He could. She had to cover her mouth with his hand to keep from waking Luc. She dug her fingernails into his arms. He thought he might be hurting her, but she begged him not to stop.
A long while later, she spoke quietly in the dark: 'I didn't want to say anything either.'
'You knew?' said Younger. 'What your father had done?'
She nodded.
'You saw it too?' he asked.
'No,' she said. 'Father told me himself. The next morning. He was still alive when we found them. He confessed to me. He pleaded with me to forgive him.'
A clock ticked.
'I didn't,' she said. 'I couldn't. Then he was gone.'
Tears ran down her cheeks in silence; Younger could feel them on his chest.
'God help me,' she whispered. 'I didn't forgive my own father.'
'The oldest bear the most,' said Younger.
'Now you know,' she said to him, wiping her eyes. 'Now you know my very last secret.'
Hours later, at daybreak, he was buttoning a shirt when Colette, still lying in bed, asked him a question: 'Did I do everything wrong?'
'I have something for you,' he answered. 'From Freud.'
He gave her the note. She sat up and read it, holding the bed sheet over her chest. She stared at the note a long time before handing it back to him:
My dear Miss Rousseau,
If you are reading this, it means, assuming I'm right, you have revealed to Younger that you knew of your father's unfortunate conduct before your brother told you of it. Do not condemn your father too harshly. A man is not to be judged by his actions at gunpoint.
Neither should you judge yourself True, if you had told your brother what you knew, his condition might possibly have abated sooner. But it might also, perversely, have become more entrenched. The fact is you each tried to protect the other from a truth the other already knew. This was irony, not tragedy.
You may have perceived that your brother has harbored a resentment against you. That is natural. He may have disliked you, or thought he did, for not knowing what he knew (as he believed) and thereby making him keep it a secret. Children expect adults to know what they know; when we disappoint them, they think the worse of us. But then even as adults we eventually come to scorn those from whom we have kept the truth, and we resent those for whom we have made the largest sacrifices. For these reasons, if you are even now undecided about whether to tell your brother that you knew his secret all along, you know what my advice to you would be.
There is one more thing I want to say. You wondered in my presence why you didn't kill the man who murdered your parents. It was from just this fact that I deduced what you were hiding. The reason is simple. You felt, even if you didn't know it, that you would be insulting your father if you did what he lacked the courage to do. It was kindness toward your father that motivated you, not kindness to the murderer. (This also leads me to believe that you feel you wronged your father some time in the past, although the nature of this wrong I'm unable to decipher.) Fortunately, at that moment you were with a man who didn't labor under your compunctions. If you are half as wise as I believe you to be, you won't refuse that man's affections a second time.
Freud
On December 25, 1920, a long-distance telephone connection was established between a private home in Washington, DC, and another in Boston, Massachusetts. It was almost midnight.
'Is that you, Jimmy?' asked Colette. She and Younger both had their ears to the receiver. A Christmas tree stood in front of them, decorated with toy soldiers and glittering hand-painted paper globes.
'It sure is, Miss,' answered Littlemore, voice crackling, 'and Betty too. Is Doc there?'
'I'm here,' said Younger. 'What is it?'
'You wouldn't believe this house we're in. Guy who owns it owns the Washington Post. Wife owns the Hope Diamond. It's a big Christmas party. Secretary Houston invited us down. Harding's here. There's so many senators you'd think it was the Capitol. Lamont’s here too. Looking pretty blue — like a guy who lost millions at the track. But you know what? Things are picking up. In the country, I mean. They got dancing girls here from New York. They're playing a new kind of music. Something in the air. The twenties may not be as bad as I thought.' 'You took the Treasury job again?' asked Younger. 'Nope. We're just guests. Betty's the one who likes Washington now. Probably because Harding's been all over her the whole night.' 'What about you and that Mrs Cross?' replied Betty. 'Not interested,' said Jimmy. 'She is,' replied his wife. 'The harlot.' 'Did you call for any particular reason?' asked Younger. 'It's Christmas, Doc.' 'Merry Christmas.'
'Everybody's giving out presents here,' said Littlemore. 'You're not the only ones,' replied Younger, looking at the diamond on Colette's finger, which had once belonged to his mother. 'Guess what?' said Littlemore. 'You got a present too.' 'I did?' asked Younger. 'From whom?'
'Houston. He asked me if you found the gold with me. I said yes. Then he asked me if you were a law officer.'
'Why?'
'Well, they finally dug it all up, and Lamont swears the gold doesn't belong to Morgan, and Houston swears it doesn't belong to the Treasury, so officially it doesn't belong to anybody. It's unclaimed. They got laws for that. They call it treasure law. The law is that unclaimed gold goes to the finder — unless he's a law officer. I told him you definitely weren't a law officer. Told him you were more a law breaker.'
There was silence on the line.
'Did you hear me, Doc?'
'All the gold goes to the finder?'
'Unless he's a law officer,' said Littlemore.
'How much was there?'
'A little over four million.'
'I can't accept it,' said Younger. 'It belongs to the United States. Tell him I give it back to the Treasury.'
'I already did.'
'You did?' asked Younger.
'I knew you wouldn't accept it.'
'Yes, but you might have let me exercise my own generosity.'
'There's something you don't know,' said Littlemore. 'Back in October, Lamont over at Morgan tried to sneak into the country two million dollars of Russian contraband gold. Customs caught him, but Houston secretly had the Treasury take delivery of it. That was illegal, but Houston didn't want Morgan to take a two-million-dollar loss; he thought it would be bad for the country. Houston was going to have the Treasury pay Morgan for that gold until he found out Lamont was behind the September sixteenth robbery.'