“Absolutely.”

Monsieur Santi approached again, a disapproving look on his face. “Young man, this is not a museum. You come in here all of the time and never buy.”

“I’m sorry, monsieur.” I put a hand against Clare’s back, just barely brushing the linen of her jacket. “Please, let’s go.”

To my surprise, she leaned into my hand. “Luc, please take me home,” she whispered. “Take me back to Mille Mots.”

—

I used the money Maman had pressed on me for an omnibus to the Gare du Nord. Clare looked as though she’d blow away across the Seine.

On the train we sat next to each other, knees touching. She kept herself tightly wrapped in her jacket, wrapped in her thoughts. I whistled a little Scott Joplin, to make her smile, but she stared at her hands in her lap.

There was nothing waiting at Railleuse station to give us a ride back to Mille Mots. “Can you walk?” I asked her.

“Unless you have another omnibus tucked in your pocket.” A ghost of a joke, but it gave me hope.

We walked along the ridge that led to Enété village. I asked if she wanted to stop, to rest for a while, but she didn’t say a word. In the village, I led her to a bench in the shade outside the smithy and sat her down, brought her a cidre to drink, but she hardly touched it. From within one of the houses someone played an accordion.

“Do you like the music?” I wanted a conversation. She just sighed, so slight it was nothing more than a flutter of her shoulders.

Her silence unnerved me, so, as we walked on, I narrated. I told her how I’d roll down the ridge as a boy, for the grass stains as much as for the spinning feeling. I told her how I’d tag along with Marthe when she came to market in Enété. She’d buy me sugared beans that I’d eat out of a paper twist and then I’d help her carry home the sack of parsnips or fish or summer plums. I pointed out to Clare all of the trees and fence posts I’d once insisted on stopping at to rest, not because I was weary, but because I always knew Marthe was. I told her how Papa bought me my first tennis racket and how I spent all summer marching up and down the Enété road, hoping to show it off to passing farm wagons. I showed her the rock where I’d been bitten by a spider and the poplar tree where I’d had my first kiss.

She stopped at that, and I broke off my nervous rambling. She went under the tree, back against the trunk, and looked up into the branches. A mourning dove cooed. I couldn’t read her face. “Luc,” she said suddenly, “if I ask you a question, will you tell me the whole and complete truth?”

Could a girl ask a more terrifying question? I followed her under the tree. “That depends.”

Her body went rigid. “It shouldn’t. Aren’t we friends?”

“Is that the question?”

“A question.”

“Yes.”

“Then you should have no trouble being honest with me.”

I felt like saying that she hadn’t been honest all the time. I was learning to recognize that little tightening around the corners of her eyes, the way she bit her lip and avoided my gaze when I’d found her outside the Galerie Porte d’Or. Over the summer, I’d learned, in bits and pieces, how to read Clare Ross.

“Fine. I’ll be honest. Ask your question.”

She swallowed, cleared her throat, swallowed again. “I just wondered…” She inhaled. “Yesterday, while I was drawing your face, did you want to kiss me?” Her words came in a jumbled rush. “Do you want to kiss me now?”

“That’s two questions.”

“Will you?”

“Answer?”

“Kiss me.”

The blue sky pressed down on us. I licked my lips. “Clare, I can’t do that.”

“Because I’m too young?” Her voice grew tight. “Because you’re too old?”

“Because I did and I do.”

Her face was tipped up to me, pale, drawn, surrounded by a cloud of hair. She looked as though she might shatter. “Please,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. “I want to forget.”

Though I didn’t understand, I stepped closer. I put my hands against the tree trunk, on either side of her face, and I leaned in and kissed her.

It was just a little kiss, light as rain. I was afraid of breaking her into a million pieces. But when I pulled back, she smiled, the first I’d seen all day.

“So that’s what it’s like,” she breathed. “It’s sunshine.” She reached with one hand to touch the side of my face, the way she had yesterday afternoon. As though my heart weren’t already racing like a steam train. I turned towards her hand and kissed her again, on the palm. “Beautiful.”

I wanted to tell her that she was the beautiful one. That this moment was a poem. That I wanted to kiss her again, right now, and maybe not stop until the morning.

She must’ve seen that all in my eyes. She covered her mouth with an open hand and ducked under my outstretched arm. Without looking back, she ran down the road towards Mille Mots.

Clare Ross, she was an orchid in a gale. She bent under the rain but always straightened in the sun. I only wished I could keep her from the storms.

I caught up with her at the front door. It was open and Maman stood with her. Not comforting or examining or anything else I might have expected, given that I’d brought Clare back from the streets of Paris. Just watching, almost warily. Next to her, Clare stood still, with back straight.

Maman said to me, “Clare, she has a visitor,” and, like that, the summer was over. I didn’t know who it was but I knew she’d be leaving, I’d be staying, and the poplar tree would be one more memory.

“Go ahead, Maman.” I moved into the doorway beside Clare. “We’ll be right there.”

Maman exhaled, but she nodded and went down the hall to the salon.

“Luc.” Clare drew in a breath. Even in profile she was lovely—the scoop of her nose, the feather of her lashes. “Do you think?”

It felt traitorous to hope it wasn’t true, that her mother hadn’t come to take her away, not when that’s all Clare had been wishing for. But I didn’t want her to leave. So when she asked, all I could do was nod.

She took that as a promise and reached for my hand. Hers was warm and soft. I never wanted to let it go.

“I went to Paris to look for her, and maybe all along she was looking for me.”

We went down the hall to Maman’s color-splashed salon. But Clare paused outside the closed door.

Finally she turned to me. “But what if it’s not? What if it’s…” She hesitated. “What if it’s more bad news?”

I squeezed her hand and then let go. “You’re not going in alone.”

She nodded and opened the door.

There was a frozen moment, breath held beneath all that gray linen. And then a “Grandfather!” said with swallowed shock.

Across the room, a man leaned against the fireplace, tall and lanky like a heron. He was mustached, with untidy white hair and a face the color of an English penny. In his eyes I saw something of Clare. He stood stiffly, in a pale, rumpled coat, a straw hat in his hands. When Clare stepped in the room, he straightened and dropped the hat.