Juliette could see in Elise’s eyes that she recognized this area of the bookshop, too; Juliette had taken great care to duplicate not just the public part of the store, but also the private room behind the register, where she and Paul took their morning coffee and where the children played when Juliette needed them to keep their voices down. It was the room where Juliette had first taken Elise that day she saw her in the park, the day Elise had gone into false labor, and in the years after that, they’d had countless conversations there.
“Even the table is the same,” Elise said in awe, finally setting down her carving of Mathilde and running her hand along the uneven wood. “Juliette, how did you do it?”
Juliette felt a surge of pride. “It was difficult, Elise, but I knew I had to bring it all back. For them.”
She didn’t miss the flicker in Elise’s eyes, and she reminded herself to be more careful. She already knew that Ruth and Lucie, perhaps even Arthur, frowned upon what she had done here. They thought she was burying herself in the past rather than living in the present, but for Juliette, the two were one and the same.
“And Paul and the boys are still… here?” Elise asked.
“Yes,” Juliette said without elaborating. She knew Ruth had walked in and heard her talking to Paul a few times, and it was clear the woman had blabbed to Elise. There was really no more to say. She certainly didn’t need to explain herself to Elise LeClair of all people.
“How about Mathilde?” Elise asked after a long silence. “Is she here in the store, too, Juliette?”
Elise’s voice cracked with pain, and Juliette was startled by the depth of anguish there. It shook her own confidence in the narrative; it had been so easy to tell herself over the years that Elise had been monstrously selfish to leave her daughter behind.
“No, Elise,” Juliette told her. “Mathilde is not here.”
Elise looked down and nodded her acceptance of this. When she looked up again, there were fat tears running down her cheeks. “Please, Juliette, can you tell me what I missed? I know it’s painful for you because of what happened… after. But when I was gone, I lay awake imagining her every night, thinking of the things she must be learning, the way she must be growing. Anything you could tell me, even after all these years, would mean the world.”
Juliette hesitated, for she knew she didn’t owe Elise a thing. But the pain in the other woman’s eyes was impossible to look away from, and after a moment, she found herself speaking haltingly. “She was so bright, Elise. But you know that. She loved to sketch, just like you and Olivier. I think Lucie learned it from her; the two of them were like peas in a pod, always coloring something or another.”
Juliette paused as Elise flinched, like Juliette had struck her. “Go on,” she said, her voice choked. “Please. This is—it’s what I need.”
Juliette felt like she’d swallowed glass, but she forced herself to continue. “I remember Mathilde wanted to ride a bike. Something she’d seen in a book, I think, but we didn’t have a bicycle small enough for the girls, and anyhow, it was too dangerous for the girls to ride outside, with all the soldiers… She and Lucie spent hours pretending to ride a bike around the store, and the boys would laugh at them and pretend they were on bicycles, too. I’m sure they looked crazy to customers, but their imaginations were so big…”
Elise was sobbing now, and to Juliette’s surprise, there were tears coursing down her own cheeks, too. How long had it been since she had talked about her memories, since she had cried like this? It felt like a release, but it also felt like a dam within her was breaking, and there was so much the barrier was holding back that she couldn’t afford for that to happen.
“Please, tell me more,” Elise said, her voice strained.
Juliette looked at the table. “She was learning to read. Both girls were. Claude and Alphonse were teaching them. They could recognize short words, two or three letters, in French and English, and they were so proud of themselves. Lucie, she was always saying she was going to write a book one day, that I would sell her book in my store. Mathilde was going to write books, too. They were so like each other; what one did, the other one had to copy immediately.”
Elise made a noise that sounded like it was something between a gasp and a sniffle. “They were so young, Juliette. And your boys… I’m so terribly sorry.”
The warmth that had filled Juliette suddenly dissipated, and familiar anger took its place. “Well, you should be sorry. You left her, Elise! How could you?” The words exploded from Juliette like little bombs. “How could you ask us to protect her when you knew that it would mean we could not protect our own children? How could you put us in a situation like that? How can you sit there across from me pretending that you care about the child you abandoned?”
“Abandoned?” Elise breathed. She blinked a few times with such force that tears seemed to fling themselves from the corners of her eyes. “You think I abandoned her, Juliette? You can’t possibly believe that’s what I did! Every day of my life I regretted it, but you knew the situation. If I had taken her with me, we would have been killed.”
“Yes, well, perhaps it would have been better that way,” Juliette shot back, and from the sharp intake of Elise’s breath, she immediately knew she’d said something terrible, something she could never take back, but it was too late to turn around now. “I loved your daughter, Elise, just as you loved mine. So did Paul, you see. And on the day the bomb fell, we both made the mistake of treating her like one of our own without thinking, trying to protect her just as we protected the others. If she hadn’t been there with us, Elise, my children would have lived! I wouldn’t be here, an ocean away from their graves, living this life I never asked for! Do you understand, Elise? You did this to us! You took my family from me! And now you have the nerve to show up here and ask me to tell you about your daughter? Your daughter is the reason my children are dead!”
Elise was sobbing now, her face blotchy, her eyes red. She had flinched at each of Juliette’s blows, her deep sadness rising so clearly to the surface. “Juliette,” Elise said. “I’m so sorry for all you lost, sorry for any position I put you in. It was never ever my intention.”
“Yes, well, sometimes, our lives don’t work out the way we intend them to, Elise.” Juliette was practically spitting the words at her. “But decisions have consequences. And your decision took everything from me.”
Elise stood, gripping the table. She was visibly trembling. “I don’t know what to say, Juliette. I never imagined that you felt this way.” She picked up the statue of a mother’s arms cradling Mathilde, and Juliette felt another flash of white-hot rage. Even Elise’s art was a lie; the love between mother and daughter was so clear in the gentle curves and angles of the mother’s hands, but Elise hadn’t loved Mathilde the right way. The right way meant never abandoning your children. Never leaving them behind. Never forgetting that first and foremost, you were their mother. It was why Juliette had found a way to bring Paul and the boys with her to New York, why she still spoke to them every day, why she was so adamant that her remaining child should live to honor the ones who never had a chance to grow up. She was a good mother. And good mothers did not deserve to have their children taken away.
Still, as Elise walked back shakily through the store to the exit, Juliette felt an unfamiliar pang of regret. Elise didn’t look like the monster she had become in Juliette’s mind. How could someone that culpable be so wounded at the same time? Juliette trailed behind her and struggled to put together the pieces in a way that made sense, and by the time she looked up again, Elise had reached the door. She put her hand on the handle and paused.
“I know you hate me,” Elise said, her voice shaking as she turned back to Juliette. “But please know that I’ll never forget the sacrifice you made. Thank you for watching over my daughter, Juliette. And I’m deeply sorry—for both of us—that things turned out the way they did.”
And then, Elise was gone, and Juliette stared after her, pain and loss roiling in the pit of her stomach. Long after Elise had disappeared, Juliette turned, walked calmy into the back room of the store, and threw up in the trash can.
“Paul?” she asked into the silence, after she’d wiped her mouth and taken a sip of water. The bitter taste of bile lingered. “Paul, are you there?”
But the bookstore was silent, the ticking clock on the wall the only indication that time was moving forward at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE