“No.” He slid down the wall to the floor. “I betrayed Chaffre.” Beneath the blanket, he shuddered. “Clare, he killed Chaffre with my own bayonet.”
“Bauer betrayed you,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say. I knelt and took his hands. “You didn’t give that bayonet to him. You didn’t tell him to kill your friend.”
“But he did.” He stared at the floor, that haunted look again in his eyes. “And all because I was weak enough to think that an enemy might…might still be my friend.”
This was it. Not his cheek, not his shoulder, not his lack of a job. This right here was the reason he kept his distance, why he refused to be close to anyone. Why he’d take temporary comfort when he could, but shy away from anything that could make him feel.
“But you understand all of that, don’t you?” he said. He pulled his hands back and crumpled them in his lap. “You understand…him.” His gaze was penetrating. “That night, in the cellar…he told me what he did to you.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t know how to answer.
He spoke in a rush. “Believe me, Clare, if I’d known then that he’d hurt you, I—”
“He didn’t hurt me.” I said it quickly, to wipe the anguish from his face. “Though he…tried, he didn’t touch me.”
His eyes went to my hand, where I still had a thin pink scar from that hat pin. “Ah.” He caught it in his and turned it over. “And to think I once thought you were the one who needed protecting.” He brushed a kiss onto the scar. “Clare Ross, you’re stronger than I could ever be.”
I woke to a room smelling warm and light, something like summer. Next to me, wearing nothing but my old brown sweater, Clare curled against my side, asleep. In a rush I remembered last night, in little snatches like photographs. The candlelight on her bare shoulders, that smile that tipped up to her eyes, her curls spread out on my chest, the way I could feel her breathing, watching, waiting while I fell asleep. She’d kicked the blanket down in the night and my gaze traced the curve of her hip and leg beneath the sweater. I tried not to breathe. Her feet were tucked up against my knee. I didn’t want them to leave.
I edged out from under the blankets. Twenty-four hours ago I’d woken up alone, the apartment feeling too dark and too close. I’d dressed thinking of her, of those few hours in the studio where I could steal glances she’d never miss and tuck away the lilts of her voice like forgotten bread crumbs.
But this morning it was as though I’d let the sun straight into my room. It glowed, and it was all because of Clare.
Clare.
On the floor was a bundle of cloth. A pale brown coat, bright red scarf, striped dress, layers of white that could only be what had been under the dress. I didn’t even remember sliding them off. Had I done that?
On the bed, she sighed and toed the blankets.
Yesterday I thought I had nothing in my life but settling. A replacement face. A pamphlet full of replacement careers. Now, I had Clare, at least for a night. For longer? She had come to me.
On the bed, she settled into a rhythm of breathing.
I lifted the edge of the cloth covering the bird cage. Lysander regarded me curiously and I tipped in a flat handful of nuts. “I’ll be back with breakfast,” I promised. I tugged the cover back over the cage and hoped they’d stay quiet.
I pulled on my trousers, stiff and wrinkled from a night on the floor next to her clothes. I found a clean shirt in the drawer. My jacket was on the back of the door, where I’d left it yesterday. The water in the basin was tepid. It was the same I’d washed in after coming back from the studio. I slipped my hands quietly in the water.
From the drawer in my desk, I took out a sheet of paper and my gold fountain pen, that too-ornate pen Papa gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I brought that ridiculous pen with me to the trenches. Because, as absurd as it was out there in the middle of war, it was the thing that made me feel like an adult. It made me feel somehow above the muck and playing soldier.
I think often of that summer, of our summer. Last night we were there again. I woke this morning and it was the shade of the trees and the roses and the river below. With your touch, you erased my nightmares. Don’t leave, Clare, not now and not tomorrow. You’re my happily ever after.
In the drawer was also Chaffre’s little lead Madonna in her case. I’d always before hidden her away, hoping to hide my memories of that night. Today, though, I tucked her in my pocket.
I leaned toward Clare, smelling warm and loved, and kissed her ear. “Don’t leave,” I whispered into it, though she didn’t wake. I slipped on my mask and caught up her red scarf. Tossing it around my neck, I left the apartment.
Madame Girard was in the hallway buttoning up her coat. “I’ll be out when you return. Bringing my sister fish, though I don’t know why,” she grumbled. “If she had the gout I do, she wouldn’t ask me to come out.” She eyed the mask. “What’s that? Did that woman bring it yesterday?”
“This?” I touched the metal. Today it didn’t feel so cold. “It’s a fresh start.”
I went to Les Halles to find the things I remembered her eating, things that I could find at the end of winter, in a city still caught in food shortages. Grapes, dates, a basket of late brown medlars. A loaf of crusty ficelle bought at an exorbitant price. I tucked it into my coat. Chestnuts, of course, a pocketful. It took a while longer to find oranges in the middle of winter, but I found a vendor with small, bruised Spanish oranges.
The old flower seller was waiting on her corner. “Flowers for your sweetheart?”
I dug into my pocket for my usual change and my usual line. In her basket were small bunches of wood violets, just like the ones that grew beneath the chestnut tree. So I smiled, the one half of my mouth matching the other on my mask. I smiled and said, “Yes, I think I will.”
She laughed, toothlessly. “I knew you’d find one.”
“She found me.” I took the flowers, the fragile stems damp.
The last thing I bought, from a narrow shop on the other side of the market, was a dozen soft Conté pencils. Eight years before, I’d bought pencils for Clare. I’d wanted her to know then that someone believed in her.
I’d spent weeks watching her head bent in concentration as she made my mask. Her face had been serene, satisfied. And, when she looked at her drawings hanging on my wall, exultant. I didn’t want her to lose that the way my own maman had.
Last time, I hadn’t given Clare the pencils. It was that young girl’s dress and that hopeful expression she wore when she ran up to me at Mille Mots. Then, I was afraid of letting her get too close. The shopkeeper wrapped the pencils in paper and I tucked them carefully at the bottom of my haversack. This time, I wouldn’t be afraid.
I wondered if Clare would still be in bed when I returned, wearing nothing but that brown sweater. I pictured her tangled in the blankets, smiling when she opened her eyes. I’d give her flowers. I’d kiss her one more time.
But I turned onto the Rue de Louvre. And I didn’t go home.
I thought I’d wake to a sleepy repetition of the night before, or at least to awkward yawns and blushes. I was already blushing before my eyes were open. I didn’t expect to wake to an empty apartment.