“It’s not like holding history…you are holding history.”
She gulped, raising her eyes to meet his. “She wore this.”
He nodded, his smile as broad as a little kid’s on Christmas morning. “Can you imagine?”
“You need to have it cleaned and appraised,” she said, the gallery owner in her taking over. “This is an antique, and it’s…silver. I’d never have guessed.”
“Probably sterling covered with twenty-four-karat gold.”
“Almost all gone now.” She nodded sadly. “But still beautiful.” Reaching for her purse, she took out her eyeglass case and put her sunglasses on her head. “This’ll have to do.” Slowly she laid the glistening gems on the black felt lining and shut the case, handing it to Jean-Christian.
He shook his head. “You keep it for me.”
She nodded, a warm feeling inside making her smile at him. “Of course.”
“How about that?” he asked, gesturing to the flattened journal with his chin and scooting around their small pile of booty to sit beside her.
“Cover page has his name and address. A ledger?” she asked, slipping the eyeglass case back into her purse and looking back at the book on the floor. “A journal?”
His fingers traced the faded name, but his eyes skimmed to the small stack of letters beside the book, bound with a yellowed ribbon. “What about these?”
“Letters,” she said, looking at the vintage airmail envelopes.
“To my great-grandmother, I bet.” He picked up the pile and scooted backward to sit against the steamer trunk. “Let’s read them first.”
She grinned at him and nodded, sliding back on the floor to sit beside him. “Okay.”
As he untied the ribbon, part of the old fabric disintegrated to fragments, and he winced. “So damn old.”
He reached for the letter on top and looked at the address and postmark. “From Pierre Montferrat in Marseille, France, to Amelie Montferrat Roche. So that’s, um…my great-uncle writing to my great-grandmother, his sister.”
Libitz’s heart sped up with excitement as she slid slightly closer to him, shoulder to shoulder, so she could see better. “Sent in December 1939.”
Jean-Christian gently squeezed the envelope that had been sliced open over seven decades ago and pulled the letter, written on thin airmail paper, from its home. He unfolded it and, after a moment, began reading snippets in English.
“Um…let’s see here…There is talk of…um, rationing. En Angleterre, um, in England, it has already started. Can you imagine a France in which you cannot have butter with your bread, dear Amelie? Today I shall try to find…”
Libitz stared straight ahead at the dust that floated around the attic in a beam of sunlight as Jean-Christian haltingly translated letter after letter from Pierre Montferrat to his sister, switching back and forth from murmured French to carefully chosen English. Though Amelie repeatedly begged her brother to join her and her family in Montreal, he was unable to due to poor health and an increasingly tumultuous France under Nazi occupation. The letters were vivid and descriptive, and her heart ached for a brother who waited too long to leave, hoping the France of his youth might be restored before the end of his life. But alas, it was still under German occupation when he died, and he would never see his sister again.
***
“…my trusted friend, Jules Vichy, has promised to keep my things safe until they can be shipped to you.” Jean-Christian cleared his throat, his voice breaking at times, clearly moved by the tone of farewell in Pierre’s final letter. “Um, let’s see here…There will be no more letters after this one, dear sister. I beg that you remember me always during our sunny days at the Vallon des Auffes when the fish practically jumped into our little boat. Do you remember collecting them into a bucket and running home barefoot to mother? I can still feel your small hand clasped in mine and the hot sun on our backs. Forever I will be your older brother…um, Pierre, watching out for you until we meet again in God’s glory, my little—” He sniffled. “My darling little sister.”
Jean-Christian folded the final letter and carefully tucked it back inside the envelope as Libitz took a shaky breath beside him and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“He didn’t make it to the end of the war,” murmured Libitz, whose head had dropped to his shoulder over an hour ago. “He never saw her again.”
J.C. turned from the pile of letters in his lap, his lips grazing the top of her head. He pressed them against her sleek black hair, closing his eyes and picturing Les Bijoux Jolis, which had been his great-uncle’s final painting in free France. Pierre’s friend, Jules, must have shipped it, along with his desk and other belongings, to J.C.’s great-grandmother in Montreal at the end of the war.