The Julian Chapter: A Wonder Story

away.
    “I wrote him an apology,” I said. “To Auggie. I wrote him an apology and I sent it to him in the mail! I apologized for the way I acted.”
    “You what?” said Dad. He was getting mad now.
    “And I told Mr. Browne the truth, too,” I added. “I wrote Mr. Browne a long email telling him the whole story.”
    “Julian …,” said Dad, frowning angrily. “Why did you do that? I told you I didn’t want you to write anything that acknowledged—”
    “Jules!” said Grandmère loudly, waving her hand in front of Dad’s face.
“Tu as un cerveau comme un sandwich au fromage!”
    I couldn’t help but laugh at this. Dad cringed.
    “What did she say?” asked Mom, who didn’t know French.
    “Grandmère just told Dad he has a brain like a cheese sandwich,” I said.
    “Maman!” Dad said sternly, like someone who was about to begin a long lecture.
    But Mom reached out and put her hand on Dad’s arm.
    “Jules,” she said quietly. “I think your mom is right.”

Sometimes people surprise you. Never in a million years would I have thought my mom would be the one to back down from anything, so I was completely shocked by what she had just said. I could tell Dad was, too. He looked at Mom like he couldn’t believe what she was saying. Grandmère was the only one who didn’t seem surprised.
    “Are you kidding me?” Dad said to Mom.
    Mom shook her head slowly. “Jules, we should end this. We should move on. Your mother’s right.”
    Dad raised his eyebrows. I knew he was mad but trying not to show it. “You’re the one who got us on this warpath, Melissa!”
    “I know!” she answered, taking her glasses off. Her eyes were really shiny. “I know, I know. And I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. I still don’t think Tushman was right, the way he handled everything, but … I’m ready to put all this behind us now, Jules. I think we should just … let go and move forward.” She shrugged. She looked at me. “It was very big of Julian to reach out to that boy, Jules. It takes a lot of guts to do that.” She looked back at Dad. “We should be supportive.”
    “I am supportive, of course,” said Dad. “But this is such a complete about-face, Melissa! I mean …” He shook his head and rolled his eyes at the same time.
    Mom sighed. She didn’t know what to say.
    “Look here,” said Grandmère. “Whatever Melissa did, she did it because she wanted Julian to be happy. And that is all.
C’est tout
. And he’s happy now. You can see it in his eyes. Forthe first time in a long time, your son looks completely happy.”
    “That’s exactly right,” said Mom, wiping a tear from her face.
    I felt kind of sorry for Mom at that moment. I could tell she felt bad about some of the things she had done.
    “Dad,” I said, “please don’t sue the school. I don’t want that. Okay, Dad? Please?”
    Dad leaned back in his chair and made a soft whistle sound, like he was blowing out a candle in slow motion. Then he started clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was a long minute that he stayed like that. We just watched him.
    Finally he sat back up in his chair and looked at us. He shrugged.
    “Okay,” he said, his palms up. “I’ll drop the lawsuit. We’ll just walk away from the tuition money. Are you sure that’s what you want, Melissa?”
    Mom nodded. “I’m sure.”
    Grandmère sighed. “Victory at last,” she mumbled into her wine glass.

We went home a week later, but not before Grandmère took us to a very special place: the village she grew up in. It seemed amazing to me, that she had never told Dad the whole Tourteau story. The only thing he knew was that a family in Dannevilliers had helped her during the war, but she had never told him any of the details. She had never told him that his own grandmother had died in a concentration camp.
    “Maman, how come you never told me any of this?” Dad asked her while we were driving in the car to her