Miracle by Deborah Smith Page A

skirt over her knees before finally laying her hands in her lap, signaling him that she was ready to listen patiently.
    Maman was a wonderful listener, though she often looked confused when he told her about his studies at school. Maman was very old-fashioned; she had stopped going to school when she was only a little girl. She was so old-fashioned that she never wore slacks, even at home with the family. Sometimes Papa sent clothes from the design houses in Paris and made her wear them, but never slacks. At times Papa’s comments about her clothes caused her to cry.
    But today she seemed happy. She smiled at his attempt to draw her from the chalet. “No shush-shush for me, Sebastien.” Her Breton accent lay heavy on the first syllable of his name. No one he knew spoke French the way Maman did, or made up new words such as
shush-shush
. No one practiced astrology or prayed to so many saints. Papa called her a Catholic witch, but Maman was no witch. Maman was special.
    “I’ll teach you to be modern, Maman,” he assured her now. Laughing strangely, she came to him and fussed with the lint on his brightly colored sweater. He was nearly as tall as she, so she didn’t have to bend much to kiss his forehead.
    “Modern I will not be,” she answered. “I am not smart enough.”
    “Yes, you are!”
    “I am smart enough to be a good mother, yes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Plenty for me, then.” She hugged him close and he smiled against her soft shoulder.
    Antoine and Bridgette bounded into the room then and joined forces with him. Maman
would
come to the slopes with them this afternoon, if only to watch. Papa would be so pleased to have her there, they were certain. Perhaps he would stop spending so much of his holiday with his old friends in the village.
    “I’ll go and watch,” she finally agreed, “if the younger ones don’t need me.”
    “Oh, Maman, the babies have fine nannies to look after them,” Bridgette said with mild impatience. Sebastien goosed his sister and made her squeal. She was sixteen this year, and
someone
had to keep her from becoming too arrogant.
    “Fiend!” she yelled at him, but grinned a second later. “I’ll ask Maman’s saints to make you sprain your ankle on the slopes.”
    “Sssh. My saints are kind,” Maman said firmly.
    Antoine, eighteen and nearly as tall as Papa, grabbed her around the waist and whirled her until she laughed, much to Sebastien and Bridgette’s delight. “Then ask them to make all the girls notice how handsome I am!”
    “It would indeed take the saints’ help for
that
miracle,” Bridgette observed. Sebastien laughed as Antoine chased her from the room. They were wonderful, his older brother and sister. Everyone knew that Antoine was Papa’s favorite because he was the eldest and would head the businesses someday; but Antoine never acted like the favorite, and Sebastien loved him for that.
    He loved fiery Bridgette, too, and his tiny sister, Annette, who was four, and his younger brother Jacques, even though Jacques was a very noisy baby. Sebastien felt lucky to have such a fine family and such a wonderful life, filled with travel, hobbies, and school, though Father was away in Paris too often and Maman talked to herself oddly at times, when she had been at their château in the Loire for too many months without seeing Papa.
    Several hours later they piled into the small van Papa kept at the chalet for skiing excursions. Antoine drove; Maman sat beside him, wrapped in a pretty fur coat, her dainty legs and feet protected by tall boots. Sebastien satin the backseat next to Bridgette and amused himself by staring at her tight ski sweater until she threatened to wring his neck.
    As Antoine drove down the winding mountain road to the resort at its base Maman stared silently out the van’s window and seemed to daydream. Thirty minutes later they reached the cobblestoned parking area outside the great lodge, at the center of an exclusive little shopping