The Keeper of Happy Endings(31)

“I was afraid.”

The admission brings a lump to my throat. “And you never saw him again?”

She shakes her head, slowly, painfully. “I had a letter once, begging me to reconsider. I was afraid I would weaken, so I threw it in the fire. Lilou was livid with me. She never understood duty. And I . . .” Her eyes drift from mine. “I never understood anything else.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say softly, because I am. But I’m angry too. That I’d never had the chance to know this man who told stories with his violin or the woman my mother had been then, the one who’d fallen in love with a stranger on a street corner. I would have liked that woman. But the years have transformed her into someone else—into an unhappy echo of the very mother who had forced her to deny her heart. It seems a terrible irony as I sit listening to her story, and I wonder if she realizes it, too, and if that’s why she’s decided to tell me her story.

“It must have broken your heart to let him go,” I say gently. And then a thought suddenly occurs. “Is that why you’re telling me now, because you want me to help you find him?”

Her tears come suddenly and noisily, like a dam breaking, and I can’t think of anything to say. I have no experience in offering her comfort and I’m apparently doing it badly. “I’m so sorry, Maman. Whatever I said, I’m sorry.”

“He was Jewish,” she sobs raggedly. “Erich Freede was Jewish.”

I stare at her, struggling to connect the words with the anguish in her eyes. It takes a moment, but finally I understand. A Jew. In Germany.

“The Nazis,” I say quietly. “Mon dieu.”

She closes her eyes, dragging in another sob. “The stories . . . The camps . . . I can’t bear to think of it.”

I glance at the locket in my hand, recalling the day one of Maman’s clients shared her account of Kristallnacht, how she had closed the shop and gone to her room and not come out until morning. And how, when she heard about the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup on the radio, she had wept uncontrollably and refused to eat for days. She hadn’t been crying for humanity; she’d been crying for Erich Freede, because she’d never stopped loving him.

It was why she’d been hanging on every word of the daily BBC broadcasts, scouring every line of the contraband newspapers that sometimes found their way into our letter box. And perhaps why she’s taken to feverishly fingering her rosary of late—a hedge against evil.

“Have you . . . had news of him?”

“No.” She covers her mouth, eyes clenched as a fresh pair of tears spills down her cheeks. “For years, I’ve imagined him playing all the great halls in Europe, holding audiences in the palm of his hand. It was a way of holding on to him, imagining him happy after everything that happened, and now . . . I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

My heart aches as I watch her speak, but I’m afraid too. Her breathing is thick and raspy, her lips blanched of color as she labors to breathe. “Please, Maman. You mustn’t upset yourself.”

“If only I hadn’t listened to my mother . . . If I’d told him about you and asked him to stay, he might be safe now.”

“You don’t know that, Maman. Jews are being rounded up here too. We’re doing it. The French.”

She struggles up from her pillow, clutching at my hand. “But it might have been different. Don’t you see? If he had remained in Paris, I would have been able to warn him. Instead, I broke his heart . . . and now I’ve killed him.”

I press her back against her pillows, hushing her like a child in the throes of a nightmare. I tell her to close her eyes and I stroke her hair, trying to recall a time when the roles were reversed and she was the one to comfort me. I can’t. She’s never been that kind of mother. Still, I can’t deny her that small bit of tenderness. Not when her heart is breaking.

I sit on the edge of her bed, waiting for her to quiet, and think of the maléfice—the curse. Maman’s mother had warned her that loving Erich Freede would lead to heartbreak. But how was that different from her current anguish, wondering if the man she loved was hiding somewhere, like a cornered animal, or imprisoned at the mercy of monsters at one of the camps? If that’s what comes of protecting your heart, I want no part of it.

Maman withdraws her hand from mine, brushing impatiently at her tears. “I wanted you to have the locket because I want you to have a part of your father. And because I need you to do something.”

I nod mutely.

“You will leave Paris one day. Take the locket when you go. Take him away from this place with all its terrible memories. Promise me you will.”

“Leave Paris?” I stare at her, stunned. “But where would I go? Paris is my home.”

“Not anymore. And you will leave. You must.”

“But the shop. The work. You always said—”

“I said a lot of things. I taught you to live for the work, because that’s what I was taught, but I was wrong. I was wrong about so much.”

“Maman—”

“Let me speak!”

I open my mouth, then close it again. It will do me no good to argue.

“I’ve always kept you at arm’s length. No, don’t shake your head. We both know it’s true. But you don’t know why.” She drags in a breath, rattling and wet. “You were so like him, Soline. So much it hurt to look at you. You have my eyes, my hair, my mouth, but you have always had his heart. He was a dreamer—un rêveur. He had such plans for us.” She pauses to drag in a shuddering breath. “I took that from him—and I was reminded of it every time I looked at you.”