The Keeper of Happy Endings(15)

She looks pale suddenly, her dark eyes bead-hard as she forces me to meet them. How have I not noticed the new sharpness in her face, the thinning of her once-full mouth? She’s frightened, and I have never seen her frightened.

There’s something she isn’t saying, something that frightens her more than the prospect of war. Suddenly, I’m frightened too. “When, Maman?”

“A year, perhaps more. But I’ve been preparing, laying up stores against what’s to come. It will be harder and harder to get things. Food. Clothes. Even shoes. Money won’t matter because there won’t be anything to buy and no one to buy it from. That’s why the workroom is jammed. And the pantry downstairs. So you’ll have what you need when the time comes. Things you can barter.” Her hand creeps back to the crucifix. “I’m afraid for you.”

The words hang in the air between us. Heavy. Solitary. “Only for me?”

Her eyes remain steady, her emotions unguarded for the first time in my memory. Fear. Sorrow. And a silent apology. Suddenly, I understand what she isn’t saying and what I haven’t let myself see until now. The hollow cheeks and shadowed eyes, the cough I sometimes hear in the night. Maman is sick and will be gone soon.





SEVEN


SOLINE

For more than two hundred years, there has been a Dress Witch, the keeper of our secret and the teacher of our craft. Our gift, though taught, is at its roots hereditary, the title passed from one generation to the next. When the mother lays down her needle, the daughter takes it up. And so goes The Work.

—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch

17 January 1940—Paris

For now at least, nothing seems to be happening. The tables at the sidewalk cafés are still full, the coffeehouses humming with artists and philosophers, sipping endless cups of black coffee, gnawing on life like a bone. The chefs keep cooking, and the wine keeps flowing, the cinemas draw their usual crowds, and fashion continues to be the chief pastime of Parisian women. More importantly—at least for the Roussels—young lovers continue to marry.

Maman says it’s to do with Hitler’s troops sweeping through Europe like a plague of locusts. The prospect of soldiers on our streets is making everyone nervous, and brides are desperate to get down the aisle before the worst comes to pass.

Every day now, we wake to reports of new atrocities. A woman who had fled Berlin with her aging parents told Maman about the night she witnessed dozens of Jews from her neighborhood being rounded up for the camps, their synagogues burned, their businesses destroyed, the streets where they lived and worked littered with shards of broken glass. Kristallnacht, they called it—the Night of Broken Glass. We’d heard about it, of course, on the radio, but not the way she told it.

And this morning, there are reports of mothers putting their children on trains, giving them up to strangers in order to save them from what’s coming. Maman has been sobbing on and off for hours. She’s declining rapidly now, so thin the bones of her face have begun to show through her skin, and her cough worsens every day. She refuses to see a doctor, assuring me with alarming calm that it will make no difference. There is no longer any pretense between us. She’s dying, and all I can do is watch.

“Will it be much longer?” I ask as she clicks off the radio and settles back against her pillows. “Before they come to Paris, I mean.”

She turns her head, coughing into a handkerchief, a broken rattling that leaves her winded and pale. “They’re closer every day now. They won’t stop until they have it all.”

Her answer comes as no surprise. It’s what they’re saying on Radio Londres too. “They’ve already taken half of Europe. Why do they need Paris?”

“They want to purge all of Europe—to purify it. Many will die. And the ones who don’t will lose everything.”

I nod, because there’s no longer any doubt about her being right. Every day brings fresh horrors. Raids and roundups. Trains crisscrossing Europe, loaded with prisoners bound for the camps. Communists. Jews. Roma.

“Will no one be safe, then?”

“Those willing to turn a blind eye and go along, but only those. Some will even profit from it. For the rest, they will come with their scythes, cutting down anyone who stands in their way. And I won’t be here. There will be no one to protect you.”

I want to tell her she’s wrong, that she’ll get well and everything will be fine, but we both know better. And so I say nothing.

“I’ve had a letter from Lilou,” she says abruptly.

The news leaves me speechless. Maman has never forgiven her sister for falling in love with an Englishman and running off to get married. He was wealthy and dashing, with a flat in London and a house in the country where he kept horses and sheep. I found it all terribly romantic. Maman felt quite differently and had shown little emotion when a letter arrived telling us Lilou’s husband was dead. She had torn the letter to pieces and thrown it into the fire, muttering that it had all been inevitable, and it served her right for abandoning us. Now, more than a decade later, it seems there has been another letter.

“I didn’t know you and Lilou were writing letters.”

“War changes things,” Maman replies stiffly. “And there were . . . things to say.”

“You told her you were sick?”