The Butler(6)

    Francois got him minor temporary jobs, as an art handler at the Louvre, then working in one of the restaurants there. Joachim went back to the auction house for a while but was nothing more than a furniture mover. He took a job running the Ferris wheel at a carnival one summer. Liese told Francois that was the bottom of the barrel. Joachim was intelligent, and capable of much more than that, but he seemed lost without Javier. But they all had to live with it. It was Javier who had distanced himself from them, severed all connection, and wanted it that way.

Joachim was nineteen the last time he heard from his twin, and spent five years after that doing odd jobs, going nowhere. He rented a tiny studio apartment in a dilapidated area of Paris. The building smelled bad, and the apartment was barely bigger than his bed, with a small battered fridge and a hot plate and sink, a toilet, and tiny shower. Liese hated to see him live that way, but he didn’t want to take advantage of his stepfather. He felt that he should be independent by then, and living on his own, although Francois would have been happy to house him. He enjoyed having him around, and it made his mother happy.

Liese worried about both her sons constantly, for different reasons. Javier was destroying any chance he had for a good life, and he was affecting Joachim’s life from a distance, with the grief of having lost his twin. Joachim doubted he would ever see Javier again and, at the same time, always hoped he would, and Javier would magically reappear, which never happened.

    Liese had to make her own peace with having a son she might never see again. She prayed every day that he was still alive. Some sixth sense gave her the feeling that he was, and Joachim had the same intuition that somewhere out in the world, his brother was still living, but they had no way to verify it. The detective had found no trace of him during his last mission for them. Javier had vanished.

Liese had had her share of grief in her lifetime, the loss of her father and then her husband only months later, and then Javier’s determined disappearance. Then eight years after she came to Paris, Francois died quietly in his sleep, lying beside her. A massive stroke was the cause of death. He was only seventy-four years old, but mercifully, he had died peacefully, hadn’t fallen ill, and hadn’t suffered. And Liese was a widow again at sixty-four. She was still passionately engaged in her work for the organization that located lost and stolen artwork in order to return it and had no desire to retire. She was healthy and strong, and loved going to work every day. Francois had still been working as an expert at the Louvre, but he had been tired lately, and thinking of retiring, and now he was gone.

He left almost everything he had to Liese, since he had no children or relatives. He had a very decent insurance policy he had taken out when he’d married her. And he had left a nice amount of money to Joachim, not enough to go crazy with, but he wouldn’t have anyway. Francois knew that about him. It was enough for Joachim to buy himself a small apartment, nicer than the ugly one he rented, or study somewhere abroad, if he wished to. Francois gave him a little start in life. He had hoped that Joachim would go back to school, to learn a trade or pursue a career of some kind, but he hadn’t. The loss of his twin had been a huge blow and took him years to adjust to. There were girls in his life, but they never lasted long. And he never got deeply attached to any of them. Having lost Javier, he seemed to have a hard time getting close to anyone, for fear of losing them too. At twenty-five, he had no particular direction and hadn’t found a career that inspired him, only the temporary jobs he took as filler. He was just passing time. Liese and Francois had talked about it a great deal, and Francois had been as concerned as any father would have been. Joachim had been lucky that his mother had married a man with a big heart who had wanted to take him under his wing, although Javier had thrown them all off balance. Liese always wondered if Joachim was just waiting for Javier to return.

    Liese continued working after Francois died, with no intention of retiring. More than ever, she needed her job now. It gave her some purpose in life, a place to go every day, and contact with people. She was doing some good, or trying to, tracking down art and returning it to people who had been so severely wronged. She felt as though she was part of some form of justice, compensating in some small degree for all that had been lost or taken from them, most of it so enormous that no one could ever really make it up to them. But what she was able to return to them gave them something, and in some cases, with important works of art, it gave them an object of great monetary value. She was only a child when most of the art had been taken from them, or their relatives, during the war, but at least as an adult, she could be part of the restitution. It was very meaningful work for her, and she was proud of what she was doing. And Francois had been proud of her.

    Joachim was shocked that Francois had left him anything at all and was deeply touched by it. Two months after he died, with his new inheritance, Joachim was having Sunday lunch with his mother at her apartment and saw an ad in the newspaper that intrigued him. He folded the paper and handed it to his mother, who looked at the page blankly. She couldn’t see why he had shown it to her. She didn’t see anything of interest.

“What am I supposed to look at?” she asked. They were both still shocked to have lost Francois, and Joachim had been checking on her a lot, to make sure she was all right. They were both doing the best they could to get used to it. He had been a benevolent force in both their lives, a truly kind and loving man. And Joachim knew how lonely she was without him.