The question echoed, hung in the still air a moment. Water dripped deep within the cave. “If I hadn’t, it would be like pretending it never happened.” He hitched his haversack further up his shoulder. “It would be wearing a mask to forget the scars beneath.”

“I made that mask.” I straightened. “I meant it to help.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“You’re not wearing it.”

“Clare, all those days you spent sketching me, shaping the mask, painting it, all those days matter.” Shadows caught in the scars on his face. “You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”

“And do you now?” I wrapped my arms around my chest.

He touched his face, craggy without his mask. “I’m starting to.” He reached into his haversack and took out a slim parcel, wrapped in paper. He seemed almost nervous, turning the package back and forth in his hands. “I should have given this to you ages ago…” he said.

He peeled back the wrapping and held it out. It was a bundle of soft Conté pencils, bunched tight.

It was an odd gift, for someone who was once an art student, for someone who worked in a studio. “For me?”

He must have seen the question on my face, even in the dim of the cave mouth. He twisted the paper. “You don’t know this, but once before I bought you pencils. It was the summer you were at Mille Mots.”

“I remember you brought your father pencils.”

“They were meant for you.”

I stood silent for a moment. “Why?”

“Because I believed in you. I knew I’d see your drawings someday in a gallery.” He took a step closer. “Even then, you knew what you loved.”

You, I wanted to say.

“Did I?” I asked instead.

“You did. You do. Your Something Important.”

“Something,” I repeated. “It’s a singular word, isn’t it?”

“Clare,” he said, holding out the pencils, so much more on offer. “You’re not your mother.”

Though I never thought I’d make a promise, I said, “I won’t leave.” And I meant it.

“If you do, take me with you?” In the dimness, I swore he held his breath.

I smiled. “I always have.”

From his bag he took a stub of a candle and lit it. The flame jumped. “So did I.” He held out his hand. “Let me show you something.”

I took it.

We walked into the dark, his hand warm and safe around mine. I closed my eyes and let him lead me. Softly, under his breath, he counted. Steps in from the entrance, steps to where he’d eaten, rested, prayed, dreaded, hoped. “Where did it happen?” I asked.

He slowed and his hand tightened. “Outside, up by where the old farmhouse was. There was a cellar near the line of trees.”

“Did you…”

“It looks different in the daylight,” he said. “I buried the past.”

“I’m glad.”

He drew me closer. He didn’t say a word.

“Remember that summer when we’d walk here?” I said, as though he would have forgotten. “It’s silly, but when I would come back here into the caves, I used to scratch our initials on the wall with my fingernail. A little deeper, each time, so that it didn’t fade.”

He handed me the candle. “It didn’t.”

Right there, on the soot-streaked walls, was scratched a pale C.R. and L.C.

“So many years.” I reached out with a finger to trace the initials. “I wonder what the soldiers here thought of it.”

He put his hand over mine, the one that held the candle. “I can’t speak for all the soldiers, but those four letters helped one soldier get through it all.” He moved my hand and the candle along the wall. “So much that he carved right beside them.”

It was me. My face, charcoaled and half carved into the limestone. Me, wild-haired, with eyes wide. Through sudden tears, the candle blurred.

“It’s how I first saw you, in the front hallway, and how I’ve always remembered you. Fascinating and frustrating, determined and impulsive, fragile and strong as stone.” He lowered the candle. “A face I couldn’t forget, even in the middle of war.”

In his face, I could see the boy I’d lost and the man I’d found again. I loved them both.

Tangier, Morocco

21 June 1922

Dear Grandfather,

We’ve found the old monastery, where you once stayed. Grandmother was right: the stones sing. The building, though, is maybe not as quiet as you might have known it. Now it houses a school for colonial children. It rings with laughter and French. It’s the perfect setting to capture life on canvas.

One of Grandmother’s paintings hangs here. Did you know? In the room where Luc teaches, in the old refectory, is a self-portrait. She’s swathed in white from head to toe, but her eyes peering from the cloth, they are familiar. Even though Grandmother returned to Scotland, she left a piece of herself in Morocco.

She’s wrapped all in white, but her hands are bare, and they cradle her belly. When she painted it, she must have known. Known that soon the pair of you wouldn’t be alone. Known that she might have to give up all of the heady days of painting her way across Africa. Known that things would change more for her than for you. Maybe it was all those thoughts that brought her back to Fairbridge. Maybe it was less fear and more a fierce resolve.

I’m not the only artist who came to Tangier in search of memories. The old gardener said that a dozen or so years ago a lady artist with hair as red as mine came seeking refuge. Of course it wasn’t a monastery anymore—it was already a school—but the headmaster gave her a bed in exchange for work. She told him she’d been home, only to find her husband dead and her little girl gone. She had nobody left to ask for forgiveness. She was also dying of consumption. He couldn’t turn her away, so he set her to restoring a crumbling mural in the old chapel.

But the restoration wasn’t the only thing that she did for the chapel. She designed a new altar, and the gardener built it under her direction. You should see it, with legs twining from the ground like rose vines. It looks as though it’s springing, living, from the chapel floor. Grandfather, they said she died here in the old monastery, that artist with her regrets and her red hair. But she left something beautiful behind. You would be proud.

There’s a new painting hanging now in the old refectory, one that hangs above the rows of curly-headed girls, swinging their legs and doggedly sketching apricots for young Maître Crépet. It’s another self-portrait of a woman swathed in robes. She, too, is cradling her stomach for the secret inside. But only with one hand. In the other she holds a wet paintbrush. The woman won’t stop for the baby in her stomach. No. But she also won’t leave her baby behind. She’ll put the paintbrush in her child’s hand and, together, they’ll paint the world.

Love,

Patricia Clare