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.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Remi knew without a doubt she was wrong. She wasn’t naive enough to believe he was held up, not when she suspected she knew the answer.
“I wrote to him before the wedding,” Remi admitted. “Before the invitations were sent.”
“You what?” Elise perked up. A juicy bit of information was all she ever needed to reignite her interest. “And you’re telling me now?”
“I know I shouldn’t have, but I felt so…afraid. Desperate for someone to save me.”
Elise’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”
“I asked him to come home.” Remi flushed, half from embarrassment and half from guilt. “Though, it would be more accurate to say that I begged him to.”
I said that I loved him still, she thought, not brave enough to mention it to Elise. “It was foolish.”
“And he never came…Oh, Remi. How cold.” She might have been frowning, but some part of Elise enjoyed the drama. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t hold any ill will toward him,” she paused, “but I know, deep down, he’s angry.”
Elise brightened. “Perhaps he never received it! Did you have the right address?”
