Sins of the Flesh. Fern Michaels

a pillow from the bed to hold against her chest, her eyes heavy, a smile playing about her lips. She imagined the face of her mother and then began to cry when she realized it was not her mother’s face at all, but the face of her aunt Mickey.

      “I hate you, Michelene Fonsard!” she spat out, crying now in earnest. “I hate you with a passion that knows no equal!”

      There it was, out in the open for her to examine. The war news…that’s what had started this whole thing. Reuben would be remembering France, the war, and the time they’d spent at Mickey’s château. Reuben and Daniel would reminisce about the good times and the life they had shared with Mickey…until she’d come along and changed everything…for all of them. She was the catalyst that had destroyed their little idyll…and Reuben had never let her forget it. He’d made her pay and pay. Even on the night they had decided to patch things up, when Reuben had garnered the Academy Award, he had insulted her by referring to Mickey—calling her the most important person in his life. In front of the whole world.

      “I hope those dirty Germans destroyed your precious château and confiscated all your money,” Bebe muttered, reaching again for the bottle. “I hope they kill you! Then Reuben will be free of you once and for all. Damn you, Mickey!”

      This time she’d come home for one reason: to watch her husband pore avidly over the newspapers, hoping for any news of the war in France. Masochist that she was, she’d come home to torture herself by watching her husband torture himself over his lost love. Almost immediately she had begun to pack after she had read in The New York Times that France had been occupied by the Germans.

      And when she’d had enough of that, she’d ask Reuben for a divorce—get herself a good lawyer and take him to the cleaners. Bitter resentment rose like bile in her throat; revenge is sweet, kept running through her head. What a perfect way to exit. What a perfect note to exit on. Finally she would see him turned inside out, and then she’d step on him.

      Maybe if she were free, she could start a new life someplace other than perennially sunny California. All the other times she’d been coerced by Reuben to dry out. This time she’d try it on her own. If she failed, she would have no one to blame but herself.

      Bebe looked at the rolled cigarette in her hand. She tried puffing on it, but it had gone out. She lit it again and resumed smoking.

      Canada! She’d go to Canada. That was far enough away. If she wanted to, she could even change her name. A clean start, a clean identity. No one would know about her tarnished past. Such good intentions, but she never followed through because it meant she couldn’t drink, and besides, making plans was too much trouble.

      John Paul, that was the name she’d given her firstborn. The baby in the cradle who’d clutched her finger with such wondrous strength. The tawdriest part of her past. The single thing that unerringly made her cringe at herself. Was he a loyal Frenchman now fighting for his country? A country that he thought of as his own? He would be old enough. She thought about John Paul every day of her life. Whom had Yvette given him to? Was he as handsome as his father? Maybe John Paul was behind all her misery. The thought of her son lying dead on some battlefield, never knowing he had an American mother and father, shattered Bebe’s heart. She said a prayer then for her faceless son, asking that his life be spared if he was among the French soldiers fighting the Germans.

      Bebe slept on the floor that night just as she was—the pillow on her chest, the bottle clutched in one hand, and the half-smoked cigarette dangling from her limp fingers.

      Chapter Four

      The sleepy French countryside appeared peaceful and calm in the evening twilight, but to those inhabitants who lived in the tiny villages off the narrow dirt road it was anything but peaceful or calm. Every man, woman, and child in the villages knew that in every church, in every clump of gorse, in every cluster of trees, German soldiers lurked with guns cocked waiting for straggling partisans loyal to France and in need of temporary sanctuary. They also knew that when the loyalists emerged to forage for food and shelter in the darkest part of the night, they would be gunned down like wild animals. Then, within minutes of a shooting, hostages would be dragged from the villages and a second round of machine-gun bullets would rain down upon the peaceful countryside.

      There were many who were not afraid—small numbers, to be sure—who would willingly give their lives to help those who might be able to thwart the hateful Germans. What these simple country farmers lacked in weapons they made up for with fierce loyalty and an intense desire to help their mother country drive the Boche back to their own land. Cries of “Vive La France!” were mouthed as often as daily prayers, as a toast with the first glass of wine at dinner, when tucking children into bed, as salutations in the street to friends and neighbors.

      It was to one of these small villages that Michelene Fonsard, her son Philippe, and her friend Yvette were headed—on foot now since bicycles had proven dangerous at night on roads deeply rutted by the constant German concourse of armored cars and tanks. They were weary and hungry; their small supply of food had been exhausted days before. Now they were resting, something they had learned to do more often toward the end of the day, in a field of tall grasses that afforded them a suitable hiding place. When they spoke, if they spoke at all, it was in whispers. Quietness and stealth meant survival. So much could be said with one’s eyes or with the flick of a finger or wrist.

      But tonight Yvette could hold back no longer. Although at the onset she had agreed to come along with her lifelong friend, her doubts were beginning to overcome her commitment. When she had determined that the young man traveling with them was out of earshot, she spoke. “This is a foolhardy thing we’re doing, Michelene,” she hissed into her friend’s ear. “You yourself said you don’t even know if Daniel heard all of your message when the wireless went out. In your frenzy to protect Philippe you may be taking him to his death. The Germans are everywhere, like lice. How, Michelene…how will your American friend get here? You are dreaming…” Yvette hesitated, then continued in a softer tone, “But I cannot fault you for wanting that dream to come true for your son.”

      Michelene had never known motherhood, yet in all her years Yvette had never seen a better example of a good mother than this woman lying beside her in the reeds. And the boy she had mothered, sleeping just a few feet away, wasn’t even her son.

      For some reason, Yvette thought grumpily, Mickey looked the same to her tired eyes as she’d always looked. Certainly she was old enough to be the boy’s real mother, but her beauty had a timelessness to it, as though God had created her full blown and forbidden her to age. Her hair was the same dark chestnut, still thick and lustrous, adorning her head like a sable crown. Finely arched natural brows and incredibly dark lashes emphasized her warm, dark eyes—bedroom eyes, Yvette called them. There were no lines on her fair skin, a fact Yvette bemoaned whenever she compared herself with her friend. She truly believed God had created perfection in Michelene Fonsard, whose curvaceous figure was the envy of many a younger woman in Paris.

      Once she herself had been beautiful, at least men had thought so, for she’d had her pick many times. During her youth she’d been fashionably thin, but now she was round in all the wrong places, which often caused her to grumble good-naturedly that she was “one size from the neck down.” True, she still possessed a certain sultriness, perhaps because of her rich auburn hair that when she released it from its pins tumbled luxuriantly to her waist. But even though she was skillful with makeup and knew how best to complement and enhance the titian beauty of her hair, her hands gave her away—her hands and the depth of suffering in her eyes, which no amount of makeup could obscure.

      Thus she considered herself and Mickey old, perhaps not in appearance but in years. However, age was supposed to bring wisdom and peace, and here they were with neither. Running from the Germans out of fear, never knowing if the day that followed would be their last. Hatred kept them alive, so Yvette nurtured their hatred as she would a fragile seedling. Whatever it took to stay alive she would do. Whatever she had to do for the boy she would do because Mickey was the only person in the world left to her, and whatever Mickey loved was beloved to her as well.

      “Daniel will come,” Mickey said now with more confidence than she