Page 52

How are you holding up?” Daniel asked the day after their return from Paris, squeezing Colette’s hand as he helped her into a pew in the back row of the church where Hubert Verdier’s funeral was to be held.

“As you might expect,” she said with a small smile as he settled in beside her.

It had been two days since their evening together in Paris, when he’d relinquished his plans to see the sights in order to stay by her side.

She would never forget it. And now, here he was again, though he could have chosen to return to New York right away.

“Thank you for being here with me, Daniel,” she added.

“It’s important you know that you aren’t facing this alone. I’m right here.”

The words were enough to bring tears to her eyes. Just before the funeral mass began, Aviva slid in beside her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, leaning over to give Daniel’s arm a squeeze, too. “I can’t wait to hear all about France. You’ve been holding out on me!”

Colette had called Aviva the moment they got home from Paris to tell her about Daniel’s offer of the bracelets, but she’d been unable to say the rest. The story of Tristan had existed for so long in the silence of her own heart that she didn’t know how to begin.

But she would need Aviva’s help to find out what had happened to him, and once the funeral was behind them, she would find the words to ask.

“Thank you for being here today, dear,” Colette said now.

Aviva smiled sadly at her. “I’m just sorry that Hubert Verdier died before you could find out the truth.”

“Maybe it’s enough to have found him after all these years,” Colette said.

“Maybe it’s enough that I’m here to see him dead and buried.

” But as the funeral procession began then with Lucas and a few altar boys carrying in an ornate casket, Colette’s heart was heavy with a sense of something vital left unfinished.

It was devastating to come so close to some sort of closure, only to have it whisked away at the last second, like a mirage that had never really been there at all.

There weren’t many mourners present; just Lucas, a pretty young woman Aviva pointed out as Lucas’s daughter Millie, a handful of nurses from the assisted-living facility, and an old man in the front row who Aviva identified as Lucas’s grandfather.

“Lucas is going to talk to him again, I promise,” Aviva whispered as a priest began the mass.

“Hopefully this week. Lucas thinks he might know something about how the bracelet came into Hubert’s possession. ”

And just like that, Colette felt a flicker of hope.

Lucas stepped up to give the eulogy after an opening prayer and some readings from the Bible.

“Thank you all for being here today,” he said, looking down at the small group.

“I knew Hubert my whole life; we used to joke that he and his wife were my bonus grandfather and grandmother. ‘You never asked for me, kid,’ he said to me once, ‘but here I am anyhow.’?”

There were a few chuckles, and Lucas paused.

“Despite knowing Hubert for all that time, though, I’ve realized recently that perhaps I never really knew him at all.

And maybe that’s true of all of us. We show people the sides of us we want them to see, and we hold the other pieces close.

But perhaps it is those pieces—the ones we keep nearest to our vests—that define us. ”

He cleared his throat and looked out at the church, his gaze landing on Aviva and then Colette.

“It’s hard to make sense of a life when you don’t know the whole story.

We’ve all done things we’re proud of. We’ve all done things we regret.

Can a lifetime of good wash away a long-ago sin?

Or are the choices we’ve made crosses that we must bear through eternity?

I don’t know the answers to that, but I do know that one of the gifts Hubert has left us with is a reminder to try.

We must look inside. We must try to do what we can to right wrongs.

And we must come clean about our pasts.”

His eulogy was interrupted by a sudden coughing fit from his grandfather, who doubled over, hacking violently, until an altar boy rushed away and returned with a bottle of water.

The old man took a sip and, with the woman beside him rubbing his back, gradually straightened back up in his seat and held up a hand.

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” he said, his words thick with a French accent. “Please continue.”

Lucas looked concerned, but he went on. “In any case, there is no doubt that today we lay to rest a man who was very complicated. But without him, my mother and her family would not have been able to immigrate to the United States, so I owe him a great debt for that. He sponsored my grandparents’ immigration application in 1948.

Without him, I wouldn’t have had the years I did with Vanessa, and we wouldn’t have had Millie.

” He glanced down at his daughter and gave her a sad smile.

“His legacy will live on, and Millie and I will make sure it’s a good one. ”

He nodded at the priest and stepped down from the pulpit, rejoining his grandfather and his daughter in the front row.

Colette watched from behind as his daughter tilted her head and laid it on her father’s shoulder.

There was something so familiar about the gesture, and it took Colette a few seconds to realize that it reminded her of the way Liliane used to lean her head on Colette’s shoulder so long ago, when she was drowsy.

Traveling to Paris, it seemed, had awakened long-dormant memories.

She held tight to Daniel’s and Aviva’s hands during the Prayers of the Faithful and the Liturgies of the Eucharist, and then, after communion, the priest closed the mass with a final prayer, followed by a song of farewell led by the church’s organist. As the congregation sang the words printed on their programs, Colette was acutely aware that her mother and sister never had the dignity of being laid to rest like this, and her heart ached for the long-ago denial of such a basic right.

Lucas and the altar boys carried the casket back up the aisle and out the front door of the church.

Colette had already decided that she wouldn’t attend the graveside service; she didn’t need to see Hubert Verdier lowered into the ground to know that he was well and truly dead.

He’s gone, Liliane , she thought. He’s finally gone, but it didn’t bring you back.

“Are you all right?” Daniel whispered in Colette’s ear as they stood to leave.

“I think I am,” she said as they made their way out of the pew with Aviva leading the way. “I have to be, don’t I?”

“You don’t have to be anything,” Daniel reminded her, putting a hand on her lower back. “But I do think it’s time for you to find some peace.”

Outside the church, the handful of mourners milled around, chatting, before they dispersed. “I know Lucas wanted to say hello to you,” Aviva said, gesturing across the parking lot to the museum director, who stood with his grandfather and daughter.

“I’d like to give him my condolences,” Colette said. “But he looks busy with his family. We can speak another time.”

“Okay. I’ll go let him know.” She gave Colette a quick peck on the cheek and stepped over to talk with Lucas, who had a hand on his daughter’s back as he listened to something his grandfather was saying.

“There’s something there, isn’t there?” Daniel asked with a smile as they watched Lucas’s eyes light up when he noticed Aviva approaching. “Does she have feelings for him, too?”

“I think she does.” Colette shook her head in astonishment.

“How do you feel about that?” Daniel asked. “Given his connection to Verdier?”

She considered Lucas’s words during the mass.

We must look inside , he had said. We must try to do what we can to right wrongs.

“We are not defined by where we’ve come from—or we shouldn’t be, anyhow,” she said.

“Lucas is his own man, and as much as it pains me to admit it, he seems to be a very good one.”

“Good,” Daniel said with a nod. “His eulogy was perfect—a goodbye to someone he obviously cared about, but an acknowledgment that he might not have been the man he believed him to be.”

“Aviva’s fiercely independent, you see—so much so that I’ve worried about her at times.

But perhaps she was only waiting for the right person to come along.

” She thought fleetingly of Tristan one more time, his letter from 1952 burning in her heart.

But then, she pushed the thought away, because if there was one thing the last few weeks had shown her, it was that the past was gone.

She would ask Aviva to find out what she could, but she knew the odds were not in her favor.

Enough , she told herself, closing her eyes for a moment. Enough .

“Ms. Marceau?” Colette opened her eyes and found Lucas approaching with Aviva.

“Lucas,” she said. “That was a beautiful eulogy.”

“That means a lot coming from you,” he said. “I wanted to apologize for everything, Ms. Marceau. I still can’t reconcile what I knew of Hubert with the idea that he could have done something so terrible—but I promise I’ll continue to do what I can to find you some answers.”

“I’m afraid it’s very likely too late.”

“Not necessarily. As soon as my grandfather is done over there, I’d like to introduce you.

I think he knows more than he’s saying about where Hubert’s bracelet came from, and I’m hoping that he’ll be willing to tell you.

” He turned to Daniel. “And Mr. Rosman, I understand from Aviva that you have obtained paperwork to set in motion a claim on the bracelet. I’ve spoken to my grandfather, and he has promised to lend a hand in helping us establish provenance, which should expedite the process. ”

“Your grandfather?” Colette asked. “What does he have to do with the bracelet’s provenance?”

“He wouldn’t say, but I assume it has something to do with the time he and Hubert spent together in France. Ah, here he comes. Perhaps you can ask him yourself.” Lucas turned and raised his voice. “Granddad, I want you to meet two friends of mine.”

Colette looked beyond Lucas to see his grandfather approaching slowly, with the help of his walker. Lucas’s daughter was by his side, and when she looked up at her father and smiled, Colette had another strange flicker of recognition, though she was nearly certain she’d never seen the girl before.

But then Colette turned her attention to the old man, whose shoulders were stooped and whose ears stuck out from his head, and the world around her seemed to stop turning.

“I’d like to introduce you to my daughter and my grandfather,” Lucas said, oblivious to the way every inch of Colette had turned to ice as his grandfather walked the final steps to close the distance between them.

Suddenly, all the pieces were falling into place in rapid succession, and Colette realized that despite Hubert’s ownership of the bracelet, he wasn’t the man she’d been looking for after all.

“Millie, Granddad, meet Colette Marceau and her friend, Daniel Rosman.”

Colette could see the moment her name registered with Lucas’s grandfather, because his eyes went wide and then darted to her in alarm.

As they stared at each other, the years fell away, and she could see that he knew exactly who she was—and who she had been—just as she recognized a face from the past hidden amidst the wrinkled, faded skin of a very old man.

It had been seventy-six years since she’d seen him last, but in an instant, it all came together.

A policeman she and her sister had known and trusted.

A policeman who must have been aware that there were jewels in the house.

A policeman who would have known that in the chaos of that terrible night in 1942, a child with a bracelet in the hem of her dress would be all too easy to steal.

It had never been Hubert Verdier at all; he was simply a weasel who liked nice jewels and who had known—after meeting with her in a café in 1945—exactly where to find one of the most beautiful pieces in Paris.

She felt lightheaded, her vision blurring as her skin broke out in a cold, clammy sweat.

“It’s you,” she breathed.

He stared at her, and then his face crumpled. “Yes,” he said, and the single word undid her.

“Guillaume Charpentier,” she whispered as the two of them stared at each other, not moving. “What did you do to my sister?”

And then, before he could say a word, Colette fell to her knees as the world went black.