The Keeper of Happy Endings(30)

She falls silent then, though I can feel her gaze on me as I continue to stare at the photograph. Eventually, her words sink in. The summer before you were born. I look up, a question caught like a bone in my throat.

“He was your father.”

Father. The word sounds foreign on her lips, but her gaze never wavers.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because we’ve never spoken of him. We must do that now.”

I’ve always been curious about the man who’d managed to find a chink in my mother’s armor, but suddenly I don’t want to talk about him or why she’s suddenly decided to have this conversation.

“He was on his way to a rehearsal when we met. I was delivering a dress on Rue de Madrid, near the school. It had rained all morning and the streets were full of puddles. I was waiting to cross at the corner when a car sped past, soaking me with muddy water. I was horrified when I looked down at the dress box. It was soaking wet and filthy, and all I could think was, Maman will murder me if this dress is ruined. And then he was there, holding out a handkerchief.”

“Erich,” I say, pronouncing the name slowly, getting used to the feel of it.

“Yes. Erich.” A rare smile softens the lines illness has etched into her face. “He was wearing a white summer suit that looked like it had been made for him and black-and-white brogues so shiny, I could have used them to powder my nose. One of the smart set, with his straw boater and immaculately knotted tie. And there I was, dripping like a wet cat.”

“And he fell in love with you then and there,” I supply, reading the rest in her eyes.

Her expression goes soft and dreamy. “We both did. He was so handsome that when he asked me my name, I couldn’t remember. It was as if my mind had suddenly been wiped clean, as if nothing had happened to me before that moment. He helped me clean up the box, then bent down to wipe the mud off my shoes. I was so flustered I knocked his hat off into the street, and before we knew it, neither of us could stop laughing. He gave me his coat to cover my wet clothes and walked me the rest of the way.”

I find myself smiling. It’s a side of Maman I have never imagined—a young woman on the brink of a grand passion. “What happened after you delivered the dress?”

“We spent every spare moment together, usually in some park or other. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. He would bring a blanket and food, and I’d make some excuse about where I was going. We’d eat, and then he would play his violin for me. He played so beautifully, as if he were telling a story every time he picked up his bow. I went to a few of his concerts at the school. All those musicians playing together on one stage, and all I could hear was him. Or at least it seemed that way to me.”

“How long did it last?”

“Seven months and thirteen days.”

The swiftness and precision of her answer surprises me. “What happened?”

“He finished his schooling. It was time to go home.”

“Home?”

She closes her eyes, wincing. “Berlin.”

Her anguish is palpable and so uncharacteristic. Perhaps because I thought her incapable of such feelings. “I’m sorry he left you, Maman.”

Her eyes open slowly, dark and bottomless. “It was me,” she whispers. “I ended it.”

“You? Why?”

“He wanted me to go back to Germany with him, to marry him. But your grandmother forbid it. Even when I told her there was going to be a baby.”

“Because of the shop?”

“Because of the war,” she replies quietly. “Erich was a German. A boche, as they were known then—and still are, I suppose. My mother never forgave them for the Somme. So many of our boys were killed there, slaughtered in the trenches by the thousands. She couldn’t forgive it. Many couldn’t. She said marrying a German would bring far more shame than a bastard child.”

“So that was it? You just let him leave?”

She nods, pulling in a phlegmy breath. “His parents were dead, and his sisters had gone to live with an aunt while he attended school. It was time to go back to his responsibilities. I could have made him stay,” she whispers thickly. “If I had told him about you, he would have stayed.”

I stare at her, stunned. “You never told him you were pregnant?”

She turns her face away. “It would only have made things harder for us both. We had . . . responsibilities.”

I blink at her, trying to understand. It isn’t that I’ve missed having a father—you can’t miss what you’ve never had—but her argument makes no sense. “What could be more responsible than marrying the father of your child?”

“It wasn’t as easy as that. There was the shop to think about. I couldn’t leave Maman with only Lilou to help. Not when I knew she wouldn’t stay. Even when we were girls, my sister had one foot out the door. And then there were the stories—all the broken Roussel hearts, the ones who defied the rules of our calling and suffered for it. Maman said mine would be next and that when it happened, I couldn’t come back.” A pair of tears squeezes from between her clenched lids, leaving thin silver tracks in their wake. “I would be on my own—like my mother was after Lilou was born.”

“So you kept your secret and broke Erich’s heart instead.”