Her certainty surprised me. “Why not?”
“Because her husband would not have approved.”
“Ahh. So she married again shortly after Osmond left?”
“Again? I do not know what you mean by ‘again.’ She was married to my Grandfather Spenard for over fifty years.”
“But … her name is no longer Spenard, is it? You introduced her by another name.”
“Oui. Ducat. Three years after my grandfather died, she married a man who had been a widower for many years, but they were only married a brief time before he passed away, too.”
“Okay, but Osmond told me that when he met her, she was a widow. That her husband had died in a German prison. ‘Barely a bride, and then a widow’ is the way he stated it.”
“Oui. My grandfather was arrested for engaging in subversive acts against German soldiers, so he was thrown into Amiens Prison. You have heard of Amiens, yes?”
I shook my head.
“It was a brutal place. No prisoner ever walked out of Amiens alive. It was where the Wehrmacht sent Resistance fighters to die. My grandfather was imprisoned for three years. He was never allowed to send a letter home, receive packages, communicate with anyone outside the prison. When my grandmother finally petitioned the German authorities to allow her to visit, they told her that my grandfather was dead and his body disposed of.” She sat back in her chair and took a slow sip of wine. “But they were lying.”
The down at the back of my neck stood on end. “He was still alive?”
She nodded. “He most likely would have died, if not for a British bombing raid four months before the D-Day invasion. Two hundred and fifty-eight prisoners escaped through a breach in the prison wall, my grandfather among them. Barely alive, but determined to survive. They searched for him with their dogs, but my grandpapa was too clever for them. He hid in the woods. In caves. He foraged for food. He crossed over into Belgium, in a direction completely opposite where Grandmama was. He knew the Germans would be looking for him at home, so he stayed away. Only after the Allied invasion did he think it safe to find his way back to his bride. And as you might imagine, after June 6, 1944, German troops found themselves battling American tanks and infantry, so they had more pressing problems to address than the escapees from Amiens Prison.”
“Oh, my God. What must your grandmother have thought when he showed up at her door?”
“She tells me that for the first and only time in her life, she fainted. Her husband come back to life? Non. Such miracles did not happen in occupied France.”
I couldn’t imagine the elation Solange must have felt when she regained consciousness to find the husband she’d presumed dead standing over her. There was probably no word in the English language that could adequately describe it. But this turn of events certainly cast doubt on the notion of Osmond’s fatherhood. It might all boil down to a question of timing.
I knocked back a swig of my wine. “Did you say what your grandfather’s name was?”
“Henri. Henri Spenard.”
“How long did it take him to work his way back to Normandy? Weeks? Months?”
“He was traveling on foot, so it took many weeks. And he was further delayed by the fighting in Caen. The Allies met strong German resistance there after the invasion. The town was virtually leveled. But when the Americans finally broke through, he was able to return home.”
“So when was that … exactly?”
“The Battle of Caen ended on July twentieth. Grandpapa managed to make it home four days later.”