“It was my pleasure,” she said, and the words felt inadequate for the profound intimacy of what they had just shared.
He finally gathered his things to leave. At the door, he paused, his hand on the heavy oak.“Tomorrow,” he said, not as a question, but as a promise.“I’ll have something for you. A… a return on the gift.”
Curiosity flared within her, bright and warm.“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” he said simply. And then he was gone.
The next day, Tuesday, the anticipation was a live wire. Élise found herself glancing at the clock every few minutes, the slow crawl of the hands a special kind of torture. When he arrived, precisely at 2:07, he carried a flat, rectangular package under his arm, wrapped in the same plain brown paper as her sketchbook.
He didn’t wait. He came to the counter and placed it before her.
“It’s not a book,” he said, a hint of nervousness in his gravelly voice.“It’s… an echo.”
Hands slightly trembling, she untied the string and peeled back the paper. It was a framed pencil drawing.
Her breath caught.
It was the library. But not as it was. It was the library as Hugo Lafleur might have dreamed it, infused with the soul Luc had discovered in the archives. The perspective was from the mezzanine, looking down into the reading room. The lightstreamed through the windows in palpable, golden shafts, illuminating the dust motes until they looked like a shower of diamond dust. The shelves receded into a warm, mysterious gloom, suggesting infinite depth. And there, at the central oak table, sat a figure. It was her, Élise, her head bent over a book, one hand resting on the page. The detail was exquisite, capturing the quiet concentration he had drawn days before. She was not just in the library; she was of it, as essential to the scene as the shelves and the light.
But the most breathtaking detail was in the margin of the drawing itself. Luc had not signed his name. Instead, in a script that echoed Hugo Lafleur’s elegant hand, he had inscribed a single line:
‘For my Élise, in whose silence this story found its home.’
Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the beautiful lines. He had given her back the library, but seen through his eyes. He had seen Hugo’s love for Céleste, and he had mirrored it, here, now, for her. It was the most romantic, the most deeply seen she had ever felt in her life.
“Luc,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.“It’s… there are no words.”
“The good things rarely have words that are enough,” he said softly, his own gaze suspiciously bright.“It’s how I see it. How I see you in it.”
He had built her a sanctuary within a sanctuary. A testament in graphite and glass. It was more than a drawing; it was a confession, as clear and as profound as the silence that had first drawn them together. The story was no longer just in hisnotebook. It was here, in this frame, in the space between their shared gaze, alive and beating like a heart.
Chapter 17:
The Unraveling
The framed drawing found its home on the mantelpiece in Élise’s apartment, a jewel in her quiet space. Every time she looked at it, a warm, sure feeling settled in her chest. This was real. What was growing between her and Luc was not a phantom of the stacks, but something with weight and substance, something that existed in the world of espresso and graphite and shared confidences.
Wednesday began with that same surety. The morning light was clear, the library peaceful. She hummed as she sorted the morning’s mail, her mind already leaping ahead to 2:07 PM.
But the day had other plans.
The bell on the door jingled with a harsh, aggressive sound. A woman stood there, silhouetted against the bright street. She was tall, impeccably dressed in a sharp, modern coat that seemed out of place among the old wood and paper. Her gaze swept the room with a cool, assessing authority before landing on Élise.
“I’m looking for Luc Valois,” the woman said, her voice crisp and carrying. It shattered the morning’s peace.
Élise’s humming stopped. The sure feeling in her chest tightened into a knot.“Monsieur Valois is not here,” she said, her voice carefully neutral.“He is typically a patron in the afternoons.”
The woman’s lips, painted a severe shade of red, thinned.“Typical,” she muttered, more to herself than to Élise. Shestepped fully inside, her high heels clicking decisively on the parquet floor. She looked around the library with an expression of disdainful curiosity, as if she were in a museum of obsolete technology.
“Can I help you with something else?” Élise asked, her librarian’s politeness a thin shield.
The woman’s eyes, a cold, calculating blue, focused on her.“You’re the librarian he’s been spending his time with?”
The question was an intrusion, a violation of the quiet world Élise and Luc had built.“I am a librarian here,” Élise corrected, her tone frosty.
A humorless smile touched the woman’s mouth.“I’m Camille. His partner.” She let the word hang in the air, letting its ambiguity—business or romantic?—do its damage.
The knot in Élise’s stomach turned to ice. Partner. The word he had used when he spoke of his failure.‘My partner.’
