Dearest Benoît,

I hope you will forgive me, as I did not wish to write to you under these circumstances, and yet fate has forced my hand. I am writing to express to you my deepest sorrow: your father has passed.

I can only imagine what you must be feeling, for I am beside myself with grief as well.

His funeral arrangements are already underway. Your presence is requested—please come home.

With love,

Remi A. Leone

Seeing her name pulled at a once-dead cord inside of him. Her words were different than before. They lacked emotion, somehow. Had her marriage been as awful as he’d silently hoped? He shook his head. He didn’t like the way his mind wondered if she still held some kind of fondness for him, even though he had rebuked her.

“What is it?” Jacques asked.

Ben brushed his thumb over her signature. “My father died.”

“When?”

“This was posted two days ago.” Ben handed the envelope to Jacques and rubbed a hand over his face to the back of his neck, finally feeling tired again. “I’ve been summoned.”

A long silence followed. The static of the background filled in the cracks as they formed. Laughter, jeering, and glasses clinking as drinks were poured. The merriment for those sodden souls around them would end in a few short hours; for Ben, they ended the moment he’d read her words.

Finally, Jacques spoke. “I’ll fetch a carriage and arrange for an early departure.”

“I’ll meet you at the docks in an hour.” Ben sighed and buried his head into the palms of his hands.

“Make it two.” Jacques countered, clapping Ben’s shoulder. “I take it this will be a long trip, and I must say farewell. After all, I have unfinished business with Farine.”

“You have two hours,” Ben said.

Jacques left without another word. Ben sat down at the bar again, setting the letter on its polished surface. He pushed his hair back and blew out a deep breath. He would need to return to his relatives and give them the news. The thought of that conversation sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine. They were cold people, his father’s family, and he was sure they wouldn’t care. Still, the thought bothered him more than he would have liked.

He was still my father, Ben thought. He ached at the memory of the man who used to sneak him extra scones after tea, the man who used to sneak him to the beach during his lessons to skip rocks and wade barefoot in the cool summer water. That was who his father had been before tragedy attached itself to their family like a parasite. Father was never the same after his mother passed. Ben understood that grief, but with his sister, it was different. When she died, he’d been cast out and sent away to live with strangers. He was spared nothing, not even an explanation. Now, there was only the weight of the mystery his father left behind.

Ben smacked the bar, a glass sliding into his waiting grasp a moment later. He tipped it back, drinking it down with a hiss. One for the man I knew.

He signaled for another and held it to his lips. And another for the man I never did.

With that, he finished his drink and stood. Gin warming his belly, Ben strode out of the brothel, tucking the letter safely in his breast pocket. It felt heavy sitting above his heart, the fresh pain of its news joining the hurt of years gone by. He never realized until that moment, as he walked the early morning streets of a sleepy Paris, that no one could ever really pocket the past. Not when the weight of it was carried in words unspoken.

HOME

REMI

Remi anticipated Ben’s arrival poorly.

She woke early and took extra care with her ablutions, dressing as sluggishly as if she had been ill and bedridden for days. After picking at the rasher of bacon and eggs set before her on the table, she returned to her room and stared at her reflection, startled by how plainly she wore her tiredness. The sagging beneath her eyes spelled a lack of sleep.

“Will he recognize me?” Remi wondered.

It was an awful thing to put vanity before grief, though it only served to distract her from everything else. Somehow, appraising the sudden shift in her features made her feel older, and more experienced than before. The soft, roundedness of her once pink cheeks now stretched over angles she never knew existed. Remi frowned and pinched them with cool fingers to bring some hue back to her milky complexion. It added some color, though the same could not be done for her eyes. If not for their darkened state, she might not have noticed how brightly they used to sparkle.

Ben will notice, Remi lamented, dropping her head into her hands with a miserable groan. He once said they were more brilliant than the ocean.

She could have laughed at herself for being so selfish.

“Remi?” Elise rapped on the door from the hall.

“Come in.”

The door creaked open. “Goodness, ma cherie!” Elise’s nose crinkled. “Could you be any more pale?”

Remi frowned, a limp strand of hair falling from place to emphasize her deflation. She pushed it back and turned to face the mirror again. “You’re right. I could be.”

“You know what Maman would say,” Elise said as she found her way to Remi’s unmade bed.

“I don’t care to relive those stuffy lessons any longer, Elise.” Remi leaned forward and pinched her cheeks again. It did little to revive her, not enough to forgo the rouge.

From the mirror, she could see her cousin puff her cheeks. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m nervous, and I barely slept,” Remi sighed, twisting at the waist to see her cousin better. “Can you blame me?”

“Hm.” Elise considered her words. “It is a bit of an adjustment. The silence is almost...too much.”

Remi blinked. “It isn’t just that.”

“Then what?” Elise’s brows rose in question.

“I can feel it,” Remi said, cupping one hand in her lap with the other. She traced the lines in her palms with sore eyes.

Elise asked. “Feel what?”

“Him. I can feel him.” Remi had kept herself still most of the night, surrounded by empty darkness, but she could not shake the nerves away. Her stomach twisted somewhere between midnight and dawn, unrelenting. “He’ll be here soon, if he hasn’t already arrived.”

“You can feel him? How scandalous,” Elise teased, attempting to lighten the mood.

“Elise, please,” Remi begged. “Be serious, if only for a moment.”

Her cousin frowned and eased back, extending her feet toward the floor like a child being punished. She looked ten years younger when she pouted. Finally, she asked, “Should his arrival be such a terrible thing?”

“He’s angry.” She might have felt the same if she were in his position.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I just do. I have a terrible knot in my chest, Elise. It’s been there since I married Edgar...he never came.”

“He could have been held up,” she offered. “Paris is a bustling city, and word has it he is a doctor now.”