He nods, then lifts his camera to his eye and focuses on a leaf hanging listlessly upon a loose branch. “Tell you what: If I find your master, I’ll send him back to the carousel building. And if you find my wife, you’ll send her back to me,hmm?”
“Oui, monsieur,of course.”
Maëlle hurries away, choking back tears and disgust, engulfed by a ravenous sense of betrayal.They are together. They must be.This is why Josephine was asking all those questions about Léon the other night. Of course.
Josephine and Léon.Maëlle can’t get the image out of her mind: Léon leaning down to kiss that heart-shaped mole on Josephine’s long, pale neck. And why wouldn’t he fall in love with her? Josephine is pretty and wealthy and sweet, and always smells like roses. And Léon is dashing and handsome, a vital young man next to that corpse—a very genteel corpse, but still—that Josephine calls husband. It would be like night and day, to be kissed by a man like Léon after knowing only Yves’s touch.
She can hardly even blame her friend. Except that... Josephine had become her trusted confidante. Almost a sister. Or so she’d thought.
Maëlle lurches back toward the carousel building, unseeing, until she falls against an old oak and closes her eyes in despair. Last night she had dreamt that Leon and the other men had boarded the train back to Angers without her; she had awoken with her heart pounding, as she called out and chased the train, but to no avail. It was as though happiness, which not long ago had seemed within her grasp, was pulling farther and farther away no matter how fast she ran.
For now, all she can think to do is to carve. Maëlle returns to the job site and inspects the carousel figures for nicks and scratches sustained when they were mounted onto the mechanism. They are now speared through by their metal rods, which are then inserted throughthe floor and ceiling and attached to the cranks that will make them prance.
As always, Maëlle hears the laughter of children in her mind as she works. But the Clementshaveno children. They have been married for years, without being so blessed.
Who will ride this beautiful carousel, then?
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
PRESENT DAY
CHÂTEAU CLEMENT
Cady
All evening, Cady felt like the proverbial kid waiting for Christmas morning. She had never actuallyhadthat idyllic experience, but she was sure that if she had, it would have felt like this. She could hardly enjoy her meal, so excited was she to lay eyes on the carousel that Gustave Bayol had carved for Fabrice’s grandparents.
Afraid to spook Fabrice, she was careful not to mention it as they savored their trout Provençal.
“Did you enjoy it?” she asked, as Fabrice used a piece of bread to sop up the remaining sauce on his plate.
“C’est pas mauvais,”he said with an inclination of his head.
“From you that’s high praise indeed,” she said. “Fabrice, would you tell me more about your work with the Résistance during the war? I’m so interested in that period of time.”
He looked into the depths of his white wine, which glimmered golden in the firelight.
“I was just a kid, fooling around.”
“A screwup?”
“A screwup. It was like I was playing a game. Little did I realize...”He trailed off. When he declined to say anything more, Cady cleared the table, scraping the fish bones into the trash.
“You should take the trash out so it doesn’t stink,” said Fabrice, standing and grabbing his crutch. “And if you still want, I’ll show you that carousel.”
Cady slung her Leica around her neck.
They went together to the garbage cans, and finally over to the building that housed whatever remained of the carousel. Fabrice struggled with the rusty padlock for a few minutes, and then asked Cady to step in and help.
The large, barnlike door creaked as it opened. Inside, the pitch-black was interrupted only by the weak light of the moon struggling through a few high, dusty windows. There was a stench of old soot and rodents.
“There’s no electricity out here,” Fabrice said, as he and Cady cast their flashlight beams around the interior.
At first Cady saw nothing more than the hulking dark blobs she’d noted through the window. But then she realized that under and behind other junk—tarps and random pieces of lumber, a broken chair, an old wheelbarrow—were the remains of an antique carousel, damaged, dismantled, its parts scattered about the building.
And sitting toward the rear of the building was the main mechanism, the running floor and overhead crown marred by several gaping, charred holes—but essentially intact.
Only two carousel figures, a cat and a pig, still remained affixed to the floor, poles running through them. One was an outside stander—a figure that did not move—and the other an inner row jumper. Several other animals were scattered about the dusty building, their seams splitting, joints loosening. She also spotted something that must have been a spinning tub, and another piece that might have been a rocking carriage.
