She wanted to move, but she couldn’t stop trembling. She wanted to turn to the strong man behind her for comfort, but she couldn’t do that with everyone here. Not with what had just happened.
His hand touched her back, very gently—a gesture that nobody else in the room could see. Then he moved past her and stood near the door, near her father, and then other people came into the room and in all the confusion she looked once again for him. But he was gone.
Jean-Philippe
He found her father in the barn.
The ship had sailed. De Brassart and Ramírez had been on it, and the guests who’d come to see them off had piled into their small boats and their waggons and departed, leaving Monsieur Wilde, his nephew Henry, and his nephew’s son to clean up afterwards. Pierre was there as well, although he’d sent his wife and children home to bed.
“Well now, Marine,” he said when he caught sight of Jean-Philippe. “How goes your night?” He asked the question dryly, as though trying to make light of what had happened.
Jean-Philippe took slow steps forward, stopping where he’d danced with her. He pushed the hollow echoes of the music from his mind. “I need to speak with him.”
“With Monsieur Wilde?” Pierre looked, too, towards the big man trying now to stack the pieces of a disassembled table into some shape that was orderly, as though that work, that order was of great importance. “I think maybe now is not the time.”
“There is no other time,” said Jean-Philippe. “Will you translate for me?”
Pierre frowned and assessed him as though searching for a sense of what was coming. “You don’t need my English. Yours is good enough.”
“It’s late. I’m tired. And it’s important.”
The Acadian considered this, then with a nod agreed.
Monsieur Wilde turned at their approach.
Jean-Philippe motioned for Pierre to step between them. “Tell him he’s been very kind to me. I never will forget this.”
Pierre looked at him in silence.
“Tell him.”
When Pierre was finished speaking, Monsieur Wilde frowned also. “It has been my pleasure.”
Jean-Philippe said, “His nephew brought a letter for me when he came today. I have been ordered to join Captain Wheelock in New York, but I must have an escort for my travel. I would like to pay his nephew to accompany me.”
This was duly translated, and Henry Ryder glanced up apprehensively. “I do not think I could.”
“I will.” The nephew’s son stood not far off, a boy of fifteen or sixteen. “I will take him.”
Jean-Philippe did not catch the exchange between Monsieur Wilde and his nephew that came afterwards, it was too swift and spoken low, but he heard Monsieur Wilde say, “a gentleman.”
And that appeared to settle things.
But Monsieur Wilde had seemed to bear this news like one more burden. He’d seemed sad, and it took all of Jean-Philippe’s resolve to thank him, bow respectfully, and walk away.
He never should have kissed her. It had complicated things beyond all measure. It had been the hand of Providence that brought the interruption, or he might have gone a step too far and told her how he felt. And there would never have been any coming back from that.
Outside the barn, Pierre caught up with him. “What are you doing?”
“What I must.”
Pierre reached out and took his arm to stop him walking. Pulled him round until they faced each other and could talk. “What does it really say, your letter?”
He stayed silent. Did not tell Pierre the letter, from Madame de Joncourt in New York, said only that his sergeant had improved a very little, and was resting well.
“You cannot leave her,” said Pierre.
That broke the wall. “It is because of her I cannot stay.”
“That makes no sense.”
He exhaled, hard. “What future can I give her? None. I’m not the kind of man she needs. And this is not the time,” he said. “When I’m exchanged, I have to go. So better I go now, than make it worse. I can wait in New York.”
“New York is not where you belong.” Pierre seemed sure of that. “You think this war will last forever? I can tell you it will not. You think the king in France, who sits in comfort, cares enough to save Quebec? I tell you, from experience, my friend, no help will come. If life has taught me one thing only, it is never to look back. Be happy where you are. Grow roots where you are standing. If you have the ones you love, then you have everything.” His eyes were sure. “You love her.”
Jean-Philippe did not—would not—deny it.
Pierre sighed. “You’re like the sheep, Marine, so stupid. Always you look back at where you’ve come from, what you’ve been, what you believe you are, and so you do not see the path you should be taking.”
“I’m a soldier. I don’t get to choose my path.” He’d meant for that to stop the argument.
It didn’t. “You’re a soldier, so you follow, yes? Then follow this.” Pierre’s hard finger jabbed him in the chest, above his heart. “God gave you this. He set it like a light within you, so that you could see it well and know the way to go. You follow this, Marine. Don’t look behind.”
And with a rough slap on the arm meant to encourage him, Pierre walked back to finish helping with the clean-up in the barn.
? ? ?
It was not light when they rode out. Monsieur Wilde fetched the mare for him and saddled her himself and said his nephew would provide a better mount when they reached Millbank, and return the mare to them again.
There was not much to carry. Just the haversack and pack that held the things he long had taken where he travelled, camp to camp. Things that were practical, not permanent. He’d left behind the wooden locking box that Monsieur Wilde had made him, all those months ago, to keep his few possessions safe beneath his bed. It, too, was practical, and he would have been happy to have kept it, but it was not built for travelling, and he knew it was not the kind of thing a man like him was meant to keep.
But Monsieur Wilde refused to let him leave with empty hands. He brought the cribbage board, and cards, and pegs, and motioned Jean-Philippe should add them to his pack. He had insisted. “It’s my gift,” he’d said, a little roughly. “So you won’t forget us.”
Jean-Philippe could have assured the older man he never would forget them, that it was impossible, but words were hard to find just then, so in their place he gave Monsieur Wilde what remained of his tobacco and said simply, “Thank you.”
Turning, he prepared to mount the horse and Monsieur Wilde stopped him with, “Lydia. She’ll want to say goodbye. Wait, I will get her.”
“No.” She was asleep, and must remain so until after he was gone, or it would be too difficult. He found the tight edge of a smile to smooth the word as he told Monsieur Wilde again, more quietly, “No.”
He swung into the saddle, took the reins, and turned the horse’s head towards the path that led into the woods. The path that life had set him on.
And out of the advice Pierre had given him, he took one piece and followed it: he did not look behind.
Charley
Rachel filled her water bottle at the kitchen sink and set it down. “So she just left?”
Malaika, sorting paint chips at the table with my grandmother, looked up. “It was Sharon. She had things to say. Then she left.”
I cut in with, “I thought I was telling the story.”
Malaika said, “You’re leaving out all the good parts.”
“She does that,” said Rachel. She looked so much better, I thought. Her hair was cut and styled, and she was standing taller. Brighter. So I let the minor insult pass.
“What part did I leave out?” I asked Malaika.
“Eve.”
“Oh.” She was right. I backtracked. “Well, we’ve had some extra items donated, some duplicates. They’re mostly smaller artifacts, so I had the idea we could make some outreach kits, you know, to loan out to the schools so they could use them in their classrooms. And that means learning the curriculum and how those kits could fit with it, so I asked Eve, because she’d been a teacher, whether she would like to take the lead on that, and be our outreach supervisor.”
“Smart,” said Rachel.