It was my dad’s fault. He should have known. You can never keep family secrets secret from a curious and nosy daughter.
My father told me his mother was French. He told me his mother’s parents were from France. Though, he said, his grandmother might have been from Belgium. . He shared that my Grandmother, Mathilda Nicolle, had a smattering of brothers scattered here and there, and one horrible sister she was close to. He flinched when he told me his mother died when he and his twin brother were about 12 years old. And yes, they were left in the hands of that horrid aunt to be raised and abused.
(Though his father was a decorated army officer, he abandoned them and his mother when my father and his brother were born in 1930. But that is for another story)
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