“Never.” I wipe my eyes. “Why?”
“It’s possible to get your daughter away from your husband. But you need money. A great deal of it. Forget your goddamn furs and trinkets. I know people who handle this kind of thing. Recovering the girl is one hurdle. You also need to be granted custody, and to do that you need to prove that you can provide stability.”
“Edouard—”
“Tell me about your daughter.”
I dab at my eyes with the sleeve of my dress. “I called her Non.” My chin begins to tremble. “It means little girl. I don’t know where to start—”
“At the beginning.”
“On the morning of my mother’s funeral, then. I was thirteen years old.”
If he is surprised at the start of my tale, his face doesn’t betray him.
“My two aunts arrived—my mother’s sisters. They weren’t close to our family. I couldn’t remember meeting them before. They were strangers to me. And all they had to say about me was, ‘Look how dark she is,’ and ‘So tall.’ ”
“Your father was still alive then?”
“My father had deserted us. I thought he would come back as soon as he had word that his wife had died and his children were alone; I asked my aunts about him and my Aunt Mina told me that he was kloten.” I whisper the word.
“What does that mean?”
“Good-for-nothing. ‘You are an orphan,’ she said. She told me that she was willing to take my brothers. But they didn’t want me. Boys go to factories and collect paychecks. But a girl is a burden.”
“You had no other relatives?”
“An aunt on my father’s side in The Hague. I asked about her and they pointed out that if she couldn’t afford to attend a funeral, then she certainly couldn’t afford an extra mouth.”
“So where did you go?”
“A school for teachers. They put me on a train with my aunt’s husband. He was in his thirties and owned a shoe shop. They had the means to take me in.”
Edouard is shaking his head. “One isn’t always blessed with relatives,” he observes.
“On the way to Leyde,” I say, “my uncle told me that the city was as old as The Netherlands herself. Beautiful. He thought I’d like it there. When I arrived, I was still dressed in the mourning clothes I’d worn to my mother’s funeral.”
“M’greet—”
He pities me. He sees me as pathetic Margaretha Zelle now, the girl whose father abandoned her. Whose entire family refused to take her in. “That was the last time I saw him.” But I correct myself. “The last time I saw any member of my mother’s family.”
“That’s a terrible story.”
“Everything that happened after my mother died was terrible.” I don’t know why I’m exposing myself to him, laying everything in front of him like an offering. I blink quickly so I won’t start to cry again.
“M’greet, you are going to get Non back.”
“It’s impossible—”
“Listen carefully to me.” I have never seen his face look so serious. “First, we will find out exactly where she is. Where she lives, what school she attends, where she goes to church. During this time—and this is going to take time—you are going to save your money. I will make calls and we will gather information. But after that we will need to secure someone trustworthy who is willing to take her away from her father and out of The Netherlands. That requires a great deal of money. More importantly, M’greet—and this is the part you must understand—it takes additional time. From this point forward, there are to be no more frivolous purchases and lunches at Maxim’s unless someone else is paying the bill.”
I am nodding. “Of course. Yes.”
“We can do this. We can bring your daughter to live with you, here, in Paris.”
*
Back in my apartment I can’t sleep. I’m excited and happy, yet I can’t keep my mind from digging through the past. I was so young. Leyde had felt so big: three churches, two dozen shops, canals that were wider than any in Leeuwarden. My uncle had put me in a carriage alone and the ride to the school had seemed endless. When at last the driver stopped at a coffee-colored building, I couldn’t move, I could barely breathe. I just stared out the window as he took down my luggage and watched the cobbled streets until the tears in my eyes turned them into a sea of raised bruises.
Chapter 10
The Haanstra School for Girls