“But she did,” Ruth said. “She has been living in her old apartment these past sixteen years, trying to surround herself with the past. Perhaps much like you are doing.” The words were delivered gently, but they felt like another blow, and Juliette bristled. “I think it would help her greatly if you reached out and told her what happened to her daughter. It is a terrible feeling, I think, not knowing. Perhaps your words would give her some peace.”
Juliette could feel her lip curling in disgust. It was unimaginable to think that any peace would come with knowing the horrific details of the blast, the way Juliette could still smell singed hair and burned flesh, charred paper and her family’s blood. “Her daughter died, Ruth.”
Ruth blinked a few times. “Yes, I know. But I think knowing the circumstances would help her to heal.”
The idea that Elise LeClair, who had abandoned her child, had any right at all to healing was so laughable it was an outrage. But Juliette knew this would be impolite to say, so she forced a neutral expression. “Perhaps I will write to her one day.”
“Juliette,” Ruth said after a long pause. “I’m afraid I must insist. You were there for her daughter’s last moments on this earth, and she deserves—”
“She deserves nothing.” Juliette snapped, cutting Ruth off, and then collected herself, adding more calmly, “What I mean to say is that it is my family who sacrificed to give her daughter a home. And if my husband had not tried to protect Mathilde, perhaps he could have saved my boys.”
Ruth put her hand to her mouth and looked down, and Juliette knew she had said the wrong thing. Perhaps she should take it back, but she didn’t want to. Sometimes, the truth was quite hard to hear.
When Ruth looked back up, her eyes were shining with tears. “I’m very sorry you feel that way, Juliette, but regardless, I think it would be a kindness to another mother. Wouldn’t you want to know how your child’s last days were spent? Your child’s last moments?”
“I do know those things about my children, you see, Ruth. I was there to see them all die.”
“I’m very sorry,” Ruth said again, and at that moment, the front door to the store chimed, and in walked Lucie.
Her brown waves, which reminded Juliette of the young Sophia Loren’s style in the Clark Gable movie Arthur had taken her to last month, fell to her shoulders, and she had developed the annoying habit of hiding behind a curtain of her own hair, parting it so far on the left that her right side appeared to be simply a cascade of rippling curls. Her face was partially obscured now, but she peeked out for long enough to get a look at Ruth, and when she did, she stopped short.
“Lucie?” Ruth breathed. “Is that you?”
“Y-yes.” It was clear Lucie had a sense of knowing the woman but couldn’t place her.
“Dear girl, I am Ruth Levy. I knew you when you were just a small child, in France. It is wonderful to see you again.”
“Madame Levy.” Lucie said the name slowly, like she was trying to figure something out. “You had two children…”
Ruth beamed at her. “I do! Georges and Suzanne. In fact, they live right here in New York. They used to play with you when you were small.”
Lucie’s eyes were wide. “Yes, Georges and Suzanne,” she said softly. She cut a quick glance at her mother and then her eyes went to the floor. “Are they well?” she asked.
“Don’t mumble,” Juliette reminded her.
“They are quite well, thank you,” Ruth said. “Suzanne is a secretary and Georges is the manager of a grocery store. I know they would love to see you sometime, my dear.”
Lucie’s eyes darted to Juliette, who gave her a hard look. “I would like that,” Lucie said, and Juliette narrowed her eyes. She would certainly not allow that to happen. There was no need to go digging up the past. The only pieces of Paris they needed lived right here in the bookshop.
“I was just saying to your mother how much it would mean to Madame LeClair to receive a letter telling her what happened to Mathilde.”
Lucie’s eyes flashed to Juliette again. “Mathilde’s mother is alive?”
“It seems so,” Juliette said.
“Then you must write to her, Maman! You were friends once, weren’t you?”
Friends. It was ludicrous. Friends didn’t abandon each other. Friends didn’t put your children in danger and force your husband to choose their child’s life over his own. “Once.” Juliette knew her voice sounded as cold as the ice running through her veins. “But that was a long time ago.”
“You must tell her about what happened to Mathilde,” Ruth said again, and though Juliette was refusing to look at either of them, she could feel Lucie’s eyes on her, too. “It would bring her some peace, I think.”
“Very well,” Juliette said at last. “Perhaps if you could send me her address…”
“I’ll deliver the letter myself,” Ruth said instantly. “I will wait right here while you write it.”
And though the very thought still made Juliette’s stomach churn in distress, Ruth didn’t look like she would budge, so after a few seconds, with Lucie still staring at her, Juliette sighed and walked to the desk to withdraw a piece of stationery.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
While Lucie’s mother sat down to write her letter to Elise LeClair, her lips pursed like she’d tasted something bitter, Madame Levy asked Lucie if she might give her a tour of the bookshop.
Lucie looked at her mother for permission, immediately annoyed at herself for still seeking maternal approval so desperately. She was twenty years old, for goodness’ sake! Other people her age were out on their own, giving not a fig about their mother’s opinions, smoking cigarettes and wearing shorter hemlines and dancing dangerously close to boys while Chubby Checker records exhorted them to do the twist. But perhaps other people hadn’t lived their whole lives knowing that their very existence was somehow a letdown. Her mother loved her, of course, but she also seemed determined to remind Lucie at every turn that she had not lived up to her expectations. Antoinette, Claude, and Alphonse all would have been smarter, kinder, more successful than she, and nothing Lucie did seemed to justify being the only one of the siblings to live.
“Go on, Lucie,” her mother said now, nodding toward Madame Levy. “What are you waiting for?”
Lucie forced a smile at Madame Levy over the lump in her throat and beckoned for her to follow. Of course Madame Levy wouldn’t know how uneasy Lucie felt in the store, even after all these years. While her mother wanted to live in the past, Lucie wanted only to forget it, for her last memories of the store on Paris’s outskirts were filled with terror, grief, and loss. Each time she set foot into this newer version of La Librairie des Rêves, her blood felt like ice in her veins, and her stomach twisted in knots of protest. But what choice did she have? The few times she’d dared object to being asked to work in the store, her mother hissed that everything Juliette did, she did for her family, and that Lucie should be more grateful. And it wasn’t that Lucie wasn’t grateful; but she wanted desperately to live in a world in which her mother’s whole life didn’t revolve around children who had died nearly two decades ago rather than the one standing right in front of her.
“This,” Lucie said now as she led Madame Levy past the first set of bookshelves leading away from the register, “is the section where my mother keeps French-language classics.”
“I remember,” Madame Levy said, her voice a low rumble as she reached out to brush her fingers along a row of spines.
The older woman looked wistful, nostalgic, and for a second, Lucie felt a surge of envy. She wished she could view the store that way, but of course Madame Levy hadn’t been there when a bomb had blown it apart. She cleared her throat and went on.
“In the old shop, though we carried many English-language books, my parents liked to stock plenty of books for French speakers, too.” The words came out by rote, for Lucie had shown many customers around La Librairie des Rêves at her mother’s request. Tell them about the store in France, her mother always said. It will make the Francophiles buy books. But this was the first time she had ever explained these things to someone who had known her in her previous life, and now she was surprised to find her throat closing. She coughed and went on. “But our real purpose was to serve the English-speaking community of the greater Paris area. Of course you know Shakespeare and Company, run by my mother’s contemporary Sylvia Beach, but our store had a larger children’s section. It was geared toward expatriate families.”
“Dear girl,” Madame Levy said, reaching out and putting a hand on Lucie’s arm to stop her. “I know all of this. I was a frequent customer of the store, beginning before you were even born. It was a haven for people like me, people who loved to read but who did not quite fit in with their adopted country just yet. At first I bought books to improve my French, but sometimes your mother would order German books for me as well, until my facility with the French language improved.”
Lucie stared at Madame Levy. “My mother did that?”