1.
Paris, the 16th arrondissement, 12th of November 1967
Deborah could feel that she would lose the game three moves in.
She wondered if there was any way to avoid it or if she would just have to put up with the inevitable?
Her father’s fingers hovered—patient, deliberate—before he reached down and lifted a polished ebony bishop from the old Staunton chess set. He placed it with a short, firm thud against the mahogany.
It landed on a white square. As it had to be: every piece on the board occupied either a white square or a black one. There were no gray margins, no ambiguous ground to retreat to.
Deborah studied her pawns, her defenses embarrassingly thin. She moved her knight toward his queen’s flank and hoped her father was too generous to ask what her plan actually was.
Her father didn’t ask anything. He merely swept his white bishop diagonally across the board, knocking her piece aside with a sharp clack.
“You’re playing on the edges, Deborah,” George Sawyer said, his voice predictably calm. “You’re letting hope dictate your strategy instead of discipline.” He steepled his hands beneath the glow of the desk lamp. “Without a plan, there is always a penalty.”
He offered a vain smile to ease the criticism.
Deborah looked around the study for an imaginary escape, if nothing else something that could distract her for a few moments while she gathered her thoughts. But nothing in her father’s office gave her much space to regain her focus.
The walls were lined with heavy leather-bound volumes of Joseph Fielding Smith’s Doctrines of Salvation, a pristine Pilgrim’s Progress, and rows of books on mining in Francophone Africa. Nothing she really liked. Except, perhaps, Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki. Right now, she wished she could board that raft and sail away.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Think, Deborah,” her father urged. “We have the time.”
“I really ought to get on with my homework.”
“Our weekly game is important,” he said. “But if you’d rather … ”
“No, it’s alright,” she said. “I just need to think.”
Her father leaned back. “Take all the time you need. Concentrate. Find the openings.”
Deborah made a move, unexpected even to herself. Acting more on instinct than strategy, she shifted her pieces to a position that felt … right. When her father seemingly did not counter during his turns, she began to fear he was letting her gain an advantage out of pity, but his expression showed genuine surprise when her gambit became clear.
“Ah,” he said. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
His white bishop was now cornered against the edge by her remaining black knight. It would take creativity to extract it. She didn’t expect to win the whole game, of course, but this would be a small victory. Her father nodded approvingly.
The gesture stirred something in Deborah—something she had been agonizing over since the family moved to France a month ago.
“You know, Father … ” she began hopefully, leveraging his approval to broach the forbidden subject one last time.
Her father kept his fingers steepled. “Yes?”
She looked down past the board to her feet. “I was wondering … maybe about writing one letter. Just one. No more.”
“For Kevin Harris?”
She nodded.
“I thought we agreed you shouldn’t see or write to him,” he said. “We agreed on that in Salt Lake City.”
“We did.” She swallowed. “But I feel terrible about how we parted. I didn’t explain how I felt, and that it couldn’t be helped because we had to move.”
She didn’t say it couldn’t be helped because Father forbade her and Kevin to have any further connection. They could have written letters, but for Father, that wasn’t an option.
George Sawyer’s lips thinned. “In principle, I’m not against you writing if it’s because you feel you didn’t say a proper goodbye. But since we agreed a month ago that you shouldn’t write at all, doing it now will only give him false hope.”
… But if you had said yes when I asked two weeks ago, she wanted to say. Or when we had just arrived, then …
But she felt mute. Like it would avail her nothing.
Her father raised a hand. “You know very well Kevin is from a contentious family. He said he would never serve a mission. And there is no reason in my view, aside from the draft—which is not relevant yet—for any worthy young man not to serve a mission. It would certainly be to his family’s credit if he did.”
“I don’t think he meant it that way …” Deborah started.
Her father looked as if he had to force himself to be patient. “Kevin Harris said clearly he will never serve—even bragged about it in public.”
“He didn’t brag!” Deborah shot in, feeling her cheeks flush. “Not to me. He said he had thought about it a long time.”
“That’s not what Brother Gunderson said. And he often counseled them—as any good home teacher would do.”
Deborah bit her tongue. Brother Gunderson came by the Harrises once a month, if that. It didn’t make him an expert on anything Kevin had thought about.
“I guess …” she said, shrugging.
Her father frowned and looked at her as if she were at fault for Kevin’s choice. “I find it concerning that Kevin’s parents haven’t tried harder to talk him onto a better path. If it is a fear of going abroad, I can understand why he may have reservations. When I was on my mission in Le Havre twenty years ago, I was distraught for months because it was so difficult to reach people. Some even wanted to beat us up!”
He breathed deeply, almost a sigh. “Is it because of that music infatuation of his?”
“No … ” she said. “He just plays the guitar in his spare time.”
She dared look directly at him. “And it would still have been two years until he had to serve. He might have changed his mind by then.”
“I can’t rely on that,” George said. “His behavior made me seriously worried for his future. And for your future. If he never goes on his mission I honestly can’t see how he can take you to the temple. How you could ever be … family.” He hesitated, then said, “It was better to end it clean.”
Then he moved his rook, effortlessly cornering the knight she had so proudly advanced.
“There’s nothing to be done now. It would just make everything worse. And Mother would feel awful if you resurrected this drama.”
Deborah looked down again. “Will … she be in bed for the rest of the evening?”
“She was at the market and is just resting,” George said. “She’s taken her pills and she’ll be fine. But we don’t want to do anything that could precipitate another … episode. So we must focus on what is important. School, for example. Go get your homework done; we can finish this game later.”
As he motioned for Deborah to get up, they heard a phone ring from the salon. And her mother’s footsteps in the hallway, coming out from her bedroom.
“There,” her father said, “you see, she is up and about again. But we must help her keep it that way.” He treated her with what she thought was intended to be a reassuring smile and she got up from the chair.
But her shoulders sagged. She felt grateful for the dismissal, yet entirely hollow. She had tried, hoping that hearing his definitive ‘no’ again would finally allow her to let her guilt go.
It didn’t.
She needed to tell Kevin that the cold way she behaved before their departure wasn’t her true self. She needed him to know she hadn’t meant it, so he wouldn’t hate her.
But now it seemed much too late.
2.
Four weeks earlier, in early October, Deborah had stood rigid in her starched Peter Pan collar, heavy woolen skirt and pinching garter belt. She waited in the olive-green high school corridor as a sea of Brylcreem-parted boys washed past. When Kevin finally appeared—his tie loosened, his dark long hair standing out—she could hardly breathe.
She hadn’t given him a chance to speak, when he saw her and came over. Trembling, she recited her father’s decree verbatim: A clean break. No false hopes. No letters.
She didn’t use her own voice; she borrowed the unyielding cadence of George Sawyer, former Stake President, maybe in the vain hope that Kevin would note that and not blame it on her.
However, Kevin’s easy smile dissolved into a look of betrayal that would later follow her across the Atlantic. She saw the panic and hurt rise in him. “Is it about my family?” he asked, voice tightening. “Or about me not going on a mission?”
Deborah couldn’t make herself say that her Father probably felt it was about both. She just nodded slowly.
Kevin looked away, his chest heaving. “Well,” he said. “I thought he allowed us to see each other these past few months. Why change his mind now?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Deep down, she suspected her father had planned to use the move to France as an opportunity to have her cut ties all along, so he could avoid looking like the bad guy. She dropped her gaze to the waxy linoleum.
“I see,” Kevin said.
She hadn’t defended herself further. She didn’t reach out to touch his hair one last time, though the hallway was empty now and she easily could have.
Instead, she turned her back and hurried into class. She hadn’t felt righteous; she felt the burning, suffocating shame of a coward.
*
She meant to remedy it all before leaving for France, but as the days dragged on, Kevin kept turning his back on her in school. Paralyzed by fear of his anger, she dared not go after him to tell him how sorry she was, or beg that they remain friends despite her father.
On her final day at East High, Kevin slowed by her locker, as he was passing, seemingly giving her one last chance. But Wilma and Jean flanked her, chatting about the dread of the weekly Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association meeting that night.
Deborah panicked—if she spoke intimately to Kevin now, what would her friends say?
She was so close to calling out, but hesitated too long. Kevin saw the doubt in her eyes and walked faster.
Something in her snapped—something dark and desperate. What did it all matter?
She turned her back before he was even out of sight, laughing loudly at a joke she hadn’t heard.
3.
Deborah stepped out of her father’s study, feeling like she only wanted the sanctuary of her room to bury her face in her pillow. But as she entered the long narrow hallway, she froze.
In the salon, her mother gripped the black telephone receiver, the cord twisted tightly around her knuckles. Hélène Sawyer spoke in efficient, hushed French which made it all too clear that while her surname may have changed, her roots had not. Deborah pressed her spine against the plaster wall and listened.
“Oui, Clara, I know you want us there sooner,” Hélène said, her voice thin. “But there has been so much to do. George’s office … the new ward …”
Deborah closed her eyes. Aunt Clara. Again.
For four years, the feud between her father and uncle had sucked all the oxygen out of the room. The arguments at the Sawyer family’s last “holiday” in Honfleur had been acrimonious—even more than previous visits. And it had all come to a showdown it was even now both painful and embarrassing for her to think about. She had been eleven.
Now, as they had actually come back to live in France for two years due to Father’s stationing with the company, George refused to return to Normandy unless Uncle François officially apologized. François for his part was too proud to do so when it came to the American who had “stolen” his sister.
When they moved to Paris, even if it was only for some years, Deborah had expected that the family reunion would follow naturally.
Not so. Since landing in mid-October there had only been tentative negotiations about Hélène going alone to see her brother and his wife in the tiny fishing town a few hours drive north of Paris.
Deborah swallowed. It felt incredibly unfair. Father had ordered Deborah to sever her own heart and said it was also to keep the peace, yet he was allowed to drag out this stubborn grudge, and it slowly tore her mother apart. Her mother had also had expectations about coming back to her homeland, none of them had to do with a continuation of the stand-off between George and François.
“Oui, oui. Deborah is managing in school,” Hélène continued, still twisting the chord. “And George is settled at IMT. We are getting there. But there has been so much to do … ”
Deborah listened as her mother steered the conversation away from what she reckoned was likely the upcoming Christmas holiday, asking instead about her nephew and nieces: Antoine who had recently had a baby with his Elle—making Clara a proud grandmother—and Chantal who was Deborah’s age and still lived at home.
Then, Hélène’s voice dropped in sympathy as the subject turned to her second niece. “I know it is hard for Sophie. The university is expensive, and Nanterre is unforgiving. If François’s back keeps him from working and sending money … Yes, I know she must sometimes be hungry. I worry for her, too.”
Deborah stared at the parquet floor. She knew she ought to feel sorry for her cousin who was struggling with her studies and working several jobs to be able to afford it in the first place, but she didn’t have the capacity today. It was just one more bleak detail layered over a miserable afternoon.
An inevitable silence fell over the line.
“Clara,” Hélène whispered, her French thickening. “George needs to hear the invitation from François himself. I don’t think he will come without it, even if it is Christmas.”
Heavy footsteps sounded from the study. Deborah shrank as her father walked past, his posture steady, his focus on the salon.
She peeked around the doorframe. Her mother’s shoulders stiffened as she quickly covered the receiver. “Clara is asking about Christmas again,” she said in English and looked pleadingly at her husband.
George stopped beneath the framed print of the Salt Lake Temple. “…What about François?”
“François has said we can come. It’s not the first time they’ve offered.”
“You mean, Clara has offered…” George’s jaw set into the familiar, unyielding line Deborah had just seen across the chessboard. “I would still like to hear it from François himself.”
Hélène removed her hand from the receiver so Clara could hear. “Well,” she said, her voice rising toward a sob. “Then we will have to pray that François calls your office.”
George frowned deeply, looking pointedly at the telephone. “It was François who stormed off back then,” he said, his voice cold, precise, and loud enough to carry to the Normandy coast. “He was the one who did not want to accept the choices you made … We can talk about this later.”
“Yes, of course,” Hélène said, her breathing sharp. Into the receiver, she added, “Clara, I have to go now. We have to prepare dinner …”
After a few strained goodbyes, the heavy plastic receiver clicked into the cradle. A hollow silence filled the room.
George turned slowly, heading back to his office. Passing Deborah, he stopped, a shadow crossing his face. He no longer looked as sharp and confident.
“We’ll get out to see them in Honfleur,” he said measuredly. “All of us.”
“For Christmas?” Deborah asked.
Her father shrugged. “I have a lot of respect for your uncle—for what he did during the occupation. But … we will see.” He offered a quick, sad smile. “I want him to be sincere about wanting us to reunite, François, or the fracture will always be there. Remember … ‘if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing.’” He patted her head, then turned away again.
“The Lord will have to guide us. Now go do your homework.”
He left. Hélène stood alone by the telephone, her lips moving in silent prayer. When Deborah approached, her mother held up a hand.
“Do as your father says. I bought a nice poulet … and some carrots. I need to peel them. They will go well with chicken.” She looked at Deborah with blank eyes.
Deborah swallowed and nodded. Her body felt like lead as she made her way to her own room. Pushing her father about Kevin again was impossible, and as for talking to her mother … in some way that was even more impossible.
Even though they had had a good talk about it initially, and Maman had declared her sympathy, she did not want to argue Father’s points about Kevin. Helene found ways to distract herself whenever Deborah brought Kevin up. She would also squeeze in a comment about how Deborah would ‘get over it,’ and then look pained—as if she, not Deborah, had suffered the actual separation. But she probably had too much to think about …
So her father was right. Her mother did not need any more stress.
And the truth was, she didn’t either. She didn’t need schoolwork or family feuds. She urgently needed to find a way to let go of Kevin Harris so she could have peace of mind once and for all.
So she could concentrate on belonging here in this strange new home, France; the country of her mother that she knew so well from her vacations here. And yet, some days she hardly recognized it at all.
Deborah closed her door, the heavy latch clicking. She had to find a way to make up with Kevin. She just had to.
4.
Even after a month, Deborah’s new room didn’t feel like hers. It lacked the comforting, slanted angles of her attic bedroom in Utah. Here, on the fourth floor of a Haussmann building, the dizzying drop to a gray courtyard outside her window felt like a chasm, kindling her fear of heights.
Paris had seemed like a grand adventure when she was still eleven, the previous time she was in her mother’s homeland, albeit just on holiday. Now, it was a dark, wet forest of brick and noise, endless motor scooters and people shouting. Father insisted it was only a two-year contract he had agreed to with Intermountain Technologies’ French branch, but she had heard hushed “what-ifs” about extending. By then, she would be finished with her new, international high school—or lycée as they called it here.
And tonight she once again had to face her dissertation about Les Fleurs du mal that Madame Duval demanded for their Français class. Father had been so proud when she was placed straight into the mainstream class alongside the French students, assuming her conversational skills were enough. They weren’t.
Dissecting 19th-century French poetry academically was entirely different from polite kitchen chatter. Even the native term for her essay—“dissertation”—made her nervous, although the contents would not have been all that different from what she had to endure at East High. Only now, everything had to be written in French.
The classes in the American section in the school felt like tiny islands of calm; the rest of the day was a frantic attempt to keep her head above water and pretend she could follow the Français class as proficiently as her mother’s instructions about shopping.
Deborah felt entirely frozen. The book with Baudelaire’s poems sat open, and her dissertation was due in two days, but all she could think about was Kevin.
And the letter to him.
She had written it their first evening in Paris but couldn’t send it. Instead, she had addressed it to the Lord, tucking the thin blue envelope inside her Book of Mormon, hoping that giving it to her Heavenly Father would take away the longing.
It hadn’t. She was still trapped in the labyrinth.
Honor thy father and thy mother. The Fifth Commandment.
And Father had been entirely clear: it was over.
And to disobey her father wasn’t risking a grounding; he was a former Stake President, the patriarch of their home. Defying his direct counsel felt like a willful sin against the Lord.
If she sent the letter, she wouldn’t just be a rebellious daughter—she would be unworthy.
But there was also the Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness.
She had borne false witness against Kevin, pretending she had lost all feelings for Kevin. Why? Pure, blinding paralysis. Terrified of his anger and her father’s rules, she had given Kevin silence. But silence was a lie.
She stared at the Mia Maid rose and Honor Bee necklace sitting perfectly on her dresser—awards for her flawless homemaking and spiritual devotion back in Utah. Her whole life had been about doing the right things to secure her place in eternity one day. But how could she be an Honor Bee if her silence to Kevin was hiding the truth?
She should have explained how deeply sorry she was, and she should have proved it. She should have said that she would try to reason with Father, so that they could at least write to each other. Instead, she left him with nothing.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. That was from the Book of Proverbs.
She tried to find comfort in the sentence, but what if it meant that her thoughts about contacting Kevin again were completely wrong? What if the only thing that mattered to God was loyalty to her father?
She closed the window. From across the courtyard, loud music bled through the glass—a mournful organ and a ghostly voice singing something nonsensical in English, about a “shade of pale”. The heavy music made it even more difficult to concentrate on finding a solution.
Turning from the Baudelaire poem collection, she reached over to her shelf, and took out Doctrine and Covenants, desperate to break the deadlock in her mind. After a long time leafing through it, she found a passage that had always spoken to her:
Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness …
Deborah stared at the words for a long time.
Maybe this was it.
Maybe God didn’t want her to wait for a miraculous numbness; maybe He wanted her to be an agent of her own!
… do many things of their own free will …
… bring to pass much righteousness …
If this was what God wanted, the righteous path in her case wasn’t blind obedience—it was to honor her father and Kevin.
So she had to break the fifth commandment just a fraction, but for a good reason—the ninth.
Ergo, she should send one final letter, apologizing, and leave no return address. Let Kevin know the feelings she had kept back from him but then end it for good.
But … how would Kevin feel about this confession if he had no way to respond?
No. No, this way would not do.
If she sent a letter without a return address, it would feel like cowardice all over again.
It would deny him the chance to say goodbye or, if it came to that, to tell her he hated her.
So there had to be a return address. Except that that was impossible, wasn’t it?
If a letter from Utah arrived at Rue de Longchamp, Maman would leave it on the salon table. Father would see it. He inspected the silver tray with letters every evening. There was no hiding it if Kevin replied.
She couldn’t provide a way for Kevin to answer in secret, so again the conclusion was clear:
She shouldn’t write it at all.
And so Father was right. Honor thy parents.
Perhaps God wanted her to see that the door was sealed, and the simplest thing was to obey and stop asking.
She continued for a while trying to fight the realization, trying to find a way to break her vows without sinning too much. But it felt like preparing to jump out of a plane without a parachute.
She had always had a clear picture of the things she had to do to feel secure that she was faithful.
Again, Deborah eyed the Mia Maid rose. It felt like a lie having been awarded that rose while sitting here and thinking about how she could go behind her father’s back.
Liar.
That wasn’t her!
But if she didn’t do anything, she would also be a liar towards Kevin.
Her head spun. The music across the courtyard swelled, drowning her will to search further. She had to think of something else.
She looked at the poem for the umpteenth time, not having written a line about it yet:
Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l’abîme,
O Beauté? Ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
Et l’on peut pour cela te comparer au vin.
Tu contiens dans ton oeil le couchant et l’aurore;
She could not concentrate on translating the French in her head, much less ponder its deeper meaning.
Tomorrow, she would have to borrow notes from Brigid, the cynical British girl who was also in the Français class and who was one of the few non-Mormon kids who actually seemed like she wanted to talk to Deborah—a new girl from a strange place called Utah.
Tomorrow.
For now she would give up.
Deborah got up from her desk and lay down heavily down on her bed. She pressed a hand flat against her sternum, and listened to the rain outside.
She felt … empty inside.
So perhaps it was already working. Perhaps the Lord was finally doing what He must—locking her heart down?
5.
Deborah dreaded the next morning’s commute to school with her father’s old friend from his missionary days in Le Havre, Jean-Luc Dubois. Not that there was anything wrong with Brother Dubois—quite the contrary.
It was his two boys, Pierre and Alain—boys who certainly did not like her. But there was no avoiding them. Jean-Luc was a Mormon and a history teacher at her Lycée Internationale in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which was located in a quaint municipality a good 45 minute drive west of the Paris center. And Deborah’s parents wouldn’t let her take the train yet, so for the time being she had to commute with Brother Dubois and his dreadful offspring.
School would offer no relief. It would be another day of endless overthinking while trying to concentrate in classes, navigating the girls’ cliques, and struggling not to fall behind in Français. She had hoped yesterday that she might feel better after sleeping, but it was not so. So she had to hold out, that was clear. If she just waited, prayed hard enough, and did her duties, the Lord would eventually take this away. She would feel nothing, and Kevin would just be … Kevin.
The November chill seeped through the floorboards of Jean-Luc’s Peugeot 404. The cramped commute made her mental paralysis worse. Pierre and Alain sat in the back, speaking rapid, slang-heavy French they knew she couldn’t follow. They were perfectly at ease in this world. She could see in the rear view mirror how Pierre occasionally shot her a faintly pitying glance, which was worse than outright cruelty.
Jean-Luc caught her eye as they wound toward Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the bleak industrial suburbs of Paris with its huge construction sites waiting to give way to the lush surroundings further to the west, where more gentle visionaries had founded the international school.
“Do you feel you are prepared for tomorrow’s dissertation, Deborah?” he asked, his accented English impeccable. Unlike her father, Jean-Luc’s voice had a gentle, inquiring tilt. “French Poetry is not an easy topic, and I can’t say I am an expert myself. But if you need me to look over your outline, you have only to ask.”
He meant well, and surely Brother Dubois, even if he was a history teacher, knew more about Charles Baudelaire than she did. But asking for help felt like admitting defeat—like proving her father wrong for letting her skip the introductory French course.
She wasn’t ready to admit that yet, unless she could find a really good reason, which seemed impossible. The real explanation was that she had been eager to make her father proud, perhaps too eager.
So she gave a polite, noncommittal answer, and then it was just the drone of traffic again and the snickering from the backseat.
They passed the monolithic concrete of the Nanterre University. Officially a branch of the prestigious Sorbonne but Deborah thought it looked more like a collection of giant factory blocks that had been dumped in the middle of another construction site. A looming tower of gray and steel, surrounded by scaffolding like metallic weeds, was seen behind the colossal blocks.
Her cousin lived in a 9 square meter dorm room in one of those soulless slabs. She wondered how that was humanly possible, with so little space. She also wondered if Sophie had that boyfriend still—Bernard, wasn’t it?
Sophie always spoke of Bernard in her letters with a tone of condescension. It could not be true love then, could it? Not like Deborah and—
Gripping her satchel, she squeezed her eyes shut, asking Heavenly Father to make her heart as hard as that concrete they had used for her cousin’s university.
Please help me forget Kevin.
But praying for numbness was futile when school demanded she be painfully awake. 15 minutes later and they were there, and she would have to try to not think about Kevin for the next seven hours.
*
By the 12:30 midday break, her head throbbed from translating old French texts. The courtyard emptied as students from both the French and other sections scattered for hot lunches. Deborah sat outside on a damp wall under a bare chestnut tree, shivering slightly, while she unwrapped a squashed sandwich.
In her vision loomed the stately Château d’Hennemont where the school originally had started before it expanded to also include more modern buildings. It was in many ways, especially with all the nationalities there, a lot more of an interesting and colorful school than good old East High. But Deborah felt no joy, nor interest in anything today.
She was allowed to sit for herself for some time but nearing the end of the long break, Brigid Murphy dropped her heavy bookbag onto the wall next to her.
“There you are, Sawyer. Mind sharing the royal seats?”
“O-of course not.” Deborah moved slightly even if there was more than enough space. “I thought you had lunch with Carolyn and Jessie?”
“I did,” Brigid said, “but they went home for a spell. Must be great to have a house just two blocks away, so you don’t have to play inmate here for this godawful long break everyday.”
“It must be.” Deborah nodded. “You could go home, though. Mine is too far.”
“Yeah, but I’d use all my time going there,” Brigid scoffed. “What’s the use of a break then?”
They both giggled and Deborah breathed more easily. It was as if Brigid had taken a special interest in her, and wanted her for herself—which was both scary and somewhat exhilarating.
Perhaps the day wouldn’t be terrible, after all?
Brigid didn’t look like the girls back in Utah. Sharp and pragmatic, her school blazer was missing a button, her scarf looped carelessly around her neck. Her jetblack hair was a perfect Vidal Sassoon bop. Deborah wished she could try having her hair like that.
If Brigid was aware of Deborah’s staring, she didn’t show it. She merely watched the remaining students with the detached amusement of a biologist observing lab rats. She then extracted an unlit Gauloise cigarette from a silver tin, twirling it expertly between her fingers.
“Right,” Brigid said, her Sussex boarding-school accent cutting through the cold air. “I’ve been watching you all morning, Sawyer. And you’ve been staring into the middle distance like a Victorian widow waiting for a ship that’s gone down at sea.”
She leaned against the tree trunk, as if she was just conversing casually about school work or the weather.
Deborah chewed her lip. “I guess, I’m just tired.”
Brigid ignored the lie. “The Dubois boys were insufferable today, but I assume it isn’t just them. And you didn’t even flinch when Madame Duval yelled. So, since we have an hour before returning to the prison ward … what is it? Are you failing a class?”
“No! I’m doing okay … well, mostly.”
“Blah,” Brigid snorted, half-amused. “I survived Sussex by learning the exit routes, Sawyer. You’ve been here a month and you’re still acting like you don’t know where the doors are … I can see myself a lot in you, you know.”
“You can?”
“Yes.”
That … did not seem real.
But Brigid’s smile had turned into something Deborah found strangely genuine, as the silence worked between them.
After a little hesitation, Deborah decided to be truthful.
Brigid had joked about Mormons, and perhaps with some judgement that she tried to hold back. But she had never been cruel or unfair, and it would feel like a relief just to get it out. She had been feeling so bad since last night.
Taking a deep cold breath, Deborah wrapped her coat tighter and let it spill.
She told Brigid about Kevin, stripping away the agonizing prayers and theological terror. Instead, she gave the facts: a boy in Utah, an angry father, a strict command for a clean break, and a heavily rewritten Par Avion letter she didn’t know what to do about.
She finished with her practiced excuse. “It’s impossible anyway. Father checks all the mail. I wouldn’t know how to send it without them finding out. Better to just leave it.”
She waited for judgment or advice to run away and rebel. Brigid offered neither. She listened with undivided attention, her usual smirk dropping away. Then she sighed, her breath pluming in the November air. She dropped the unlit Gauloise back into her silver tin and snapped it shut.
“Right,” she said, her British vowels clipped. “So, to summarize: Romeo is pouting in the American desert, Juliet is freezing her arse off in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and Lord Capulet is currently controlling the postal service.”
Deborah managed a weak smile. “I know it sounds silly,” she said, flushing.
“I didn’t say it was silly,” Brigid said. “It sounds awful, actually. Nothing quite as wretched as knowing someone is operating on bad information about you.”
Leaning forward, she switched to a tone of practical instruction. “You’ve just told me a tragic story, but the ending you’ve tacked onto it is rubbish.”
Deborah blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The logistics!” Brigid waved dismissively. “You’re convincing yourself you can’t send it because of your dad sitting on all the letters that go in and out from the nice posh apartment you have in the 16th. Rubbish.”
“It’s a very straightforward operation.” Brigid continued, counting off on her fingers. “One: take a few francs. Two: go to the kiosk—the little Tabac across from the station, for example. Just point to the red stamp for the États-Unis. Three: put the stamp on your envelope.” She paused for effect then pointed toward the street. “… Four: drop it into any yellow boîte aux lettres in Paris. They empty them twice a day. That’s it. And, sure, do not write a return address. Then nobody on this side of the pond will find out.”
“You don’t understand,” Deborah protested. “I can’t send it without a return address. Then I would be a coward again. But if I do and Kevin replies, then father would know.”
Brigid leaned back, crossing her arms. “You are just moving the goal posts.” She tilted her head. “The real problem is that if you send it, you are disobeying those Mormon rules—isn’t that it? I mean, what can your dad actually do if your boyfriend responds? Excommunicate you?”
Deborah’s heart hammered louder. “You make it sound so easy,” she said.
“Isn’t it?” Brigid replied, a challenge in her tone. “At some point you have to stop always doing what your parents want. You are, what, 15?”
“Well,” Deborah said carefully, “maybe it’s not just about rules. Maybe our rules are grounded in something … more.”
“‘More’?” Brigid looked slightly amused. “Rules are rules. Parents make them all the time. To control their children.”
Deborah was taken aback but realized that it might have been a mistake not to explain the scripture’s importance first. Surely, that was why Brigid did not get it.
And Brigid herself was proud to be British and about lots of things she considered “hers”—from her special Italian earrings rings to her collection of records from that Jim Morrison fellow. So if Deborah framed it to be about who you … were, well, perhaps that was a way to make her understand?
“Don’t you believe in anything?” she tried. “Because I do … and those rules follow from what I believe, and you are right that it is a challenge. But it is also who I am.” Deborah found a defiant look. “Even if others think Mormons are weird. Who we are matters. It is not always meant to be … easy.”
Deborah held her breath. Brigid’s mouth twitched. Then she let her head fall back against the tree. “‘Easy’? No, I don’t reckon so. But since you asked: My parents are Church of England, nominally.”
She paused and looked up at the gray sky. “What it means is that we sing hymns on Christmas Eve and pretend we aren’t terrified of dying. Beyond that, I don’t know if there’s a bloke up there keeping a ledger of who smoked behind the bicycle sheds.”
She looked back at Deborah, eyes softening. “I’m sorry … I guess I believe most adults are making it up as they go along.”
“But then you—” Deborah began.
Before she could say more, Brigid leaned forward, suddenly, expression fierce. “Your father was just afraid of the mess, wasn’t he? Long distance boyfriend. ‘Wrong sort of people’. Ha, I’ve been there, trust me. Your father reminds me of my old man!”
“I don’t think they are alike …” Deborah said quietly. “I really don’t think so. It’s about … honoring your parents.”
Brigid paused and tapped her scuffed shoe thoughtfully against the wall. “Very well … letting a boy across the ocean think you’re a coward sure brings your parents a lot of honor. I suppose if God prefers polite liars to messy, honest people … well, then I reckon you’ve been reading the right scriptures.”
The shrill bell rang. The break was over. And not a moment too soon. Students groaned, stubbing out cigarettes and grabbing satchels. Deborah frantically searched for a comeback.
Brigid pushed off the wall, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Her face mask of irony had given way, though.
“Don’t use your father’s rules as an excuse to cover up how you feel, Deborah.” Her gaze turned distant. “Trust me, you don’t want to go down that way … ”
She pulled a shiny one-franc piece from her pocket, placing it gently on Deborah’s crushed sandwich. “A stamp for America costs less than that. If you want to carry this miserableness around because you think it makes you ‘honorable,’ keep it. But if you care about the truth … ”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Giving a bracing nod, she walked back toward the British section building, leaving Deborah alone.
Deborah waited, unmoving, glaring at the franc.
Then she threw it hard onto the ground.
The snap as the coin hit the pavement was sharp, brief, and satisfying. But the feeling only lasted a second before she felt terrible again.
She had to get to her next class. It was the only way not to feel anything now.
6.
Later that night, the apartment fell quiet. The heavy cast-iron radiator in the corner of her room was going full blast but failed to completely hold the November cold from seeping in. Outside, there was the usual cacophony of cars, scooters, sirens, people … a world she was allowed to see but not really touch. Rain tapped against her window.
This was it. Deborah knelt on the cold hardwood floor beside her bed, bowing her head in the dark.
It’s a test, she told herself. Abraham on the mountain. It has to be.
She began to pray, pouring the tangled mess of her mind and heart out to Heavenly Father, presenting her case like a lawyer.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
“Please tell me what to do,” she prayed, again and again. “If this is a test of faith, give me strength to burn the letter. But if it is a test of honesty, tell me it is okay to send it. Give me a burning in the bosom. Give me anything.”
She finished praying and said Amen. She stayed on her knees, waiting for the “fruits of the spirit” her Seminary teachers had always promised would come.
But as minutes ticked by, the room remained exactly as it was. There was no burning in the bosom. Only the sound of Parisian rain, the blue letter hidden in her scriptures, and a vast, echoing silence.
After a while, though, she noticed another stillness in her mind.
Something that felt … like clarity. She thought again about the scripture.
Anxiously engaged. God wanted everyone to be that, did He not?
Doctrine and Covenants said it so well:
“For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.”
She wasn’t supposed to ask God for every little thing.
And it made perfect sense now.
With the world in disarray—everything from her mother’s health to that unrest in the Congo that had father’s company so troubled—her concerns were minor. She should take responsibility for them herself.
And if she did this, she could be forgiven if she made the wrong choice!
And since Father would never find out, and she would likely never get a reply, nothing would really happen—except hopefully, she wouldn’t feel anxious about Kevin anymore. Or miss him.
A cold thought then came to her. What if the letter made him like her less? Because it was too late, for example. Because she hadn’t fought enough for him in Utah?
She steeled herself. That might be the consequence, but at least she would tell the truth. And inwardly, she felt sure it would not be so. If Kevin knew the truth about her feelings, and her guilt, then he would appreciate that and in a way it would feel like the old bond still existed. Even if she had to break it off.
Deborah pulled out her hidden letter and rewrote it into a shorter, equally intense version, deciding to send it tomorrow.
But there was still the matter of the return address. Should she share it or not?
Sending a letter without a return address denied Kevin the chance to tell her how he felt, and denied herself one last good memory.
So if she wanted to serve the truth it required her to give the return address. Truth was not a one-way street.
But the fear of what she was contemplating left her shivering.
And if she decided to allow a reply, she needed another return address than her own. It couldn’t be Rue de Longchamp no. 104.
Sophie.
She could use Sophie’s address.
Her older cousin who was studying at the university out there—so close to her school—seemed like the obvious choice. She didn’t trust any of her classmates, and in particular not the Mormon kids at school.
Brigid might be an exception but Deborah felt that her condescension would be worse than Sophie’s. And Brigid would probably urge her to continue writing to Kevin in secret which she absolutely would not do.
One letter. That would be all.
Sophie would likely just call her ‘petite cousine’ and then accept the single-letter mission with a smirk. She had other things to think about with her studies, did not see Deborah every day, and would therefore not be tempted to try to twist Deborah’s mission of truth into someone more rebellious and sinful.
Maybe that was unfair to Brigid, to think like that; but whenever Deborah turned it around in her mind, Brigid felt like the option with the most potential drama. She just wanted it over with.
So, yes—Sophie it had to be.
The trick was getting to her cousin.
Maman was anxious to see the families together, but Father was jumping through hoops to postpone the full reunion.
Deborah wondered if she could visit Sophie at the Nanterre campus, since they passed it every morning and afternoon anyway, but she knew Father would never allow that. Nor was he likely to invite Sophie to their place with the feud still going on with Sophie’s father.
Deborah didn’t think anything would happen before Christmas on the family front. Maybe not even then. The resentment between Father and Uncle François seemed like it could go on forever.
And magically, that was all her mind needed to stop overthinking and sleep.
Postponement.
She had made a decision to act, yes, just not when to act. Perfect.
Fortunately, she fell asleep before considering what God would say to that.
7.
The psychological trick worked beautifully—for about eight hours. She slept deeply, wrapped in the warm illusion of a resolved decision.
She wasn’t a coward, but she also didn’t have to face any yellow mailboxes today or in the near future. She had successfully outsourced her timeline to her father’s stubbornness and the French holiday calendar.
When the morning dawned, the physical reality of her plan still lay in her drawer. She opened it. The envelope was sealed, bearing Kevin’s Utah address, but the Expéditeur section was blank.
Deborah quickly took it to hide somewhere else. First, she wedged the letter safely inside her Book of Mormon, but then she decided to put it in her satchel, at the very bottom. Then she could at least feel she was looking for a solution while in reality she had decided to postpone any such action.
*
During a tense breakfast—her father scowling over a telex about riots in the Congolese mines, her mother brushing invisible crumbs off the table—Deborah mentally polished her plan.
Not in order to act on it, just feel more secure in what she had already decided:
– Send the letter.
– Ask Sophie to put her address on it, if Kevin replied.
– Wait for an opportunity to talk to Sophie that would come much later, when her father and uncle buried the hatchet.
Hélène was finally going to Honfleur this coming weekend to see her estranged brother and his family. It would be her first visit since they arrived last month. But she would be going alone.
George insisted Deborah stay behind for Sunday’s Sacrament Meeting. And he, of course, would not go.
Already busy packing, Hélène was even more intense than usual. Deborah was just relieved to stay in Paris, anxious for her mother to leave so she could be alone with her thoughts without having to think of her feelings as well.
It still nagged Deborah, though, that she had decided to go behind her father’s back, even if she hadn’t decided when and how yet.
It was as if her mind kept returning to this over and over, and any attempt to push it away for good was like kicking at the surf.
*
But later that same morning, quicker than she had dreamed of, she had an answer.
She knew how she could stop feeling guilty.
It struck her suddenly. Like lightning.
On the ride to school with Jean Luc and his pestering boys, Deborah tried to tune out all the noise, especially Pierre’s poor jokes and then … she remembered a piece of scripture.
One very important piece of scripture.
It felt like the key to everything, accompanied by a genuine burning in her heart.
It was Jesus’ central message of love—contained both in the Sermon on the Mount and in Nephi:
“ … first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”
Reconciled.
She clung to the word.
It was not merely truth versus honor.
She couldn’t be reconciled to Kevin by shouting into the void!
Reconciliation required two people, forgiveness, and an answer. So she already had that right.
Providing a return address wasn’t just a selfish desire disguised as a dubious addition to the commandment of truth; it was a scriptural necessity for true repentance!
More than that, it offered a way to balance all the scales, and make her transgression against her father seem irrelevant!
Disobeying her father’s direct counsel was a willful sin that would stain her worthiness, and would therefore require proper restitution.
But if she used her letter as the catalyst to heal her family’s four-year feud, it would be a righteous trade. It was all about getting to see Sophie. And help her.
She just had to figure out how. But there were many options. Maybe … maybe Sophie could come and have dinner with them a couple of times a week and then she would not be so hungry. And when her father found out he would be grateful, wouldn’t he?
There were some things Deborah couldn’t quite figure out yet, but she felt that helping her cousin would somehow help everyone. And she could figure out how to make that work, she could balance her spiritual ledger, buying off the sin of her disobedience by performing a little miracle for her mother!
Arriving at the Lycée International, she felt a renewed sense of spiritual armor. Now, finally, she had a direction to go in—rooted in scripture.
And most importantly, she had a sense that she wasn’t a fraud or a liar.
She was the girl who deserved the Mia Rose again.
She told herself she had time to work out the details later. For now she just reveled in the feeling.
*
At the midday break, though, her peace of mind was challenged.
The freezing courtyard bustled, a hard autumn wind made brown and orange leaves dance everywhere and stung the skin on your face, but that was something she could manage. Deborah walked back and forth in the yard to keep warm, but what kept her warm mostly was the feeling that she had found the key to everything.
Then Brigid appeared.
The British girl’s breath was pluming over a thick woolen scarf. Falling into step, Brigid’s sharp eyes scanned Deborah’s face, noting the absence of yesterday’s Victorian-widow gloom.
“You look terribly pleased with yourself.” Brigid regarded her with the usual detached interest, her hands firmly tugged in her pockets.
Deborah just nodded and noticed that they were nearing the massive wrought-iron gates. She slowed and so did Brigid.
Bolted to the stone wall outside was another bright mustard-yellow PTT mailbox. From where they stood it could easily be seen through the bars.
“I assume,” Brigid said, smirking, “that the newfound cheerfulness means you’ve brought the letter.” She smiled in a way that made Deborah shiver more than from the wind around them. “Now, go out and drop it in.”
Deborah swallowed. Something in her mind stirred. Like a stone had just broken the surface of still water.
“Don’t think. Drop it in,” Brigid urged. “I’m sure you have it. Better than Baudelaire, eh?” She patted Deborah’s satchel.
Deborah stopped. This wasn’t the plan.
Brigid eyed her very closely. “ … What is the matter now?”
Deborah felt something twist inside her. Everything had been so great and clean and clear in her mind and now it was as if her path was as confusing as the leaves blowing around them.
“I can’t. I have to—,” Deborah forced herself to look directly at Brigid. “I’m going to have my cousin Sophie, ah, to tutor me. Then she can receive the reply … if there is one. I just need time to get Father in on the arrangements … ”
Brigid’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Are you serious? I thought you did not want to leave a return address? But you still want to send it, right?”
“Yes.”
“But not really? That is why you haven’t put it yet in any of the hundred mailboxes between here and your castle-sized apartment? You still have it, though—right?” She patted Deborah’s satchel again.
“You don’t understand—” Deborah began.
“What don’t I understand?” As Deborah stepped away from the gate, Brigid stepped in front of her.
“Uh,” Deborah rambled on, “It’s … my Français class is not going well … you know how Madame Duval criticizes my dissertations, my pronunciation … And my aunt and mother fret about Sophie not getting enough to eat at Nanterre, so—”
“I’ve seen the mud palace,” Brigid interrupted, impatiently. “But I don’t see the connection to Romeo.”
“Ah … Sophie will help me with Français class and get something proper to live for, so she doesn’t have to work every evening at those dreadful supermarkets, brassieries …”
That … sounded about right.
Deborah found a renewed confidence. She felt she had been able to articulate how to make this work, something she hadn’t been able to in the car.
“If we can help my cousin so she doesn’t have to work so much instead of studying,” she continued with more conviction, “then Uncle François might come around and see my father has charity … and make up with him!”
Brigid chuckled. “From what you have told me these past weeks, it sounds like your dad might need to make up for some things, too.”
“Of course,” Deborah protested. “Of course! But he wants the families reunited. Only, he is trying to protect my mother, as well, you see. My uncle has never accepted her faith.”
“And you are trying to protect her too?” Brigid cocked her head. “By making that little family reunion come true, and without more fuss between the gentlemen?”
“Yes!”
Brigid shook her head. “Really, Deborah Sawyer? Did you make all of this up just now?”
“—No!”
“‘No’?” Brigid’s eyes narrowed again.
“No…!” Deborah felt exasperated.
Her plan to involve her cousin for the sake of family peace wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t as true as she would like it to be.
Or at least as thought through. Certainly, it made at least some kind of sense, what she had stitched together impromptu. But she had blurted the new plan out before realizing exactly how she would make it all work and how it would up her timetable.
But she couldn’t retract now, not in front of Brigid.
And furthermore … she was getting tired of being questioned all the time, about what she felt was the right thing to do. She was tired of never getting a chance to make her own decisions.
“It is the right thing to do, to make things better for both of our families.” Deborah crossed her arms.
Brigid waved her hand dismissively. “You’re not convincing anyone with this… ‘righteousness’. Just send the bloody letter! Or stop by the mud palace and ask your cousin if she can receive a reply for you from Ro—”
“I can’t,” Deborah almost shouted. “I can’t just ‘stop by and ask’ Sophie like that. Don’t you see?” She gestured toward Jean-Luc’s car in the parking lot outside the gates. “I’m not going back and forth alone by train, or bus or—not like you!”
“Then write to your cousin and ask if she is in on it—don’t you write to her already, or is that forbidden, too?”
Deborah gritted her teeth. “My mother reads all my letters from Sophie. She’d be suspicious if I suddenly didn’t let her see some of them.”
“Okay, okay … for cripes’ sake,” Brigid said. “But here is the simple solution, then: Tell Romeo that if he wants to reply then he can send it to our address. I won’t tell anyone.” She snickered. “Unless there are some really racy things in those letters.”
Deborah flushed with anger. But also with embarrassment. This was one of the reasons she had initially not wanted to consider Brigid. Not that she did not trust her, unlike the other girls at school.
But she already felt so embarrassed having revealed this and about the way Brigid had received it. At least Sophie knew about some of her problems back home and while she had joked about some of it, she had never judged. As a matter of fact, she had seemed kind of aloof to it all.
Brigid’s offer was tempting, though. It would be so easy.
No.
Availing herself of the easiest path wasn’t what God wanted. Her flash of inspiration in the car had proved that.
Reconciliation was the purpose of all this. And she was God’s instrument in bringing it about.
“I’m going to bring the families together,” Deborah said firmly. “So it has to be via Sophie. That will help my father reconcile with my Uncle, because I know he wants to be charitable! But he is also hurt about some of the things my Uncle said and did. He doesn’t know how to talk about it.”
“Sounds like he should learn it then.”
Something dark—righteousness, Deborah told herself—rose even stronger within her.
“—Just because you don’t believe in anything doesn’t mean there isn’t something right in our books about how we should treat each other!”
Her voice was high-pitched. She glanced around nervously, but there were only distant voices and the chill autumn wind rustling the swirling leaves.
And Brigid’s cynical smirk faded. She pulled her scarf higher against the wind.
“Run this by me one last time,” she said quietly. “Rather than just dropping a letter into a box and having the reply sent to our little old house in Vésinet … you’re going to manipulate your father’s transatlantic superiority complex to force him to hire your radical, chain-smoking, impoverished cousin, creating a scripture-sanctioned back-channel for your illicit correspondence?”
Deborah felt her cheeks burning. “ … I don’t think Sophie smokes that much.”
“Oh, but you told me once that her letters always smell,” Brigid smirked.
Then, she laughed—a sudden, delighted sound.
“Deborah Sawyer, I take all of it back,” she said, eyes glittering. “You aren’t a Victorian widow. You’re Machiavelli in a modest cardigan. I love it. It relies entirely on the massive egos of your father and your uncle—which means it might just have a decent chance of working. And maybe do some good for your poor mother, too.”
Deborah nodded eagerly. “You do understand!”
“Yes … Well, I guess miracles have to find a way to happen. Just get your letter into that mailbox—any mailbox—that’s all I care about.” Brigid patted Deborah’s satchel for a final time.
“I hope you kept the franc-piece,” she said, stepping back as the bell shrieked in the background. “Good luck with the plan, Miss Napoleon.”
8.
Deborah went straight to her mother before dinner that evening—to ensure her backup. She confessed how terribly she was struggling with Madame Duval’s assignments, and how wonderful it would be if her cousin Sophie could tutor her. She said she had been thinking about this for a long time, but was afraid to say it, which was again close enough to the truth. It certainly felt like she had been thinking about it for weeks on end.
To say Hélène was happy for the chance to invite her estranged niece into their home was an understatement. She didn’t ask much about grades or specific books; she simply grabbed the lifeline with both hands. Deborah felt she could fly.
During dinner, as the blanquette de veau was passed around, Deborah made her move. Heart hammering, she exchanged a knowing glance with her mother. Hélène carefully put her cutlery down, her eyes suddenly bright.
“George,” she breathed. “I think Deborah has something to tell you.”
Her father stopped cutting his veal, his gaze shifting heavily. “Yes?”
Taking a steadying breath, Deborah explained how pressed she felt in the Français class, emphasizing Madame Duval’s harsh commentaries on her progress. Right on cue, Hélène introduced the perfect solution to prevent deteriorating grades: hire Sophie.
Silence fell over the dining room. George slowly put down his knife and fork, his face betraying nothing.
“It would be the best for everyone,” Hélène leaned forward, her usual nervous energy replaced by a fierce, grasping hope. “Clara says with François unable to work … they can hardly afford her rent at those dreadful dorms, let alone food. She has to work such late hours—time away from her studies—just to make ends meet. We could help, George. We could pay her to come here and she could also get a proper meal. It wouldn’t be a handout; it would be to help the family.”
“Maybe I should talk to Madame Duval first?” George looked uneasily from Deborah to his wife and back. “I thought we agreed your French was good enough. I even had Jean-Luc put in a word for you to be allowed to skip the introductory classes.”
Deborah steeled herself, blending confidence with visible remorse. “Maybe I was too confident,” she said slowly. “Father, every night I struggle with those essays—dissertations, I mean. The language isn’t like speaking with Maman back in our kitchen in Utah.”
“Well, could Mother not help you?” George suggested. “The skill to write it, the grammar—she could help with that.”
“But if I don’t understand the lectures,” Deborah shot in smoothly, “it’s difficult to know what to write. I could write it in English first and Maman could help me translate, but it would still be inadequate.”
George breathed deeply. “Deborah, I had no idea …”
“You were so busy, George,” Hélène soothed. “There has been so much with the mission and that awful unrest in the Congo. It is not your fault. But maybe the Lord has shown us a way to help Deborah and help Sophie. We want that, don’t we?”
George’s face was unreadable. “She studies at Nanterre. I have heard things about that university. And it would take time from her studies, just as any of her other jobs.”
“She works so many hours at Prisunic as a cashier just to keep food on her table,” Hélène countered. “And at that brasserie as well. If we pay her … what did Sophie write in her last letter she earns?”
Sophie hadn’t written anything, but Deborah had overheard a phone conversation with Aunt Clara. “Six francs an hour,” she said and nodded solemnly.
“Sophie could come for a couple of hours in the late afternoon,” Hélène continued smoothly, “and we could pay her what she earns for a full evening’s work at the Prisunic. She could have dinner here, too, and go home early.”
“It’s just …” George hesitated. “What about her faith? Or lack thereof. She was always François’s girl in that regard, perhaps in everything. I mean, he was definitely more supportive of her than Antoine who just wanted to start his shop … ”
“Higher education is a distant dream for many girls in Normandy,” Hélène said evenly.
George lowered his gaze. “I suppose … but my point is. We know Sophie no longer wants to attend Mass. Clara suspects she has embraced atheism completely, in fact.”
“As an old missionary,” Hélène said, “you should know this is sometimes how God wants things. Despite our call, we do not seem to be destined to bring everyone into the Celestial Kingdom. But that is why there are other kingdoms beyond this life for those worthy, and Sophie definitely is that, even if she does not believe anymore. That was one of the beautiful teachings about our Church that convinced me to join, if you remember?”
“I am not talking about converting her, of course,” George said quickly.
“Of course.”
“And at 21, she is certainly old enough to make her own decisions.”
Hélène smiled faintly. “So it’s still about Nanterre?”
“Look, it is not for me to judge my niece … ” George cleared his throat, “but I do not like what I hear about the universities in Paris. Especially hers. I read in the papers they just closed the lectures down for three weeks—a ‘student strike’. If they had kept to the study plans, then maybe Sophie would not be so stressed.”
“Surely, your niece didn’t decide any of that,” Hélène countered. “She was so jubilant that she could go to the university, the first in her family. And we know from her letters—” she looked quickly at Deborah “—that she’s very frustrated that she may not be able to take all her exams because of the strikes.”
“Very well”, George said “there may be all kinds of explanations for the disruptions out there, but Sophie’s choice not to have any faith at all is her own, as far as I can see. And I am not comfortable with it.”
“But if Sophie comes here,” Deborah jumped in, “we can show her what living faith means, what our life is like, instead of just writing about it. She might see another side of, ah, things.”
It didn’t sound convincing to her own ears, but her father brightened briefly.
Then his resigned mask returned. “If only it were that simple. Like I said, Sophie is her father’s daughter. They have never accepted God, despite Clara being very attached to Catholicism.”
“Yes, it’s true: Sophie and Uncle are close,” Deborah pushed, “but don’t you think that will make him appreciate that we help her even more? Maybe he will finally call you?”
Something stirred in George’s eyes.
For a second, his face went blank before breaking into a tightly controlled smile.
Deborah held her breath.
Yes … yes … yes.
She could see that something had finally changed in his mind. A weight had lifted from her father’s face.
Yes, she could see it clearly.
She could see him imagining it now: the American priesthood holder humbly taking his family to Christmas dinner in Honfleur, casually mentioning his duty to help a struggling family member.
That role was something he would very much like to have. Deborah could almost hear the different reactions her father contemplated in his mind when they met with her uncle.
‘It was nothing François, think not of it. Family matters more than our differences.’
“Let … us talk more about how you envision this, Deborah,” George said, his tone shifting entirely. He patted her cheek. “Maybe the Lord has shown us a way to make things come together.”
Her heart beat faster. Madame Duval was all but forgotten.
Her father had seen … it.
The rest of the dinner was spent discussing the practicalities of the arrangement. Her father laid out his conditions: payment would be twenty-five francs per session, including transportation time. And Sophie must come to their apartment, Hélène or George had to be home, and she had to come willingly. And no smoking. Also, he’d prefer it if they studied in the salon.
Deborah quickly interjected that they should study in her room, if at all possible since her mother often used the living room for Relief Society meetings and they didn’t know which days Sophie had to be at university in the evenings. The chances of a clash were evident.
It didn’t take long to convince either of her parents of the sense of that flexible arrangement. That it also gave her a lot of leeway to be alone with Sophie was another thing.
What mattered most, though, was that her greatest mission was accomplished. She was bringing the family together, and if Sophie said yes, she would be accessible at least once a week. That was all that mattered.
9.
Convincing Sophie was alarmingly easy. Over lemon cake in the salon, she immediately accepted Father’s formal offer of twenty-five francs per session—an astronomical amount for a student. They could easily afford it, and Father clearly enjoyed playing the benevolent patriarch.
Deborah took it as absolute confirmation she had read the Lord’s intent correctly. Her anxious engagement had given her family a chance at reconciliation. Now, she just needed to reconcile with Kevin.
The first few tutoring sessions were awkward, but Sophie’s dry, sharp wit slowly put Deborah at ease.
But Deborah still had to secure her return address and she didn’t have the courage to ask for it the first week.
As the December calendar leaves piled up, ticking panic grew in Deborah’s chest. If her letter didn’t reach Kevin before the holidays, the silence between them would become permanent, she feared.
So in the second week of December, the second week of tutoring, she decided she could wait no longer, despite the risks of being overheard.
Deborah and Sophie sat in her room, the scent of Hélène’s rosemary chicken roast drifting down the hallway outside. Propped up by the prospect of hot, home-cooked food, Sophie looked less exhausted and almost effervescent. The tutoring had gone like a whirlwind.
For Deborah, it had almost—almost—been enjoyable to get help in formulating her next dissertation (this time on Flaubert). But inside, she felt a restlessness she could hardly contain much longer.
They had closed the French textbooks, and Deborah’s pulse hammered. Now.
She pulled the thin, blue Par Avion envelope from her bag and laid it on the table.
Sophie frowned. “What is this, ma cousine?”
Deborah spilled the beans. She knew she had to be quick. Her mother would call them to the table any minute now.
Hearing the slightly rambling story of Kevin and the plan, being told with such desperate urgency, Sophie regarded her squarely.
It wasn’t a clinical stare like Brigid’s. Slowly, her cousin broke into a profoundly amused grin. The idea of her obedient Mormon cousin pulling a fast one on her own father was the best thing Sophie had heard all week.
“Will you do it?” Deborah pressed. “Just this once?”
“Of course,” Sophie said lightly, tapping the blue envelope. “But why me?”
“I thought it was more important to do this with you and try to get our families together,” Deborah admitted. “Father and Uncle François have so much trouble with taking the first step. And it is close to Christmas, Maman would feel absolutely terrible if we couldn’t be together for Christmas.”
“I thought your French was better than you give yourself credit for,” Sophie grinned. “This whole thing was a ruse. But I do like the compensation I get for being in the ruse.”
“It’s … still important,” Deborah stammered. “I mean, I am only now beginning to actually not feel stressed every day in school. You are really helping me!”
“I sure am.” Sophie’s smirk softened into something far more genuine. “But fine. I will do this … also.”
She didn’t press with further questions, simply accepting the tangled logistics of her younger cousin’s heart. “Christmas … yes, I guess you’re right. We could use a normal one for a change.”
Before they left for the salon she added softly. “We can post it on my way home. I’ll let you know if a reply comes.”
An hour later, after a dinner where Sophie had eaten like she was only allowed one meal for the rest of the week, they walked through the damp Paris chill to the Trocadero Metro station. Outside stood a bright yellow boîte aux lettres. Deborah held the envelope for a fleeting second before dropping it in.
The deal was sealed. Sophie gave her a bracing smile and disappeared down the stairs. Walking back to the empty apartment alone, Deborah exhaled. The crushing weight of the last two months evaporated. For the first time since leaving Utah, she had a plan that belonged entirely to her.
She allowed herself a brief, longing glance at the station sign. Perhaps things would finally begin to go better now for her, in France. And sometime soon, she would board that train perhaps—all by herself. For school … like Brigid.
That thought struck another delightful chord in her mind: She couldn’t wait to tell Brigid about her accomplishment. If only there had been more people she could share it with than Sophie, but her slightly superior British classmate would have to do.
And why not? When Brigid was not with her clique of admirers she was hanging out an awful lot with that boy from the Danish section, Lars. Deborah was sure they had something together.
Maybe soon, Deborah could say the same.
Even if it would be a painful farewell with Kevin, it felt dignified in a way she hadn’t expected. It would erase all doubt of what she and Kevin had together.
That Kevin would know her real thoughts, her real feelings about that awful departure from Utah—that felt nearly as vital as seeing him again at all.
*
After that, the dominoes fell exactly as Deborah had hoped.
It was no longer necessary for François to do anything, except, by way of his wife, to acquiesce personally to the Christmas reunion.
Hélène broke the news about the arrangement with Sophie on her solo-trip to Honfleur that weekend and this broke the ice. The Sawyers were officially invited to Honfleur for the holidays. Deborah wondered why Sophie hadn’t called to tell her parents already, but decided that she probably did not want to embarrass her father. That seemed more true than anything. The trick now was not to let it happen in other ways, so peace could finally settle.
And peace came, slowly, with some tension but also with a lot of clarity for both families. At least, that was what Deborah liked to think.
After celebrating the immediate days of Christmas with the ward members and the missionaries in Paris, they took the train to the Normandy coast. The visit went well enough. The atmosphere in Uncle François’s house was strung a bit tight, and Deborah could see that her uncle wasn’t entirely happy to be hosting his wealthy American brother-in-law, but the miracle held: neither he nor Father got into a single argument.
Some days, she was gripped by a sudden fear that it was all pretense. After mass in the little Honfleur church—which they had all politely attended (even Sophie joined in)—a heretical thought struck her: perhaps a proud man like François hadn’t wanted to leave his trench at all—maybe he just felt he had no choice.
He certainly did not talk much over the dinner table, not as she remembered him; it was mostly Antoine, Sophie’s brother, who regaled them with the challenge of making his tackle business successful with “this weather and the general economic conditions.”
But whenever she needed it , Deborah managed to remind herself that she had secured everone a fresh start. Her father and uncle would likely be friends again later on, and at least pretend to feel like family until then. How could this not come to pass now that they had taken the first step?
And in terms of beginnings, the calendar shifted and the days of respite from school ended. Soon she was back to that and tutoring, as January 1968 came to pass.
Tutoring, and waiting for a special American airmail envelope.
*
If I don’t get a reply, she told herself one of those white January tutoring afternoons, tracing the wood grain, that is all right. At least now he knows the truth. She had been truthful—at least to Kevin— but also reconciled her family. She has only broken the commandments a little bit and balanced that out perfectly with her deed. She had been “anxiously engaged.”
She just needed to hear Kevin’s voice, written on paper, one last time. She told herself it did not matter again, but she knew in her heart that it did. If only …
The doorbell rang. “Will you get that, Deborah?” her father called from his office.
Deborah rushed to the door. “Yes, Father, it’s Sophie!”
“Hey, favorite cousin!” Sophie stepped inside, flushed from the cold. “How is it going? Are you ready not to feel miserable about Les Miserables?”
Sophie stopped as she saw Deborah’s unspoken question and nodded. Of course her American cousin was not thinking about French literature.
“—Hello, Sophie,” George called from behind his half-closed door, deep into mining logistics. “The salon is ready.”
“We are just going to look at some new books in my room,” Deborah called back. They hurried down the hallway, past George’s office.
As the door to Deborah’s room closed, Sophie smirked and pulled an American airmail envelope from her bag. “I believe this is for you.”
Deborah opened the letter with trembling hands.
Then she blinked.
Dear Deborah,
Thanks for the mail. You don’t need to think about it too much. It was your father’s decision. I just had to take some time to get used to it, I reckon. I am dating Jean now. I hope you find someone, too, when you can. Have fun in Paris.
— Kevin
Deborah sat stiffly down on her bed, holding the letter. Outside, the winter sun shone and a scooter honked loudly. Inside, there was only a terrifying silence.
Sophie took the letter, read it, and frowned. She handed it back, and Deborah left it on her nightstand.
“I w-was wrong,” Deborah stammered.
“About what?” Sophie asked quietly.
“About everything!” Deborah’s voice cracked, trying to shout and whisper simultaneously for fear of her father hearing. She dropped to her knees by the window, tears streaming freely. “He decided against me—and rightfully so—because I wasn’t truthful and didn’t get to him in time. And now he is with Jean.”
Sophie crouched beside her, placing a light hand on Deborah’s shaking back. “Cousine—you have got to take it easy. And quiet.”
Deborah choked back the tears. “Is this what the Lord wanted? I can’t—”
“Deborah,” Sophie said, “I’m not much of an expert in God, but you can’t think like this.”
“Why not? Because I can’t think that God wanted to teach me something … like this?”
“And what would that be?”
“That I was wrong, in what I did.”
“You knew this could happen, didn’t you?” Sophie shook her head. “Deborah—that’s how it is sometimes. With boys. Maybe that’s what you have to … to know.”
“—That all boys turn away from you as soon as they can?”
Sophie helped Deborah to her feet. “Not all turn away from you. Not all.”
*
Photo by Piotr Makowski on Unsplash
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