“Finally!”
“They’re in terrible shape, though. And it felt like stealing to take them, so they’ll have to go through official channels before we can get our hands on them.”
Emma made atsking sound. “Drawing the line at stealing, are we? Now you’ve disappointed me.”
“But here’s the best part: Jérôme’s great-grandfather was a veteran of the Great War, and he was severely injured, and believed dead for a while, andlost a hand.”
Emma blinked. “You think Jérôme’s great-grandfather was Émile Legrand?OurÉmile?”
“We don’t know for sure yet; Jérôme said he’d try to find hisname in a genealogy or family documents to confirm it. But it seems awfully coincidental, doesn’t it?”
Emma nodded. “It certainly does. So, if true, Jérôme and I are cousins. A few times removed, but cousins nonetheless.”
“I’m not following.”
“While you were destroying private property and canoodling with Jérôme—”
“Canoodling?” Rosalyn asked with a smile.
“—Imade a discovery of my own. André got his hands on the orphanage ledger from Madame Bolze.”
“How did he manage that?”
“The man has a way with old women—I’m a case in point. I don’t ask questions.”
Rosalyn stilled. “Have you looked through it?”
Emma nodded slowly, a smile on her face.
“What did you find?”
“It’s over on the nightstand, by the bed. Check out the bookmarked page.”
Rosalyn rose to retrieve the ledger and flipped through its ancient pages. Where the bookmark held the place, she ran her finger down the names, pausing at:Narcissa Emilia Maréchal LeGrand, Reims; agée moins d’un an, adoptée, Madame Doris Whittaker, veuve, Australie.Narcissa Emilia Maréchal LeGrand, less than a year old, adopted by the widow Doris Whittaker from Australia.
“You’re kidding me.” Rosalyn stared at Emma. “Doris adopted Lucie and Émile’s daughter? But I thought... Didn’t you say Doris didn’t have any children?”
“She didn’t. Not according to the family tree, anyway.”
“Would she have kept the adoption a secret for some reason?”
“I can’t imagine why. She was a wealthy widow, and known to do pretty much as she pleased. But I started thinking about thetimeline.... Doris didn’t live past forty. We know that Narcissa was born in nineteen eighteen, which means she would have been only a few years old when Doris died.”
“Oh, the poor thing,” said Rosalyn. “She lostanothermother? What happened to her then?”
“Ah, that’s where things get even stranger. Doris had one brother, Louis. He and his wife—my great-grandparents—had ten children. The youngest child, who was my grandmother, was named Narcissa.”
Rosalyn stared at Emma. “That’s not a very common name, is it?”
Emma shook her head. “And here’s the kicker: My full name isn’t Emma—it’s Emilia. It was my grandmother’s middle name.”
“Emilia... as in Émile? So this means you are Narcissa’s granddaughter, and the great-granddaughter of Émile and Lucie,” said Rosalyn, a note of wonder in her voice. “No one in your family ever said anything about Narcissa being an orphan from France?”
“I’m sure they were aware of it at the time, and I always knew we had French blood in the family, but I never heard about it. Then again, my great-grandparents had ten children, so I imagine they just folded her into the brood and raised her as one of their own. Maybe that’s why I was so fascinated by the letters—maybe I was meant to find my cousins,eh? I have two brothers who can follow up on that. They’ll like Jérôme; I bet they’ll get along like wildfire.”
“What does your mother say about all of this?”
“I haven’t spoken to her yet. I... I don’t want to call her until I know what’s going on with my health situation, and decide what my next steps are, assuming there are any.” She let out another long sigh, and closed her eyes. “By far, the worst thing about all of this is imagining what my death is going to do to my poor mother. But I can’t do anything about that—death is the ultimate relinquishment of control, after all. And she’s got lots of grandchildren to console her.Still, I always meant to leave a legacy of some sort. I never had kids, so it should have been something else. Something...” She left off with a shrug.
