Or was she becoming like Fabrice, seeing disloyalty around every corner, allowing one betrayal to taint everything else?
None of it mattered anymore, anyway. The time had come for her to leave. After a moment of internal debate, she decided to leave her exposed film cartridges with the photos she had taken of Lucy, Fabrice, and the carousel during her stay at Château Clement. Let the familydo with them what they would. That way, at least, Fabrice wouldn’t worry that she had shared them with anyone.
Then she grabbed her bags and slipped out into the early evening.
She was dry-eyed now, beyond tears. But the problem with a small town was that even though she’d been here only a short time, people recognized her. What she wouldn’t give to be back in Paris this instant, walking those streets, reveling in her anonymity.
Anonymity.
Olivia used to say that, historically speaking, “Anonymous” was a woman. Anon.
What if...
What if the “apprentice” who stayed at the château wasn’t Léon Morice at all, but a woman?Thewoman. The one in the photograph—the secret kept in the rabbit’s belly.
She dropped her bag and took the envelope of historic photos she had developed out of her satchel. In the photos where she was working on the carousel, the woman had looked a little chubby to Cady. But now Cady saw it: The woman wasn’t chubby.
She was pregnant.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
1901
CHÂTEAU CLEMENT
Josephine and Maëlle
The camera feels awkward in her hands, and she has to squint to see through the tiny hole. How did Yves manage to keep the lens so steady? Was it the result of practice, or was it his resolute way of doing everything he did?
“You stand right there,” Josephine tells the mother of her baby. “With the carousel behind you.”
“Here? Like this? At least let me take off my apron.”
For many months, Maëlle has worn increasingly looser clothing to accommodate her swelling belly as she carves the lintels, mantels, newel posts, and doorways throughout the château. Josephine, for her part, has gained weight and, in the end, resorted to placing a small pillow under her skirts. Yves is ignorant of the ways of women, and so over the moon at the thought of Josephine having his child that he does not notice the obvious details. Some of the more astute housemaids have their suspicions, and Josephine can only pray that they hold their tongues. But no one else pays attention to the quiet carver who fills the halls of the château with the scent of freshly sawn wood and thescrip-scrape tink-tinkof her work, her passion, her joy.
The truth gnaws at Josephine; she cringes at the thought of deceiving her dear husband. She would have confessed a thousand times already, but Yves is such an upstanding man that if he discovered the truth, he would step aside and allow his brother to take over the château. It would break his heart. Their infant son, Marc-Antoine, named for Yves’s father, has already brought them such joy that she prays her husband will understand, in the long run.
“No, no,” Josephine tells Maëlle. “Stay exactly as you are, right this moment. This is how I will always remember you; this is how your son should know you. You are an artist, a sculptor.”
“He will never know me,” Maëlle says, in the saddest voice Josephine has ever heard.
She lowers the camera. “He will, Maëlle. When he is old enough to understand, he will know of the apprentice who came to stay at Château Clement. I will make sure of it. I will tell him to look inside the rabbit on his eighteenth birthday. He will know he was loved by the Aspiring Apprentice from Angers.”
Maëlle nods.
Her son will grow up a Clement. He will never want for anything, or know the acid rejection of being an illegitimate child.
Josephine has been writing letters, securing commissions for Maëlle all over France. Soon she will move on to the next château; a family who lives outside of Nice had already offered her a commission. She will be able to sculpt. Even though she is a woman. Even though she must remain anonymous.
Maëlle has carved a single, stand-alone carousel figure. She has created him, from start to finish, all by herself. He is a rabbit with a sweet expression, every inch of him fashioned with whispers of love and hope and encouragement. She allows herself to dream that her tender endearments will infuse the very wood of the figure, reaching out across the years to comfort and console her son and future generations.
Maëlle lifts her chin, and Josephine snaps the picture.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
PRESENT DAY
PROVENCE AND PARIS
