4583 without daisies: part 1
the archives mystery
two people of questionable heritage
the name change

The bombing of the school building had brought along some unexpected and unpleasant consequences. It had been the first real disaster caused by combat, and it had awoken a feeling of danger hiding behind a veil of disbelief and terror, nestled inside France’s stomach. Sometimes fear captures the truth and keeps it imprisoned.

The town of Calais mourned the death of twenty-seven people, as towns do. Roses were propped up against memorials, and the mayor held a speech in the town hall. Dozens had come to the grounds on which the school building had once stood. For Hugo Berger, this time was met with confusion and emptiness, for it took two full days for the police to step further and confirm that yes, his parents had been found among the rubble of the detonated bomb. Hugo was sent to live with his aunt, who he hadn’t seen for many years, and his two cousins, who didn’t like the attention he got. What had happened was disastrous, and Hugo could not shake the feeling of guilt he had accumulated. If he’d been at school that day, he would’ve been sent home like the other children. He would not have missed his mother and father’s call. His mother and father would not come looking for him at the school. His mother and father would not be dead, torn apart by a mechanism thrown from an airplane. And for what? he would continuously ask himself. His aunt would reply that they were not fond of the French, didn’t want the French learning French. Who were ‘they’? The Germans, Hugo knew, but his heart was set on finding out who was behind ‘the Germans’, because all he ever heard was that specific termination and he couldn’t believe that every single German was the type to throw things out of airplanes and kill innocent people. The dead hadn’t even formally shaken hands with the Germans before they were lost to the fatal power of the enemy.

For a few weeks, Hugo forgot about daisies and he forgot about his bicycle. His thoughts were silent. Only then could he let go of his parents, but even so it was a process of nearly insurmountable suffering.

He almost forgot about Violette, except that after two days Violette stood at the front door of his aunt’s house. She swallowed when she was let into the house, and she moved toward the living room, where Hugo was waiting silently for dinnertime to come. Violette was not an uncomfortable person, but she had never met someone who’d lost someone so dearly to themselves so recently, so she hesitated by the living room threshold and wondered if she should go in. She did at last, and Hugo looked at her drearily. She realized he had never looked at her this way before. A hopeless love had been replaced by a grateful one, like vegetables replaced by candy. Violette sat at the edge of the couch and touched his shoulder. She’d come not because she felt she had to, but because she genuinely worried for Hugo and his adjustment to a new household shortly after his parents’ death.

“I cannot begin to express how…” And she cut herself off, because he’d heard those words dozens of times and she was not about to fall into the same category as his furthest twice-removed relatives.

He hadn’t ended up in such a bad place. His aunt lived in a house twice the size as he had had before, and although some of the walls were empty and the painting needed to be redone, there were truly some elegant and expensive-looking pieces of furniture spread throughout the room.

She let out a breath. “…how much I adored those flowers you brought me,” she said. “I left them in the bakery, because it would be difficult for me to bring to school, but I put them in the window and they look magnificent.” She was wearing a sorbet orange dress, perhaps too cheerful for the occasion she realized now, but her mother had told her it went well with her dark blond hair. She couldn’t read his face. “Perhaps you might like to come along to the beach one day.”