Things are as usual here. Grandfather’s widow friend brought over a tagine again. It’s disgusting, how he’ll smile and simper and eat around the pieces of mutton so that he doesn’t have to admit that he follows a Pythagorean diet. With as often as she comes around, I don’t imagine she’ll stop if she finds out that he doesn’t eat meat.

When she started making camel eyes at him (and she always does), I escaped to the Djemma el Fna. Grandfather thinks it’s too crowded and no place for a girl, but I wear a robe and scarf and, anyway, I have a bicycle now. I’m faster than I used to be. And besides, I can’t resist going. All of the snake charmers and storytellers and dancers in their horned hats. The square is so full of life.

With that heavy paper you sent, I’ve taken to sketching the water sellers. They’re usually young boys in tattered robes, bent under the water skins on their backs and the strings of tin bowls around their necks. If I keep buying bowls of water, they’ll patiently ignore me while I draw. There’s one, a boy with a limp, who reminds me of you. He’s always on the edges of the group, looking like he’s waiting to begin life. But his eyes watch me. Though he’s afraid to say a word to me—a girl, and a Western girl at that—he looks as though, more than anything, he needs someone to listen. It still amazes me that, after so many years, you let me listen to you. As long as I can, I’ll walk with you on your “grand march.”

I love it here, the swirl and commotion of the markets, the color-drenched scarves and robes, the aching warmth of the clay walls. I speak Moroccan French now, and a spattering of Arabic, and I can bargain like a camel trader. Everything is so alive. And yet, all someone has to do is mention the word “Scotland,” and I’m suddenly hungry for it. I can smell gorse in the air, hear the Tummel rippling past, feel the breath from the Highlands. In those moments, I want to be there, too.

Grandfather doesn’t understand. Whenever I mention Perthshire to him, he just laughs and waves a hand and says, “Isn’t it better to be away from there?” I know Grandfather and why he’s been away so long. It was my grandmother’s death and all of the things that remind him of her. For him, memories haunt the halls of Fairbridge, though they are memories softened by distance. It has been too long since he’s known the word “home.” These days, the whole world is his home.

Distance has softened my memories, too. Instead of a cold, echoing, lonely place, I can’t help but think of Fairbridge with a warmth not warranted. I remember my old nursery, with my collection of china dolls tucked high on a shelf. Father used to buy those for me, you know, every time he finished a commission. The curiosity room, packed full of things Grandfather sent from his travels. Even when I felt alone and adrift, there was someone in the world who loved me. Even the way Mother’s room used to always smell like lilacs. I miss her, Luc. I know now that she’s never coming back, but I miss her still the same.

Maybe it’s because, out here, I understand her a little more. I know why she couldn’t wait quietly in one place when the world is so full of possibility. I wouldn’t trade my travels for anything. But, even so, I don’t understand why she left. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her that. She chose the world over me. She couldn’t have both.

I know you’re like me. Adventure is adventure, but there’s something about home. Maybe it’s because it makes us feel like children. Maybe it’s because it reminds us of summer. When I talk about the river, the grass, the flowers on the air, you understand. Because you’re thinking about Mille Mots.

I do, too. Think of Mille Mots, that is. It’s not my home, but sometimes, during that one summer, I’d pretend it was. Before my grandfather came, I’d pretend that your home was mine. I wanted to have a place to belong. That’s why I was always outside drawing the château, you know. I wanted to be able to capture Mille Mots down to every blade of grass, every ripple in the Aisne, every crumble of white stone, so that if I were ever to leave one day, I could bring the château away with me. I didn’t know that once you fall in love with something, it never really leaves you. Does it? I’ve even found a sweet chestnut tree here that reminds me of ours, though it’s lonely beneath it all by myself. I’ve sent you a leaf, pressed flat. Remember?

Yearning for home, yearning for those warm, safe days of childhood, that doesn’t halt our steps forward. It doesn’t mean we regret or fear. It means that we’re built of so much more than our future. We have the past to stand on. And we’re stronger for it.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Mardi, le 29 octobre 1912

Dear Clare,

This time of year is so melancholy. Rainy and gray, as the world slips into winter. I read your letter and it made me wonder, what does “home” mean to me?

Autumn at Mille Mots is just as gray, of course, but warmed by the fireplace in the drawing room and by stands of goldenrod around the edges of the garden. Stacks of books read on the sofa in my room, fresh honey for my bread, all of the apples, grapes, and medlars I can eat. In Paris, I can still find all of the fruit, if I’m willing to go to the market at Les Halles. But everyone rushes past me. Unless you are Uncle Jules (rest in peace) or an English tourist, you are not in Paris to savor it. You’re here to work or to study, like I am. You’re living in a borrowed space, like I am. In a year I’ll be gone.

Perhaps it’s disillusionment, what with this time of year and with my military days looming. I wish I felt settled enough to savor. But I can’t help but think of months ahead and wonder where I’ll be.

Do you know my favorite spot in Paris? The Île de la Cité is a little island in the middle of the Seine, the same island that the great Notre Dame de Paris sits on. At the other end is a tiny triangle of land called the Square du Vert-Galant. I’ll go stand on the edge, point my feet to match the angle of the land, and close my eyes. When the wind from the Seine, smelling of fish and of stone and of history, blows across my face, I have a moment where I feel that I’m at home.

Those days, I remember why I first fell in love with the city. I remember my first puppet show at the little Guignol Theatre on the Champs-Élysées, my first ride on an omnibus down the Avenue de la Grande Armée, the first time I caught the brass ring on the carousel at the Luxembourg Garden, my first taste of Maman’s rum baba, my first boat on the Grand Basin, my first run across the teetering bridge in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Writing this, pinning each of those memories to the page, makes me content. For all its gray, that golden Paris still lurks beneath. Maybe when all this is over, maybe Paris will be the place I call home.

Lately I’ve felt like drawing more often. I’ll go and sit by the Seine, in the Square du Vert-Galant, and sketch until I can’t feel my fingers. I draw the river and the barges, yes, but my pencil also turns to the things I can’t see. I draw Papa’s queens and knights and fairy-tale ogres. I draw the château and the gargoyles above the courtyard chapel. I draw the Aisne, Enété, and the caves around Brindeau. Would you be angry if I told you I also drew you?

Luc

Marrakesh, Morocco

27 November 1912

Dear Luc,

I’ve drawn Mille Mots more times than I can count. I’ve drawn the caves and the chestnut tree and the light falling on the courtyard. I’ve drawn the row of copper pots in Marthe’s kitchen, the vases along the mantel of your maman’s salon, the mauve sofa in the studio upstairs. And I’ve drawn you. Would I be angry at anything you’ve sketched? Would I be angry that you are thinking of me?

I wish I had seen Paris while I was in France—really seen—that golden Paris you love so much. I wish I’d had a chance to capture it on my sketch pad, the way you are now. The museums. The puppet shows and omnibuses. The rum babas, the carousel, the trees in the park. Will you send me something of it? Because the only Paris I remember, from those few hours there, is not as bright.

Grandfather has spent longer here in Marrakesh than any of the other places. It has become less about scholarship and more about the brown-eyed widow. His passion always used to belong to linguistics, but now I don’t know. Can love ignite the same way?

I’ve become so accustomed to wandering that I’m beginning to feel restless. I think he is, too, though he ignores it. He’s run out of things to transcribe and has talked to everyone in the market three times over. If he is to ever find the source of his dialect, if he is ever to finish his book, he must move on. As we grow, we all must.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Jeudi, le 18 décembre 1912

Dear Clare,

You really should consider coming here when you’re done wandering. I’ll show you the Paris I love, the Paris that you never had a chance to see. And you could be accepted into one of the fine art schools, I’m sure. Remember those dreams you told me through a mouthful of mimolette? I worry that you’ve forgotten those in your wanderings. Where’s your portfolio? Your letter of application? Where are those plans you once had?

Clare, you should, you must go. Find someplace where you can surround yourself with art. Someplace where you can breathe it in, smell the paint and freshly sharpened pencils, feel the wet of a brush on your fingertips. It’s all well and good to be sitting in the marketplace with your sketchbook, drawing the world, but you need to be with other artists. You need to be appreciated. You will be.

Luc

Constantine, Algeria

25 January 1913

Dear Luc,

I can’t think about that. About abandoning Grandfather? Now that we’ve left Marrakesh, now that he’s left his widow friend, all he has is me. If I leave, who will pour his tea the way he likes it, with a lump of sugar unmixed at the bottom? Who will make sure he has a fresh supply of the Alizarine ink he prefers? Who will be here to crank the phonograph while he scribbles away in his notebooks, then help him later decipher that hen scratch he calls an alphabet? I can’t go off on my own. He’s the only family I have left.

Dreams can change. People can grow up. These days I sell my drawings off the back of my bicycle when Grandfather’s funds for the month have dried up yet again. I keep us in beans and couscous. Do you understand? I know you must, with all of your old talk about “steady work.” I know you can see why, sometimes, we have to choose the earth beneath our feet rather than the clouds above.

Algeria feels quieter than Morocco. Or perhaps that’s me. Tomorrow’s my birthday. At seventeen, maybe the world doesn’t dance as much. Even Grandfather is melancholy, at having to leave his widow behind. He sits in our rooms, drinking strong tea. I can’t stand to be in there. With the walls all hung over with dark rugs and cushions piled along the floor, it’s stifling. I go out into the baking air, and I walk.

There are more women on the streets here, women wrapped in pale robes and veils, women in colored skirts and head scarves, draped in long shawls. I even see the occasional European woman, sweating in a tailored suit. Before, I would’ve noticed the patterns on their scarves, the colors of their stitched leather shoes. But now, all I can see is the way they drag their feet in the dust, the way their shoulders bend under their baskets, the way they tug on their veils, just for a second, to catch a mouthful of fresh air. With age, you no longer see the trappings on the surface. You start to see the people beneath.

Luc, do we have to grow older? Does the world have to change for us? Can we return to that one summer, when everything was beautiful? Can’t we hold onto our childish dreams for a little longer?

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Samedi, le 22 février 1913

Dear Clare,

You mean to be an artist, so you shouldn’t fear growing older. Experience brings depth, no? At least that’s what Papa always says. Ask him, and there’s more thoughtfulness in his later paintings, more nuance, more symbolism, more expression. “No art done with youthful naivety was ever worth discussing,” he says. “You must first live it.” We must all suffer to gain experience, to create things capable of emotion.

It’s nothing creative compared to art, but sport can be the same. Between classes and studying, I have so little time, but what I have, I give to tennis. Stretched, exhausted days swinging a racket, leaning up against evenings of loneliness, quiet cups of café. My goal is no longer a gold medal tacked to the wall. It’s no longer to have my name in the record books alongside the greats. It’s to do the best I can. It’s to be a better me.

Bauer is in it for the competition, I know it, but he helps me to push myself. We’ll play wherever we can. Clay, grass, parquet. Solid ice, if someone propped a net over it. We’re stronger, faster, trickier. Bauer has developed this drop shot that gets me every time. He’ll lob balls deeper and deeper into my court until they become almost a yawn. He’ll wait until I move exactly where he wants me, until I stop thinking so hard about every stroke, then he’ll drop a shot just over the net, well out of my reach. I should have learned to expect those shots by now. But I don’t. It’s so easy to trust Bauer. He lulls me with the easy shots, then blindsides me with the unexpected drop shots. He knows how to set me up to lose. He’s up right now on games won, 257 to 228. Once I remember to be wary, I’ll turn that around.