Leap of Faith Read Free

day he met her. And he was as handsome and blond as he had been when he parachuted over her parents’ farmhouse.
    “You have to promise you’ll listen to Sophie while I’m gone,” Françoise admonished Marie-Ange, as Robert slipped her a dripping canard of coffee under the table, and she popped it into her mouth with a grateful look at him. “Don’t go roaming around where she can’t find you.” She was starting school herself in two days, and her mother hoped it would keep her mind off her brother. “Papa and I will be home on the weekend.” But without Robert. It seemed like a tragedy to his little sister.
    “I’ll call you from Paris,” he promised.
    “Every day?” Marie-Ange asked him with the huge blue eyes that were so like his and their father’s.
    “As often as I can. I’ll be pretty busy with my classes, but I’ll call you.”
    He gave her a huge hug and squeeze and kissed her on both cheeks when he left, and got into the car with his parents. They each had a small overnight case in the trunk, and just before he shut the door, Robert pressed a little package into her hand, and told her to wear it. She was still holding it as the car drove away, and she and Sophie stood side by side, crying and waving. And as soon as she walked back into the kitchen, Marie-Ange opened the gift, and found a tiny gold locket, with a picture of him in it. He was smiling, and she remembered the photograph from the previous Christmas. And in the other half of the locket, he had put a tiny photograph from the same day, of their parents. It was very pretty, and Sophie helped her put it on, and fastened the clasp on the thin gold chain it hung on.
    “What a nice present for Robert to give you!” Sophie said, dabbing at her eyes, and clearing the dishes off the breakfast table, as Marie-Ange went to admire the locket in the hall mirror. It made her smile to look at it, and she felt a pang of loneliness again as she looked at her brother’s face in the picture, and another as she looked at the photograph of her father and mother. Her mother had given her two big kisses before she left, and her father had hugged her and ruffled her curls as he always did, and promised to pick her up at school at noon on Saturday, when they got back from Paris. But the house seemed empty now without them. She drifted up to Robert’s room on the way to her own, and sat on her bed for a while, thinking about him.
    She was still sitting there, looking lost, when Sophie came upstairs half an hour later to find her.
    “Do you want to come to the farm with me? I have to get some eggs, and I promised to bring some biscuits to Madame Fournier.” But Marie-Ange only shook her head sadly. Even the delights of the farm held no lure for her this morning. She was already missing her brother. It was going to be a long, lonely winter at Marmouton without him. And Sophie resigned herself to going to the farm alone. “I’ll be back in time for lunch, Marie-Ange. Stay in the garden, I don’t want to have to look all over the woods to find you. Do you promise?”
    “Oui, Sophie,” she said diligently. She didn’t feel like going anywhere, but once Sophie was gone, she wandered out into the garden, and found nothing to do there. And then she decided to go down to the orchards after all, and pick some apples. She knew Sophie would make a tarte tatin with them, if she brought back enough of them in her apron.
    But even Sophie was out of sorts when she came back at noon, and made some soup and a Croque Madame for Marie-Ange. It was normally her favorite lunch, but today she only picked at it. Neither of them was in great spirits. And Marie-Ange went back out to the orchard to play afterward, and for a while, she just lay nearby, in the grass, looking up at the sky, as she always did, and thinking of her brother. She lay there for a long time, and it was late in the afternoon when she wandered back to the house, barefoot as usual, and looking as disheveled