Chapter 28

When Sidonie dragged her heavy feet up the path towards the house, it was Lyse who ran out to meet her. But the girl’s smile vanished from her face once she saw the tears streaking Sidonie’s cheeks.

‘Léo?’ Lyse whispered.

Sidonie tried to say the words she had heard used so many times before. He has gone to God. He is at peace. But when she opened her mouth all that came out was a sob. She held out her arms, her empty palms facing the sky to show she’d brought nothing back, nothing except loss and death and pain. She could not look at Lyse; to see her own grief reflected in the child’s eyes would be too much to bear. She just needed a moment to collect herself, closing her eyes for no more than two heartbeats. To remember what it was to breathe. But when she opened them, Lyse was gone.

No one had seen her since.

Sidonie found Fabien in the stables saddling his horse, preparing to fetch the gendarmes after Léo had not been returned that morning. Sidonie told him it was too late. She had been too late. She had let this happen again . His face crumpled and he buried his face into her breast. Her numb arms encircled his back, holding him while sobs wracked his body. When the shaking subsided, he took her face gently between his hands, fingers now coated in the salt from her tears. ‘Bless you,’ he croaked. ‘For the kindness you showed him and for the love you bore him. God will keep him by His side and in our memories forever.’ He took her arm and led her inside to Aunt Eloise and Liane.

She told the story in pieces while Aunt Eloise and Liane sat pressed together on the chaise in the solar. How Apolline had come to the estate asking for help. That Léo had escaped to the cottage, to Gilles, and she had not been able to find them. How she and Apolline had run through the forest. The pear tree. She didn’t speak of Léo’s broken body clutched in Gilles’s arms. Not to spare them the pain, but because she couldn’t find the words.

Liane held her hand to her mouth the entire time. Tears ran down her face. Aunt Eloise sat as still as if she were carved from marble.

‘We will claim him as ours. He shall have a funeral,’ Aunt Eloise said, her eyes averted. ‘I would ask you to keep this from the other children. We do not want to distress them further. We have their welfare to consider, even though Léo ... Léo ...’ Her voice caught on his name, and she coughed and turned her head.

‘Sidonie, Fabien, please leave us,’ Liane said firmly. ‘And take care of yourselves.’ She reached for Aunt Eloise’s hand and squeezed it until the knuckles went white.

Fabien left, but Sidonie lingered outside the door. She had left it open a crack. Her aunt was so rigid, so contained. Had Léo’s death meant nothing to her? She wanted to storm back into the room and make Aunt Eloise feel what she felt, the pain in her heart, the images in her mind that wouldn’t stop even when she closed her eyes.

‘They’re gone, Eloise,’ she heard Liane say. ‘We’re alone. It’s just us now.’

Through the crack in the door, Sidonie saw Aunt Eloise’s head fall onto Liane’s lap. Her hands grabbed at the fabric of Liane’s skirts, her face contorted in grief and her mouth opened in a soundless cry. ‘I couldn’t save him!’ Aunt Eloise sobbed.

‘My love, my dearest, my heart,’ Liane said, one hand holding tight to Aunt Eloise’s while the other cupped her face.

Aunt Eloise moaned as if in pain. ‘I have to be quiet. The children, they will hear me. They cannot hear me. I have to be strong for the children. Oh, Liane, I couldn’t save him!’

‘You saved me. You saved so many others,’ Liane said while tears fell from her eyes and landed in Aunt Eloise’s hair.

‘Not this child,’ Aunt Eloise said, pulling herself up and staring into Liane’s eyes. ‘Why not this child too?’

‘Because life is not fair, my love. If it were, I would stand before a priest with you on my arm and seal our love in marriage. But I am blessed with what I have. I get to fall asleep every night with you in my arms. And know that you are the first thing I will see when I wake. I grieve for Léo, who will never know a love like ours. I grieve for all the mornings he will never have. For the life he will never live. And then I will take your hand and I will continue our work and that will give me comfort.’ She took Aunt Eloise’s face in her hands and kissed her lips as gently as if plucking the petal from a rose. ‘You can take your strength from me.’

‘You always have so much to give. I cannot think of what I have done in my life to have been blessed with you.’

‘And I you.’

Sidonie had not made a noise, not a sound as she observed the exchange between these two women – her aunt and the woman she had thought to be only her aunt’s companion, but who was so much more than that. Companion, friend, family, lover. She must have made a sound then, for Liane looked over at the door and saw Sidonie peering through the gap in the door. Liane held her gaze, watching her watching them. Then she turned back to Aunt Eloise and held her as if she were the most precious gift in the world.