“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.
“Grandfather!” She stopped halfway across the room and stood, uncertainly. “Sir.”
The man brushed at his mustache with a thumb. Marked right onto the skin on the backs of his hands, in faded blue-black, were crosses and dots. Tattoos, like a pirate. I could see why she thought him that. In the center of his right hand was a five-rayed sun. Clare glanced back over her shoulder at me, then lowered into a graceful curtsey.
“Patricia Clare,” he said.
“Clare.” Head bowed, she wobbled. “I’m called Clare.”
I stepped into the room. I wanted to take her arm, to steady her to her feet. Behind me, Maman caught my hand and shook her head.
“Clare.” The man cleared his throat and looked away. His heavy mustache twitched. “Of course.”
“Ma chère…” Maman moved into the room, her shawl held tight. “Monsieur Muir has come to take you home.”
“Home?” All I could see of Clare was her back, that narrow bit of gray. I saw as she sucked in a breath and held it.
“To Fairbridge.” Maman forced a smile. “It will be nice for you to return to all of your things, won’t it?”
He shifted his feet. His boots were streaked with reddish mud. Maman noticed, too, as her mouth tightened in disapproval.
