Page 21

The sketch provided a poor imitation—though a hint, she granted—of the love between her parents. The way they curled into each other, both reading from the same book. Sometimes they would sit far too long on one page, neither wanting to move to flip it, each assuming the other hadn’t finished yet.

What her drawing made no attempt to capture was the exhaustion back in Papa’s eyes. The weakness once more in his limbs.

He’d never been healthy again, after she tripped over him in the mud and he sent her shrieking for her mother when he peeled his eyes open.

He’d been better. For months at a time, he’d been good enough.

Then he’d catch a cold or an ague and they’d wonder if this would be the one that took him, that overwhelmed his fragile lungs.

He’d called himself a shadow of the man he’d used to be.

He’d joked that his injuries and illness had made him more like his brother, only he couldn’t ever tell his brother so.

For Remmy’s own good, he said. Because he was the better heir to their father, the better man, the one who deserved to carry their name forward.

She couldn’t imagine that, couldn’t imagine a better man.

She’d loved the shadows, because he claimed to be one.

Loved the darkness, because he said it soothed him, to see the stars dancing over France just as they had over England, only he’d never paused to look up at them back then.

She’d loved books, because they were the one thing he had the strength to do with her through long, cold winters when he could never seem to get warm enough.

“Your parents?” Bauer asked, voice as soft as the memory.

She nodded, though he wasn’t looking at her to see it.

“Right after we moved here. It was...” Was there any harm in saying it?

None that she could see. “It was our last month together. We didn’t know it then—but Papa died right after we moved to the city.

As if, once he’d made a way for our dreams, he thought we didn’t need him anymore. ”

Ciel —she hadn’t meant to say it like that, so...truthfully. She’d meant to give facts, not feelings.

Bauer lowered the sketch, but he didn’t hand it to her.

No, he moved over to the row of photographs in their simple wooden frames atop the low shelves under the window, and he set it there against one.

Among the faded, posed wedding photo, the one of her at her confirmation, the one of Oncle Georges and Tante Minette, taken the summer before she died in childbirth, along with their son.

So much sorrow, framed and frozen on that shelf. So much love. So many reminders that life was never one or the other, but always both, twisted together like ribbons on a maypole. And now she was the only one here to look at them, and who knew if Maman would ever even make it home again?

When something tickled her cheek, she reached up, swiped, and jolted when she realized they were tears, not a stray lash or an escaped curl.

Bauer still didn’t look at her. Perhaps he was too busy studying the photographs, or perhaps he was granting her a moment to collect herself.

“My parents are gone too,” he said softly.

“Together—as I know they would have wanted to go—in an auto accident. A year ago. They would have wanted it that way, but I...I didn’t.

Not both, at once. Not then—as if there’s ever a good time to lose the people we love best, nein ? ”

One more swipe of her cheeks, a sniff, and she pretended to be under control.

“No, there isn’t.” She let silence stretch for a second, then asked what she would have had he been any other professor.

Because just now, he was acting like one, rather than like himself.

“Have you other family waiting for you? In Germany?”

He shook his head, back going stiff. “My brother didn’t make it to adulthood. Grandparents, uncle—all gone. I had no cousins, no other siblings.”

She shouldn’t ask. But he wasn’t a young man, nor was he unattractive, so it seemed like a reasonable question. “Wife? Children?”

“Nein.” He faced her then, his smile small and tight, like any other professor’s would be when the conversation was all the family they no longer had. “No one waits for me in Germany aside from a few colleagues and friends who have long ago given up on me providing good company anyway.”

Like any other professor. It shouldn’t make her smile go real. Shouldn’t...but did. “Books? I imagine they miss you.”

His smile went real too. “You have me there. I daresay my collection mourns my absence day and night.” He motioned toward the novel on her chair.

“Perhaps when you’ve finished...if it’s a day you don’t hate me for my uniform.

..you could tell me your thoughts. I’m afraid Kraus isn’t much of a reader. ”

A laugh slipped out, and though she tried to smother it, it was too late. His eyes were already twinkling, his shoulders already relaxed. Letting her fingers fall from her lips again, she shook her head against the smile. “We’ll see.”

She’d visit Abraham first, see what he had to say about his “interviewer.” If he’d treated her friend with respect, with kindness, then perhaps she’d grant him her opinions on the book.

If not, then she’d chuck it at his head when he walked by. Either way, a cause to smile.