“I have yours too. It’s put away.” But his photograph had had no place in her life with William, and Joachim knew that. “What do you do now?” He looked distinguished, and not poor, but he didn’t look either as though he had a great deal of money.
“I am a professor of English literature at the University of Heidelberg.” He smiled, as they both remembered long conversations about Keats and Shelley.
“I’m sure you’re very good at it.”
He set down his wineglass then and moved closer to her.
“Perhaps it’s wrong of me to have come, Sarah, but I have thought of you so often. It seems only yesterday since I left here.” But the truth was, it wasn’t yesterday, it was a lifetime. “I had to see you again … to know if you remember, too, if it means as much to you still, as it did to both of us then.” It was a lot to ask, and her life had been so full, and apparently his so empty.
“It’s been a long time, Joachim … I have always remembered you.” She had to be honest with him. “And I loved you then. I did, and perhaps if things had been different, if I hadn’t been married to William … but I was … and he came home. And I loved him very much. I can’t imagine loving another man again, ever.”
“Even one you had loved before?” His eyes were filled with hope and lost dreams, but she couldn’t give him the answer he wanted.
She shook her head sadly. “Even you, Joachim. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now … I am married to William forever.”
“But he is gone now,” he said gently, wondering if he had merely come too early.
“Not in my heart, just as he wasn’t then. I was grateful then, and I am now. … I can’t be any different, Joachim.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking like a broken man.
“So am I,” she said softly.
The children came in to them then. Isabelle looked adorable as she curtsied to him, and Xavier raced around the room, happily destroying whatever he could, and eventually Julian came down, too, to ask if he could go out with friends, and she introduced him to Joachim.
“You have a beautiful family,” he said when they left again. “The little one looks a little like Phillip.” Phillip had been just that age during the Occupation, and she could see his fondness for her son in his eyes. … and for Lizzie…. She knew he was thinking of her then, too, and she nodded. “I think of her sometimes, too … in some ways, she was like our baby.”
“I know.” And William had thought so too. He had told her that he’d been jealous of Joachim, because he had known Elizabeth, and he hadn’t. “She was so sweet… Julian is a little bit like that. And Xavier once in a while.… Isabelle is her own person.”
“She looks it.” He smiled. “And so are you, Sarah. I still love you. I always shall. You are exactly as I thought you might be now … except perhaps more beautiful … and still as good. Perhaps I wish you were not quite so much so.”
She laughed softly in answer. “I’m sorry.”
“William was a very lucky man. I hope he knew it.”
“I think we both did. It was too short a time …I only wish he’d had longer.”
“How was he after the war? The newspapers said his survival was miraculous.”
“It was. He was very badly damaged, and he was tortured.”
“They did terrible things,” he said, without hesitation. “For a time, I was ashamed to say I was a German.”
“All you did was help your men while you were here. The rest was done by other people. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” She had loved him, and respected him, in spite of their divergent positions.
“We should have all stopped it long before. The world will never forgive us that we didn’t, and they’re not wrong. The crimes were inhuman.” She couldn’t disagree with him, but at least they both knew that his conscience was clear. He was a good man, and he had been an honorable soldier.
Eventually, he stood up and looked around the room again, as though wanting to remember every inch, every detail, when he left her. “I should go back to Paris now. My brother will be waiting.”
“Come back again,” she said as she walked him outside, but they both knew he wouldn’t. She walked him slowly to his car, and when they reached it, he stopped and looked at her again. The hunger in his heart was etched in his eyes as he longed to touch her.
“I’m glad I came to see you again … I have wanted to for so long.” He smiled, and gently touched her cheek as he had once before, and she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, touched his face, and then slowly took a step backwards. It was like taking a last step from the past back to the present.
“Take care of yourself, Joachim….”
He hesitated for a long moment, and then nodded. He got back into his car, with a small salute, and she didn’t see the tears in his eyes as he drove away. All she could see was his car … and the man he had once been. All she could think of were her memories of William. Joachim had left her life years before. He was gone. And there was no place for him anymore. There hadn’t been in years. And when she couldn’t see the car anymore, she turned and went back inside to her children.
Chapter 25
Sarah was grateful that she was still working for her, particularly now that Julian was coming into the business. He had great taste and a wonderful sense of design, and a fine eye for extraordinary jewels, but there were many things he didn’t know about running the business. Emanuelle was no longer working on the floor selling, and hadn’t been in a long time; she had an office upstairs, she was the directrice générale, and her office was directly across from Sarah’s. They left their doors open sometimes, and shouted across the hall, like two girls in a dormitory doing homework. They had remained close friends, and only their friendship, her children, and her ever-increasing workload had helped Sarah survive William’s death. It had been more than six years, and for Sarah, they had been brutally lonely.
Life wasn’t the same without him, in countless major ways, and all the small ones. All the laughter they had shared, all the thoughtful little gestures, the smiles, the flowers, the deep understanding, the shared or even diametrically opposed points of view, his endless good judgment, and limitless wisdom, they were all gone now, and the ache she felt was almost physical, it was so painful.
The children had kept her busy over the years, Isabelle was sixteen, and Xavier seven. He was into everything, and Sarah often wondered if he was going to survive his childhood. Sarah found him on the roof of the château, or in caves he created near the stables, testing electric wires, and building things that looked as though they might easily kill him. But somehow he managed to get through it, and his energy and ingenuity intrigued her. He had a passion for rocks, too, and he always thought he had just found gold or silver or diamonds. The moment anything glimmered in the soil, he would pounce on it and proclaim he had found a bijou for Whitfield’s