By the time we docked in Le Havre, I’d gained some much-needed weight and had stopped consuming so much wine. Even if I hadn’t figured out what to tell Sebastian about the future, my head was clearer than it had been in a long time. I was not less unhappy, but I was less confused.
We immediately drove north to Cannes. As soon as the car started its climb up our driveway and I got my first glance at the pale-pink Art Nouveau villa my father had designed every inch of, I felt a surge of relief. Things would be better now that I was home. Getting out of the car, I smelled the cypress trees that encircled the house. Fuchsia bougainvillea vines climbed the walls. Forest-green ceramic pots of night-blooming jasmine flanked the door. Yes, things would be better now that I could wake up to the south’s golden light flooding in through the extra-large windows my father had installed.
That night, we ate in the dining room at a rosewood table with carved wisteria vines creeping down the legs, sitting in matching chairs. On the walls, my mother’s murals of lush gardens brought more of the outside in. She’d arranged for a feast of all my favorite dishes, especially those that weren’t plentiful in New York in the winter. A big pot of bouillabaisse, the freshest green salad with olive oil pressed only miles away. Crusty bread, still warm from the oven, and butter churned at the farm our housekeeper’s husband owned. For dessert, there were oranges and runny cheese and more of the bread I’d missed so much in America. And with it all, crisp white wine that smelled of summer grass and sunshine. I had two glasses but refused my parents’ customary eau-de-vie after dinner.
That first dinner at home was a quiet affair, with just Sebastian and my parents and my favorite cousin, Agathe, who lived nearby. My older sister, Opaline, and my younger sister, Jadine, were both living in Paris and had written warm letters of welcome. They would be coming home to visit but not until later that season.
After my cousin left and my brother had returned to his own villa at the end of Palm Beach, my parents kissed me good night. Upstairs in my childhood bed, I fell asleep almost right away and had my first dreamless slumber since the party on Fifth Avenue almost two months before.
When I woke up, I guessed the reason. After I had breakfast with my parents on the terrace overlooking the sea and my father left for his office, my mother asked me if I’d like a second café au lait.
“Yes, thank you. And speaking of coffee, what did you put in my tea last night?”
“Did you sleep well?” she asked slyly.
“You know the answer as well as I do.”
“Wasn’t it a relief?”
“Yes, but you should have asked me, Maman. I’m not a child. You can’t trick me into taking medicine.”
“It wasn’t medicine. Just a sleep draft to give you some peace. I can see how much you need it.” She smiled at me, as if her interference was completely acceptable, and smoothed my curls down with the flat of her hand.
The sun was shining into the kitchen, and even in the direct light, my mother looked like a young woman, no more than thirty instead of a fifty-five-year-old mother of four grown children. My father and great-grandmother both also looked at least twenty years younger than their actual ages. We all knew that the spells my mother used to reverse an illness or save a life sometimes resulted in slowing down the aging process.
She’d worried that when she restored my eyesight, she might have interfered with my development and that I would be stunted at age nine, but I’d grown up according to schedule after all.
My mother had taught me many of her spells. And as was the custom among daughters of La Lune, she gifted me with my own grimoire when my menses arrived at age fourteen. Unlike my sister Opaline, who was a jeweler and had initially avoided learning the witch’s trade, I’d sought out lessons from a young age. I craved the power and ability that my mother had. Much of it was subtle, but she could sway people’s minds with a glance. She was a great seductress. Even though she clearly was devoted to my father, she enjoyed melting men’s reserves in her presence. Often after a party, I heard her and my father laughing about how so-and-so had left smitten or this one had made a fool of himself trying to impress her.
But nowhere was my mother’s talent more visible than in her paintings. She captured magick in every canvas. Her elaborate creations were unique, although you could see the lingering echoes of her symbolist teacher Gustave Moreau in her decorative work. She used Greek and Roman mythology to create illustrative tales that often no one but she understood but that everyone was drawn to. She also did portraits, very personal studies highlighting the obsessions of close family and friends. Opaline’s portrait showed her inside the facets of a ruby. Sebastian appeared on a ten-franc note. I was portrayed in pools of paint on an artist’s palette. She painted my father in the reflections of all the windows of a building he’d designed.
“We need to speak of some things,” she said now, as she walked toward the table with the fresh coffee. “All right?”
“Yes. Of course.”
I’d been dreading this postmortem conversation. But given the depth of my mother’s insight—a combination of empathy and sorcery—I had expected it.
“I was on my way to New York to get you myself, when I got sick,” she said, as she poured hot milk and coffee into my cup at the same time.
“Sebastian told me. He said it was food poisoning.”
“Yes. But I don’t think it was as simple as that.”
“You think it was more than just food poisoning that ailed you?”
“I think I was being a mother, sick with worry over her two grown yet still quite young children,” she said.
“Children? What do you mean? Does someone else need rescuing?” I asked.
“Sebastian. He’s not the same when you’re not around, you know that?”
“No, not really.”
“Since childhood you relied on him in many ways, but you functioned fine emotionally without him. Sebastian, on the other hand, is always a bit adrift without you as an anchor.”
I took a sip of the coffee, surprised by her revelation.
“The letters we got from New York, first Clifford’s and then Tommy’s, worried us all,” she said.
“I can understand why. I’m sorry they wrote. It wasn’t their right. I needed to sort things out on my own.”
“But you weren’t doing a good job of that, according to them.”
I resented her comment. Most mothers have no choice but to watch their children make mistakes and subsequently learn from them or not. But my mother was different. She could influence and even reverse what appeared to be reality. My brother and sisters and I all felt that as a mother, Sandrine was too powerful, that we were often at her mercy, even though she meant well.
“That’s your opinion. You weren’t there,” I countered.
“Either way, you’re here now. That’s what matters. You’re home, where you can heal. And you will. You have the strength to do it. You are like me that way. But Sebastian isn’t, and . . .” An odd expression crossed my mother’s face.