She told him about her parents and Robert the next day, and the accident, and he looked horrified when she told him about her Aunt Carole. “She sounds pretty mean to me,” he said sympathetically. He lived with his parents, and had seven brothers and sisters, they had a small farm and grew corn, and had a small herd of cattle. He said he'd come over and help her with her chores sometime, but she said nothing about him to Aunt Carole, and Aunt Carole asked no questions at night when Marie-Ange finished her chores in the barn. Most of the time, they ate dinner in silence.

It was Saturday afternoon, when Marie-Ange saw Billy ride down the driveway on his bike, and hop off with a wave at her. He had told her he might come by, for his French lesson, and she had hoped he would, but didn't think he'd really do it. They were talking animatedly where they stood when a shot rang out, and they both jumped like frightened rabbits, and looked instinctively at the direction it came from. Her Aunt Carole was sitting on the porch, in her wheelchair, holding a shotgun. It was inconceivable to either of them that she had shot at them, and she hadn't, she had fired into the air, but she was looking menacingly at them.

“Get off my property!” she shouted at him, as Billy stared at her, and Marie-Ange began to tremble.

“He is my friend, Aunt Carole, from school,” Marie-Ange was quick to explain, sure that that would solve the problem, but it didn't.

“You're trespassing!” she said directly to Billy.

“I came to visit Marie-Ange,” he said politely, trying not to let either of them see how frightened he was. The old woman looked as though she were going to kill him.

“We don't want visitors, and we didn't invite you. Get on your bike and get out of here, and don't come back. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, hurrying toward his bike, with a glance at Marie-Ange over his shoulder. “I'm sorry … I didn't mean to make her mad,” he whispered. “I'll see you at school on Monday.”

“I'm sorry,” she said as loudly as she dared, and watched him disappear as fast as he could down the driveway, as Marie-Ange walked slowly toward her great-aunt's wheelchair, hating her for the first time since she had come here. Until then, she had only feared her.

“Tell your friends not to come visiting you here, Marie,” she said sternly. “We don't have time for little hoodlums hanging around, and you have chores to do,” she said, laying the shotgun across her lap and looking straight at Marie-Ange. “You're not going to be hanging around with friends here. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Marie-Ange said quietly, and walked back toward the barn to do her chores. But the attack on them, and the fear she'd caused, had only cemented the bond between Marie-Ange and Billy. He called her that night, and her great-aunt handed her the phone with a grunt of disapproval. She didn't like it, but she didn't object openly to phone calls.

“Are you okay?” It was Billy. He had worried about her all the way home, the old lady was crazy, and he felt sorry for Marie-Ange. His own family was large and open and friendly, and he could have friends over after chores, anytime he wanted.

“I'm fine,” she said shyly.

“Did she do anything to you after I left?”

“No, but she said I cannot have friends here,” she explained in a whisper after her aunt left the kitchen. “I'll see you at school on Monday. I can teach you French at lunchtime.”

“Just make sure she doesn't shoot you,” he said with the solemnity of a twelve-year-old. “I'll see ya…. ‘Bye, Marie-Ange.”

“Good-bye,” she said formally as she hung up, wishing she had thanked him for the call, but grateful for the contact from the outside world. In the barren existence she led, his friendship was all she had now.





Chapter 4




The friendship between Billy and Marie-Ange grew over the years into a solid bond that they both relied on. Through their childhood years, they became like brother and sister. And by the time he was fourteen, and she thirteen, their friends began to tease them about it, and asked if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Marie-Ange always insisted they weren't. She clung to him like a rock in a storm, and he called her faithfully every night at her Aunt Carole's. Marie-Ange's life with her remained as bleak and as gray as it had been from the first moment she saw her. But seeing Billy in school every day, and riding home on the bus with him, was enough to keep her going. And she visited his family as often as she could. Being with them was like taking refuge in a warm safe place. She visited them on holidays, after fulfilling her obligations to Aunt Carole. For Marie-Ange, Billy's family was her haven. They were all she had now. She didn't even have Sophie anymore. She had written to Sophie for two years, and was still puzzled by the fact that she had never had a single answer from her. She was afraid that something terrible must have happened to her. Otherwise, Sophie would have written.

In some ways, Billy had replaced Robert for her, if not her parents. And as she had promised to, she had taught him to speak French during lunch and recess. By the time he was fourteen, he was almost fluent, and they conversed with each other in French frequently in the schoolyard. Billy called it their secret language. And her English had improved to the point that she scarcely had an accent. But given her fraternal feelings for him, it was all the more surprising to her when he told her he loved her, one afternoon as they were walking to the school bus. He said it under his breath, with his eyes cast down, and she stopped to stare at him with a stupefied expression.

“That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,” she said in answer to what he had told her. “How can you say that?” He looked startled by her response—it wasn't what he had hoped for or expected.

“Because I do love you.” He was saying it to her in French, so the others wouldn't understand them, and to them, it sounded like a heated argument, as Marie-Ange said, “Oh, alors, t'es vraiment con!” She told him he was a jerk, and then she looked at him and started laughing.

“I love you too. Okay. But like your sister. How can you go and mess everything up between us?” She was determined not to let him risk their friendship.

“I wasn't trying to do that,” he said, frowning, wondering if he had said it wrong, or perhaps at an inappropriate time, but they had no other time together. He still wasn't allowed on her great-aunt's farm, and the only time they had together was in school, or on the school bus. Except for her rare visits to his parents' farmhouse. It was even harder for them during the summer, when they weren't in school together. Instead, they would both ride bicycles to a meeting place they had found the year before, and sometimes spent hours by a small stream, sitting there and just talking to each other, about life, their families, their hopes and dreams and their futures. She always said she wanted to go back to France when she was eighteen, and planned to get a job as soon as she was old enough so she could afford to. And once he had said that he wanted to come with her, although for him, the dream was even less likely and more distant.

They rolled along after that, as they had always been, devoted friends and buddies, until the following year in the summer, when they met at their secret hiding place. She had brought a Thermos of lemonade with her, and they had been talking for hours, when he suddenly leaned over and kissed her. He was fifteen, and Marie-Ange had just turned fourteen, and they had been best friends for nearly three years then. And once again, she was startled, when he kissed her, but she didn't object quite as violently as she had the year before. Neither of them said anything, but Marie-Ange was worried, and the next time they met, she told him she didn't think it was a good idea for them to do anything to change their friendship. She told him in her innocent way that she was afraid of romance.

“Why?” he asked gently, touching her cheek with his hand. He was growing into a tall, handsome young man, and sometimes she thought he looked a little like her father and brother. And she loved to tease him about his freckles. “Why are you afraid of romance, Marie-Ange?” They were speaking English, because hers was still far superior to his French, although she had taught him well, and he even knew all the important slang expressions, which he knew was going to impress his French teacher in high school. They were both starting high school, at the same school they'd been, in September.

“I don't want anything to change between us,” she said sensibly. “If you fall in love with me, one day we will be tired of each other, and then we will lose everything. If we stay only friends, we can never lose each other.” It was not entirely unreasonable, and she remained firm about it, although no one who knew them would have believed that. Everyone had always believed that they were boyfriend and girlfriend since their childhood, even Aunt Carole, who continued to make disparaging remarks about him, which always made Marie-Ange angry, although she said nothing to her.

Their relationship continued to flourish all the way through high school. She watched him play on the basketball team, he came to see her in the junior play, and they went to their senior prom together. With the exception of a few random dates, he had never had a girlfriend, and Marie-Ange continued to say she had no interest whatsoever in romance, with Billy or any other boy, all she wanted was to finish school, and go back to France one day. And her great-aunt wouldn't have let her go out with boys anyway. She had strong opinions about it, and was prepared to enforce them. She had continued to threaten Marie-Ange with the state orphanage for all the years she'd been there. But on prom night, Aunt Carole finally agreed to let Marie-Ange go to the dance with Billy.

He came to the farm the night of the senior prom, in his father's truck, to pick her up. And Aunt Carole had let her buy an ice blue satin dress that was almost the same color as her eyes, and made her blond hair seem to sparkle. She looked beautiful, and Billy looked appropriately dazzled.

They had a great time that night, and he and Marie-Ange talked endlessly about the scholarship she had earned, and which she was not able to use, for college. The university was fifty miles away, in Ames, and Aunt Carole had made a point of saying she would do nothing to help her, she would not lend her a truck or a car, and said she was needed on the farm. She offered her neither money nor transportation for college, and Billy was outraged.

“You have to go, Marie-Ange! You can't just work for her like a slave for the rest of your life.” Her dream had been to go back to France at eighteen, but it was obvious that when she turned eighteen that summer, she was not going to do that. She had no money of her own, and never had time to work, because Carole always needed her to do something, and Marie-Ange felt obligated to her. She had lived with her for seven years, and to Marie-Ange, they had seemed endless. But college was now an unattainable dream for her, the scholarship covered tuition, but not books, or dormitory, or food, and even if she got a job, she couldn't make enough to cover her expenses while she went to school. The only way she could go was if she stayed on the farm with her aunt, and commuted. But Aunt Carole had seen to it that that couldn't happen. “All you need is a car for chrissake,” Billy raged on the drive home. They had talked about it all evening.

“Well, I don't have one. I'm going to turn the scholarship down next week,” Marie-Ange said matter-of-factly. She knew that she had to get a job eventually, locally, so she could make enough money to go to France, but she had no idea what she'd do when she got there, probably just visit and come back. She had no way of staying in France either, nowhere to live, no one to live with, no way of making a living. She had no skills whatsoever, and no training. All she had ever learned was how to do chores on the farm, not unlike Billy, who was going to be taking agricultural extension classes. He had dreams of helping his father on their farm, and even modernizing it, despite his father's resistance. He wanted to be a modern-day farmer, and he thought Marie-Ange deserved a real education. They both did. It made him hate Marie-Ange's great-aunt all the more for not letting her go to college. Even his father understood the importance of taking classes, although he couldn't go to school full time. His father needed him too much on the farm to allow him to do that. He urged Marie-Ange to work on her great-aunt some more, and not turn the scholarship down until later in the summer. And as they drove home that night, they were in good spirits. They were both excited about graduating from high school.