Skeptical, she tilted her head. “How many could you identify before?”
“None,” Ben said plainly. “Now, who are you, and where are you from? You did not magically appear from nowhere.”
“My name is Remi,” she said. “I only just arrived on the Isle, and my uncle said there were children near-about, so I went off to explore.”
“Alone?”
As if on cue, a pair of voices called out her name. Ben begrudgingly sat his book down and stood. Two more children approached—the Cuvilyé girl who lived at the bottom of the hill and a thin boy.
The girl shrieked, “Remi! I’m going to tell Maman you ran off!”
“Oh no,” Remi muttered, turning back to face Ben. “My Tante Beline is dreadful.”
If she meant Beline Cuvilyé, then he understood immediately. Elise stomped down the rickety steps, the boy following close behind. Ben watched them as Remi left him to greet them.
“You can’t wander off alone!” the dark-haired girl said.
“I’m sorry, Elise,” Remi said sheepishly. “I had a magnificent time exploring, though. You see, I walked all this way by following the sound of the water and came to this beach. I stumbled upon this boy, and he told me that he knew every bug on the island just from reading a book! Isn’t that fascinating?”
Elise peered over Remi’s shoulder. A red blush spread across her cheeks as the boy behind her, a head taller, waved with a quick “Hello.”
Ben nodded politely.
“We aren’t supposed to be here!” Elise hissed under her breath.
“Really? But why not?” Remi pushed out her bottom lip. “I’ve just made a friend, Elise. He has a picnic, and he reads!”
Ben was startled by her liberal use of the word “friend” but did not correct her. Part of him liked the title. He hadn’t had a friend in a long time, perhaps ever.
His closest friend was Soleil—and sometimes Martin.
I don’t think adults count, though, he thought.
Remi dragged Elise over to Ben. “This is my friend. He knows about beetles and other bugs.”
“Ben,” he said without thinking. “My name is Ben.”
Unfazed by his informality, Remi grinned. “Lovely to know you, Ben.”
“We’re going to be in trouble if Maman finds us here,” Elise said, ignoring him altogether.
The boy behind her moved past the girls as they chattered and held out a dirty hand. He was mussed and thin, quite the opposite of the polished, put-together Remi and Elise. “I’m Guillaume.”
Ben shook his hand.
“Elise, please! I don’t want to go just yet,” Remi shouted, drawing the boys’ attention. Elise was halfway back to the stairs when Ben spoke up.
“You won’t be in trouble. The land here is ours,” he said. He pointed toward the manor at the top of the cliff, almost smiling when Remi’s eyes widened with genuine awe.
There was something easy about her that reminded him of his mother. Her presence was calming, if not absolute in its ability to offer comfort and companionship in the most stagnant silence.
Ben’s silence had been edging toward stagnant for the last few months.
“You must be a prince, then.” Remi looked down at the abandoned book and cracked another smile. Ben could not help himself and smiled back when she said, “A prince that reads about bugs and eats bread on a beach.”
“And knows three types of beetles,” he added. “Don’t forget that.”
Remi scrunched her features humorously at the mention of beetles and shivered. Guillaume and Elise, inched closer, drawn in by Remi’s unerring friendliness. Ben supposed that was what made her so easy to be around.
“Remi is my cousin,” Elise said. “She’s living with my family now.”
“Pleasure to meet you all,” Ben said, glancing at the other two, but unable to stray for too long from Remi’s cheerful grin.
“Then we are all friends!” Remi clapped. “I’m so happy to have friends. We’ll have so many adventures.”
Ben had believed her, too. For a time, they’d all played together, and the cloud left behind by his mother’s loss had moved on, only to be replaced by the great loss of his sister. Then their adventures ceased as he was shipped away to relatives overseas.
He never imagined, after being gone for so long and harboring his anger for so many years, that Remi would once again fall right into his lap—literally. He rubbed the back of his head as he gathered himself up from the floor, wincing at the pain in his stomach where her elbow rammed into him. Twice now, she’d knocked him awake; the only difference was that he wasn’t sleepwalking off the edge of the moors in the middle of a storm this time.
“I’m so terribly sorry,” she said for the twentieth time. “Did I hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” he repeated. “My limbs are all intact.”
“I can’t apologize to you enough.”
Ben groaned. “You can, and you have.”
Remi pressed her lips together, the red in her cheeks deepening. Ben lifted himself from the ground and offered his hand. She took it, letting him pull her to her feet.
