O O O O O

Chapter X- Stay

O O O O O

They had been reading for over an hour and the day was as glorious as could be, shining through the sheer curtains with a brilliance that warmed Théodore’s back and lit up the yellow color of his hair, but despite the day, and despite his usual wish to be out of doors, Théodore was content to simply sit and read poetry in the empty corridor beside the drawing room. Agnès was there, sitting beside him cross-legged, and she had a large book opened to Lamartine’s “Le Lac.”

“It’s a pretty thing,” she was saying, “but rather too sentimental for me. Most girls like it. Mathilde thinks it’s lovely. Too weepy and romantic for me though.”

Théodore nodded. “I think so too.”

Agnès began to flip through the pages, looking for another poem for him to practice on, while Théodore sat and watched silently. His eyes were rather too upturned, however, to be focused on the book. They fell more on her pink cheek, her pink lip, the soft sheen of her hair.

Somehow, Théodore and Agnès had ended up in a ring of books and papers. Seated beneath the window in the otherwise shadowed corridor, they had both crossed their legs and their knees were almost touching. Because Agnès was incapable of continuing with one book for too long, she’d asked Théodore to help her bring an enormous stack upstairs from the library (they would’ve simply stayed and read in the library, but Agnès was afraid that Alain might come down). Théodore brought every book she pointed out and tried to keep her from taking any herself, stacking them up comically so that they almost kept him from walking in a straight line.

When they reached their spot upstairs, they sat and began the little lesson with Agnès running her finger beneath each line of text and Théodore reading as a child might, stumbling over the difficult words and sounding them out as best he could. They usually only read a page or so in each book, sometimes less, and when they finished each, they spread it around themselves casually, with no real intent, and didn’t even realize until they’d almost finished that they were in the center of a dandelion, with white spindles of papers sprouting out around them in a circle.

To be honest, Théodore couldn’t remember how long they’d been having the little reading lessons. More than a year, at least, he was sure. And they’d always held them in that same corridor too because besides the fact that Agnès was afraid of Alain coming down and scolding them for lazing away in the library, Théodore was rather embarrassed about his shortcoming and preferred to stay in the dark somewhere, where Georgeault and Damien and Mathilde wouldn’t accidentally stumble in upon his lessons. Damien, naturally, was already aware that Théodore hadn’t been taught to read as a boy because he hadn’t been either, but Théodore still didn’t like to discuss his fault or admit that he wanted help for it.

The orphanage St. Claude’s had been rather simple and small and once they reached a schoolboy age, Damien and Théodore were seen more as babysitters for the little boys than students to be taught. Damien, however, was a very clever boy and he easily taught himself to read and write when he was eleven years old by stealing adventure books and filthy erotic novels from Monsieur Robillard’s office. Théodore was jealous of his friend, but as much as he tried, he couldn’t make sense of the little black symbols on the pages and the only letters he recognized were T, H, É, and O because during the boys’ removal from the orphanage, whenever they’d needed to place their name on a contract, Damien had written “Théo” on the line for his friend saying, “Voilà, c’est toi.”

But now Théodore knew how to write much more than just his name. Agnès had become his teacher, offering one day after she accidentally asked him if he’d ever read anything by Victor Hugo and was met with a shy, blushing apology that he couldn’t read at all. Of course she felt awful about it, since Damien had mentioned more than once that the orphans weren’t taught to read at St. Claude’s and that his own knowledge of the French language wasn’t perfect. So, with a shrug, she offered to help Théodore.

And despite the months that had passed now, Théodore didn’t know when he would tell Damien about his newfound ability. He never even thought of Damien during his lessons really.

“Read these next few lines here,” Agnès said, running across them with her finger.

The tip was calloused a bit and the nail had two spots of white in the center, Théodore noticed. He looked at it, then cleared his throat, then slowly read the last stanza.

“Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire,
Que les parfums légers de ton air embaumé,
Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit ou l'on respire,
Tout dise: ‘Ils ont aimé!’”

Three times throughout, Agnès had to correct him, softly murmuring the true pronunciation, and Théodore could feel her light breath upon his wrist. It tickled the skin, making him jittery, but he continued on as best he could and tried to concentrate on the poem and the words and nothing else. He meant only to keep Agnès out of his head, but when Laurie appeared in the corridor and Théodore was focused intently on the text, he ended up oblivious to him too.

“Bon travail,” Agnès said when he’d finished, smiling, and Laurie stepped forward then, nodding and smiling too.

Théodore immediately reddened and dropped his head, closing the book and stumbling to his feet. “I only saw Agnès here a few minutes ago,” he said. “She asked me if I liked the book and I hadn’t ever read it before. That’s all.”

Agnès looked at him with wide eyes, her smile gone, and then looked at Laurie. Laurie only shrugged.

“Oh. Alright,” he said. “Actually, I rather thought that you were letting her help you with your reading. I know I always appreciate her help with harder things. I’m an awful reader, myself. With nine children to look after, my mother and father didn’t look after our schooling much. And my penmanship’s pitiful.”

Théodore’s red cheeks began to fade, but he didn’t say anything. He saw Agnès silently sigh with relief, as if to thank Laurie for relieving the embarrassment of the situation, but it didn’t help any. He still wished that Laurie would go away and leave them be, in the spot that no one had ever bothered them before. And there was an irritating little tick pulsing in his brain, asking him how Laurie had ever found them in the first place. Someone else probably knows we come here too, he decided. Another blush began to speckle its way down his cheeks.

“Gotten lost?” Agnès asked Laurie. “Or what’s brought you to this part of the house?”

“Oh no, I was just looking around. But I’m glad I stumbled upon you two,” he said. “I wanted to ask, have you ever noticed anything strange about Virginie?”

“Oh she’s always been like that,” Agnès said, shrugging. “I couldn’t tell you what’s wrong with her. Her head’s just a bit jumbled, I think. Sometimes she doesn’t know if she’s talking aloud or not and you’ll hear her say something odd. She’s just not really rooted in reality.”

Théodore, who had begun stacking up books, looked up at Laurie from beneath his floppy bangs and admitted, “I think she’s a bit scary. Always have. The first week I was in the house, when I was just a boy, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw her standing in my room. Scared me half to death until I realized she was just sleepwalking.”

Agnès laughed. “Is that why you moved out to the farmhouse?”

“No, I just like the privacy,” Théodore said. “It’s nice having a place away from this house.”

Laurie nodded. “I can understand that. I’ve only been here a few weeks and I already think it’s a bit stifling sometimes.”

With a shrug, Agnès admitted, “I’ve never noticed it. Or maybe I’ve just gotten too used to it to remember when I did notice it.”

Théodore had finished stacking the books. He sat down on the top carefully so that they wouldn’t topple over, leaning over so that his elbows could rest on his thighs. “Why’re you asking of Virginie though?” he asked. “Did something happen? Did she spook you too?”

Laurie laughed. “I suppose you could say that. I heard her wailing last night and at first, because she was so far away, I couldn’t tell who she was and I thought it might be Mathilde. I went to find her, but when I did I found Virginie instead, trying to get into a door upstairs and crying on and on about her mistress Charlotte. I tried to talk to her, but I don’t think she understood me. She didn’t even seem to know who I was.”

“Must’ve been a nightmare.”

“I’ve seen her like that before too,” Théodore agreed. “Sleepwalking.”

“I suppose so . . . But why would she have a dream like that? Was she remembering something, do you think, about Charlotte and Alain?”

“It’s hard to say. No one in this house really knows anything about that time except for Virginie herself and Alain.”

Théodore nodded. “And you can’t ask anything of Virginie and expect to get a nice, clear answer. She’ll either say something strange, and you won’t have a clue what she’s going on about, or she’ll just make an angry face and walk away from you. It’s impossible.”

With a resigned nod, Théodore saw, Laurie seemed to swallow this information. He had obviously been hoping for more. Agnès scooped up a pile of books and Théodore did the same.

“So that it’s then?” Laurie asked. “We’re never going to find out what happened back then- how Charlotte really died, why Virginie is so distraught, the reasons behind Alain’s cruelty to his own daughter?”

Théodore gave a burbling sort of laugh. “You might it out like some sort of storybook.”

Agnès, like Laurie, remained quite serious for a moment. “It seems so,” she said. But then she smiled. “So if that’s why you took this job, Monsieur Mottier, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. We don’t know any more about it than you and as it happened twenty years ago and you are not currently able to read minds or see glimpses into the past, it’s doubtful that you’ll learn any more about it either. So are you planning on running back to your brother’s house then?”

Laurie shrugged. “No, of course not. I’m not so very curious, really. I was just wondering.”

O O O O O

Mathilde’s favorite room in the house was a parlor on the second floor that overlooked the gardens. It didn’t have a true name, but ever since she was a little girl she’d called it le salon du roi- the King’s Parlor- because it reminded her of a sketch her father had done of a room in the Palace of Versailles with its celery-green walls, floral fabrics, red curtains, and bits of gold paint on the picture frames and molding. Toward the far side of the room, a piano was set up perfectly near to the fireplace, with the velvet-padded stool several feet away from the hearth. On cold winter days, Mathilde liked to sit there and play a little melody, letting the flames stroke her back and warm her spine and crawl to her slim little ankles.

Today, after a morning of sewing in the garden with Agnès, a sudden wave of rain had washed Mathilde into King’s Parlor. For several minutes more, they sat by the fire and continued their sewing, but soon they’d both tired of it and instead began to talk- Mathilde still before the hearth with her slippered feet curled up beneath her and Agnès wandering around the room aimlessly.

“Sometimes I wish that people wouldn’t have dreams at all,” Agnès was saying, picking up a little ivory elephant statue from a shelf and dusting off its trunk. “It’s just so bothersome. And it makes you feel like that person isn’t happy and content where they are, which can reflect back on you, and then you feel like you aren’t making the person content enough where they are, and that’s why they’re dreaming of something else . . . I don’t suppose you know what I mean though.” She looked up and smiled, setting down the elephant. Mathilde watched her, looking at her shoulders and neck that seemed so very pale and vulnerable. There were even a few wispy curls reaching down from her hairline like tiny vines. “No, I don’t suppose you know at all,” Agnès murmured and she crossed the room, going to a shelf with portraits and framed silhouettes that she began to organize. “If you knew Damien as I know him, then you’d know more of what I’m talking about,” she said. “You haven’t spoken much to him though, I don’t think.”

Mathilde shook her head. “No, I’m sorry I haven’t. But I’ve heard quite a bit about him from you, of course. He seems like a very nice man.”

“He is.”

“And I’m sure he knows he’s very lucky to have you as a sweetheart.”

Agnès giggled. “I think he’s pretty happy to have a sweetheart at all, considering the fact that he’s only seen two young women in the past five years of his life.”

“He still wants to be a sailor then?”

“Of course,” Agnès said. “And he’s still talking of sailing away to Indochina.”

“What a lovely name for a place!” Mathilde exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of it before. What’s it like, Agnès?”

“Oh I gave Damien some postcards from it once. I’ll swipe them and show them to you tomorrow. He won’t mind.”

“Are you sure? Because I wouldn’t want to intrusive and . . .”

Agnès smiled. “Don’t worry. He won’t even know they’re gone. I promise.”

“So he wants to go for a holiday in Indochina then?” Mathilde asked.

“No, he wants to live in Indochina actually. But I haven’t a clue why. He thinks it would be exotic and exciting, I suppose, but honestly, why is France not good enough for him? If he wants to go for a holiday, why doesn’t he just go to Marseille or Nice for a week or two?”

Mathilde was silent for a moment, but Agnès was too busy thinking, probably of Damien, to notice it. She went to the window with her hands on her hips, staring out at the silver-colored rain. Behind her, Mathilde had turned so that her side was facing the fireplace and she stretched out her legs and then drew them up, curling her hands around her knees and then running them down to her ankles.

“If Damien left, would you go with him then?” she said finally, and her voice was weak as she said it. Her maid turned and smiled.

“No, of course I wouldn’t leave . . . I wouldn’t be any good in Indochina anyway. It’s much too hot there, I think.”

Mathilde nodded, though she’d started to think of something else then. As far as she’d ever been told, the purpose of courting was, in the end, always marriage. Once she’d told her father that in storybooks, girls were courted so that they might meet different boys and decide which one they’d most like to be their husband, but Alain had sternly shook his head and said that she’d better stop trying to use storybooks as her sole source of knowledge. He’d told her that in more proper families, like their own, the father was the one to go searching for suitable husbands and once he’d found the right boy, he brought him to his daughter, they courted for a bit so that they weren’t complete strangers anymore, and then they married. That’s the way it worked, he said.

At the time, she hadn’t thought about this much, or about how miserable it made her future look, considering that Alain never left the house, and thus couldn’t possibly find her a suitable husband. At the time, she’d been so startled that he’d called their little two-person a relationship une famille. A family. And she’d lied in her bed all night thinking of that instead of her prospects of finding a kind, clever, handsome young man to marry her.

But now that she was several years older- nineteen, in fact- and she knew that most girls in France her age probably had a sweetheart and were thinking of marriage, or at the very least knew a boy that they would like to be their husband, she’d begun to feel incredibly hopeless in her own situation. She wondered if everyone else in the house realized how hopeless she was too. As a child, she’d always felt blessed to be Alain’s daughter rather than a servant. At least she had some pretty dresses to wear, she thought, even if she could impress no one with them. And at least she was able to do ladylike things like read and sew and paint instead of working all day, like the servants.

But lately, she’d started to realize that the servants didn’t think that way at all and, in fact, they felt blessed to be servants rather than a child of Alain. Sometimes, when no one thought she was around, she’d creep around the house or peek out the window and see the little group of young servants gathered- Agnès, Damien, Théodore, and now Laurie too- and they would be smiling and laughing and she realized that, in fact, they weren’t always working constantly. Because the house had no visitors and Alain mostly stayed up in his atelier, they were able to do what they liked sometimes. Unlike her, they had plans outside of Saint-Étienne and the aviary. They even, in the case of Damien and Agnès, had sweethearts. She shouldn’t be pitying them at all, she knew now. In all likeliness, they’d probably been pitying her for years.

Agnès, noticing her mistress’s silence now, came to stand beside her and asked, “Would you like to continue working on your handkerchief now?”

Mathilde shook her head. “No, not really.”

“Why don’t you play a song for me then?”

“Yes, alright. Would you choose one from the songbook for me, please?”

Sitting down on the plush piano stool and then smoothing her rose-colored skirt, Mathilde sat and waited while Agnès flipped through various songs, clucking her tongue at some and mumbling at others. Finally, she chose “Quand les Lilas Refleuriront” and set the open booklet on the stand. Mathilde placed her hands gently on the keys, taking a little breath, and then slowly began to play. As the song went on, she grew more and more confident and her movements became quicker, bringing the song to a lovely, cadenced melody.

“Chante,” Agnès told her. “You have such a nice voice.”

And although she was reluctant and nervous, Mathilde began to sing the song aloud. Like her playing, her voice became more confident and loud as she went on. Between the verses she looked up and watched Agnès, who had taken the black ribbon from her hair and was dancing around the room with it, sashaying through the curtains and spinning in front of the fire and running her ribbon across Mathilde’s shoulders, making her giggle through the next few lines of the song. For a few moments, Mathilde was happy. Truly, truly happy. All thoughts of hopeless husbands and pitying servants had traveled out into the corridor atop the notes of the piano. For the girls hadn’t closed the door, hadn’t even thought of it, until they heard a pair of footsteps stomping toward them, scarcely audible above Mathilde’s sweet voice and the piano’s music.

Agnès, collapsed into an armchair and smiling childishly, instantly straightened and sobered when Alain walked in. Mathilde, who hadn’t seen her father in two days now outside of dinnertime, was so startled that her hands clattered down on the keys, making a blaring, chaotic sound and then silence, as she pressed them hard against her thighs. For a moment she only looked at him. He was almost like a puppet- tall, spindly, gaunt about the face, arms loose, gray suit hanging drably, perfectly combed but thin grayish hair, like the yarn a puppeteer might use. But when she met his eyes, which were so terribly clear and blue, she had to look away. Her head dropped and she stared down at her lap, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry and her tongue very large.

“Stop that hellish screeching,” Alain commanded, even though Mathilde had stopped several seconds before and the room was now silent.

Mathilde tried to swallow, but couldn’t for a moment. When she managed, her mouth was only wet enough for a feeble whisper. Her voice, that had been so sweet and silky several moments before, came like a croak.

“Oui, papa,” she said. “Je suis désolée, papa.”

“I could hear that all the way upstairs.”

“In your atelier?”

“In the corridor,” Alain corrected. His voice, though not quite so booming anymore, had an odd and quiet strength that made Mathilde shiver, as it always had. “There’s no need to sing so loudly,” he continued, “and I haven’t the slightest idea why you feel the need to pound your hands on the keys, like some sort of imbecilic child. Is it really necessary to play so loudly?”

“Non, papa,” Mathilde murmured.

“And why are you even playing the piano anyway? It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. You ought to be sewing. Are your handkerchiefs finished?”

“Non, papa. Almost.”

“And if all that isn’t enough- why in the world, Mathilde, are you allowing your maid to lounge around the parlor while you play a song for her? Isn’t she paid to serve you? If you wanted to hear a song, why didn’t you just ask her to place it for you?”

“I don’t know how . . .” Agnès began, but Alain held up his hand. She went silent instantly, as though he were a magician and had stolen her voice with his fingers.

“And if you don’t have anything for her to do, then it is still unacceptable for you to allow her to do nothing. There is always something to do. Send her to the kitchens, so she can wash dishes or make us an extra course for supper tonight. Send her to the gardens, so she can put fresh flowers in all the parlors. Send her to me, if you must, and let her wait outside my door until I call for her- but for Christ’s sake, don’t let her lounge around my parlor, in my chair, acting as though it belongs to her.”

Neither girl said a word after that. They’d both lived with Alain long enough to know that it was foolish to argue with him or apologize. Best to simply let him talk until he’d finished. Which, Mathilde realized thankfully, he was starting to now.

Letting out a thick breath, he murmured, “Continue your sewing until suppertime, Mathilde. And do it in the garden. It’s stopped raining now, I think. I bought that bench by the peonies for you, you know, and I don’t think you’ve been making much use of it. And Agnès . . . Agnès, go to the kitchens and help Madame Pelle. I don’t know what else to do with you. If I find you lounging around again, I shan’t hesitate to give you a harsher punishment, and you know that, I think. Tomorrow I want you to help Théodore in building the stone floodwall by the creek. Madame Perron can be Mathilde’s maid for the day.”

Agnès nodded. Mathilde raised her head again.

“For God’s sake,” Alain spat finally. “You’re not a child anymore, Mathilde. You don’t need to be singing and if you want to practice playing the piano, at least choose a nicer song . . . Don’t be late for supper. And change your dress. That pink color is hideous.”

As he turned and walked out of the room, his footsteps sounding like stomps because of the quiet, Mathilde murmured, “Oui, papa,” and her voice cracked as she said it. Once they were sure he’d gone, both girls rose and Agnès came over to Mathilde, taking her hand and apologizing, since she had been the one to suggest the piano and the song in the first place, but Mathilde shook her head.

“It’s alright,” she said softly. “I’m fine. I’m going to go pick out another dress.”

Although it looked as though Agnès wanted to say something else, Mathilde had already stepped away. She could feel her nose growing warm and her eyes growing full and she didn’t want Agnès to see her crying, so she started to walk faster, afraid that her friend would want to follow her and help with the dress instead of going to the kitchens as she ought to. By the time she’d crossed the doorway, her eyes were so wet that she knew the tears would fall soon. She reached up a hand, trying to dot them away daintly so that no one would know, but before she could reach, she heard the floorboards squeak behind her, on the opposite side of the doorway. And when she turned to face the noise, she saw Laurie there, staring at her, his face expressionless, and she was so terribly embarrassed, she could do nothing but turn away, though she knew it was impolite, and rush away from him before he, or anyone else, could see that her cheeks were wet now too.

O O O O O

“I think that we think too much. I think we need to spend more time just . . . just living and being. Don’t you think so, Damien?”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning. Jésus Christ. Go back to bed.”

But Agnès wouldn’t go back to bed. She was determined. She’d been lying awake in her own room for hours and she’d been thinking of Damien. Somehow her thoughts of him molded into something more abstract, so that now she was talking like some sort of philosopher about living and thinking and being.

“Let’s go outside,” she whispered.

“You’re mad.”

“It’s not even that cold out.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

Damien, who had been lying on his side with his face pressed into the pillow, now rolled onto his back with a sigh. Although Agnès’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness by this point, Damien was still squinting at her, trying to better make out her face, and he’d pulled the blankets up beneath his eyes. He was obviously cold already. She sighed, bouncing on the bed a little.

“I’ll get your coat for you, if you want,” she said.

“Why must you be so odd? Why can’t you just sleep at night, like a normal girl?”

“Please, Damien? We can go sleep beneath the stars.”

“I’ll be asleep before I can even see them,” he grumbled.

“And we can stay there till sunrise. When the sun comes up, we won’t have any walls or curtains to shelter us, and we can wake with it. It’ll be lovely. It’ll bathe us and clear our heads and tomorrow, you’ll feel wonderful.”

“For Christ’s sake . . . You ought to go see a doctor or something,” Damien said, allowing himself to chuckle at the situation now. “There’s something wrong in your head, I think.”

Agnès smiled too and took his shoulders, rocking him back and forth. “Damien. Damien, please? I’m not crazy. I swear. It’ll be nice.”

For a few moments, he said nothing and Agnès sat there in silence, waiting. Then, when she was just about ready to leave him and abandon the whole idea, he lifted himself up onto his elbows with a sleepy moan. Pressing his leg against her thigh beneath the blankets, he pushed Agnès off the bed and then leaned over, picking his stone-gray cap off the floor, combing down his hair, and settling the cap upon his head. Agnès still didn’t say anything, but she was glowing like a satiated child in the corner of the room while Damien stepped from bed, pulled on his shoes and socks, and took the old wool coat that she held out for him. Once he’d finished, she allowed a smile to cross her face and she stepped forward, taking his hand and kissing his cheek. He groaned and rubbed the spot with his knuckles.

Although there wasn’t any real reason to rush, once Agnès had Damien’s hand clasped firmly in her own, she went up the stairs as quickly as she could without making too much noise. Damien, still half-asleep, let her drag him through the house and only moved of his own accord when they reached the kitchen door. Agnès, ignoring it, started to pull him past, but Damien grabbed the doorframe and then rotated their positions so that he was now dragging Agnès.

“Damien,” she moaned, but he didn’t listen.

He rummaged through the cabinets, pushing aside Alain’s bourbons and whiskeys until he reached the sweet Burgundy wine in back. He knew one bottle wouldn’t be missed; the kitchen had plenty to spare. There were wines of all colors, all tastes, all years, and from every wine-producing region in France- Alain would have no wine but French wine in his kitchen. Although Agnès was worried and said that someone would notice the missing wine and Damien’s thievery would surely be punished, he waved away her concerns and took a swig right there in the kitchen. And once she realized that she couldn’t possibly convince him, she just took his hand again and led him quickly out the back door into the gardens.

Five minutes later found them in the middle of the field beyond, lying flat on their backs amongst the long grass and violets. Their murmurs were overshadowed by other murmurs- the murmurs of the owls and insects and the grass swaying with the wind. Agnès lips were already sweet with warm wine, though she hadn’t touched her mouth to the bottle once. And Damien, though still disgruntled by the disturbance to his sleep, was happy to be there now. He let Agnès take his free hand and point out all the constellations that she knew. The sky was lovely and enormous, stretching above them like the ceiling of a glamorous ballroom adorned with diamonds and crystals. And as time passed and the night grew quieter and the wine bottle began to empty, Damien thought that it was the most beautiful sky he’d ever seen and he proclaimed it so several times, squeezing Agnès next to him and pressing his face into her neck.

“But I’m not drunk,” he told her. He smiled. “Do I sound drunk, ma chère coeur?”

And she had to admit that he was right. He didn’t sound drunk at all. The wine had hardly any effect on him expect to make him more affectionate. While Agnès whispered lazily, still caught on her sudden philosophical tangent, and wondered whether she was the way she was because of her genes or her upbringing and how much was her mother’s fault and how much she owed to living and working in the aviary, Damien rolled closer and nestled his face into her hair.

“If we all were born in the same house and lived in the same town, and we ate the same food, and were taught in the same school, and all of our families were exactly alike, do you think that we’d all have similar personalities too?” she asked aloud.

“Je ne sais pas,” Damien mumbled. “We’ll never really know, will we?”

“We could. Someone should test that. I’d like to know. But then if that was true, you’d think that all of us here would be more alike, wouldn’t you? Not the de Daumiers, but just the workers. We’ve all been here for almost half of our lives, under the same conditions. But I’m nothing like Virginie.”

After swallowing another bit of wine, Damien wrapped his arms around Agnès’s waist and pressed his lips to hers for a slow, sleepy, sloppy kiss. It was November and they ought to have been cold, she supposed, but somehow she didn’t even think of the temperature or the cool wind that pinkened her cheeks. When Damien pulled away and pressed his nose against her neck again, she paused for only a moment before starting again:

“And you and Théo even— You’ve been together since you were just boys, but you’re not alike in the slightest. So I think it must have something to do with our heads, don’t you think? Our brains are different. They’ve been imprinted with many of the same memories, but they were created in different mothers, with different genes, and because of that, we end up like this, although . . .”

“I thought we were just supposed to be,” Damien said at her pause. “You’re going against your own idea, chère. You’re thinking much too much.”

“But don’t you wonder about that sort of thing?”

“I don’t wonder about anything at all,” Damien said and he picked up the bottle at his side, swirling it around and holding it to his ear to see how much wine was left. “Although, I must admit, I can sometimes see why Laurie’s always wondering about everything in this house. You know, I think Alain’s been having some awful nightmares lately.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well you have to admit that he’s been looking dreadful lately. Moons beneath his eyes and slouchy shoulders and all of that.”

Agnès shrugged. “He has phases of that all the time though. I’ve always supposed that he’s just spending his nights painting rather than sleeping.”

“I know, but I think there’s a reason why he’s not sleeping that’s forcing him to paint instead. This morning Georgeault had me help move some things from the atelier and there were three different paintings that all looked quite new, and they were all of the same thing- a girl. A girl around your age wearing a white dress and looking very spooky too, like a spirit. But she isn’t in the darkness, like you might think. She’s just a spirit in the daytime in a very badly lit room. And in the last painting, you can see that one of her hands is half-hidden behind her skirt and it’s holding something silver.”

“A necklace?”

“A knife,” Damien corrected. “And all of the paintings were titled “Ma Cauchemar- Un” and “Ma Cauchemar- Deux” and so on. Unless he was just imagining a man’s nightmare for the paintings, which I find unlikely, I think he’s been having some pretty peculiar nightmares lately about a young girl coming to murder him. And even stranger, when I went to put the paintings into storage in the basement, there were two more there too, very similar. He’s been having that same dream for years, I’ll bet.”

“How odd.”

“Oui. J’ai pensé alors,” Damien said. “So, obviously I could only come to one logical conclusion.”

“What’s that?”

Damien chuckled, squeezing Agnès in a bear hug. “Have you been dallying upstairs trying to spook Alain, you naughty girl? That girl in the picture could have been you, you know.”

“Damien!” Agnès giggled, slapping at his hands. “How dare you? I would never do such a thing!”

“But she had your eyes! I swear it!” he cried, crawling atop her and kissing her eyebrows.

“Damien!”

“And your nose- it’s identical!” He kissed that too.

Agnès collapsed into a fit of laughter. “You cruel, cruel boy! To say such a thing!”

“And your lips.” He kissed her mouth, first quickly, then slowly, then deeply, relieving all her shivers with his warm lips and shoulders. When his mouth finally fell away, she was left breathless and her heart was pounding. “And I must say,” Damien murmured. “I don’t like the idea of ma chère fille entering another man’s room during the night.”

“Even if she has a knife?”

“So you did do it!”

They laughed and laughed and the wine bottle was emptied. Neither of them had any idea what time it was, but they didn’t care by that point. Both had accepted that they wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night. When the sun finally made its first appearance on the horizon, lighting the sky to a brilliant orange color, Damien had long been asleep- around Agnès like a spoon, with his arms wrapped tight about her and his leg flung over hers. Agnès, though, had been drifting in and out of sleep all night.

“I don’t want to work today,” she whispered. “I just want to sleep. I want to sleep forever and ever and ever . . . Don’t you think that would be nice, Damien? Wouldn’t you want to sleep forever if you could?”

Damien woke at her words. “If you wanted to sleep,” he said, snuggling closer, “then perhaps you shouldn’t have pulled me out here last night.”

“I know,” she yawned.

“And why would you want to sleep forever? What about your whole ‘living and being’ plan?”

Agnès bit her lip. “I don’t know. I just like the idea of it.”

Despite the growing color of the sky and the brightness that was filtering its way through the grass, Damien quickly fell back asleep again. Agnès only lied and waited and dreamt and thought; she was suddenly terribly conscious of Damien’s body next- and half atop- of hers. She calculated how long they had before someone in the house would catch them. They didn’t have much longer, she knew, since Théodore rose quite early and he could probably see them from his spot in the hayloft. Sighing, she let her head fall to the side. Her mouth was just inches from Damien’s ear. And then, biting her lip again, she whispered into his ear, “Because I want you to stay.”

GLOSSARY

1. le lac . . . the lake

2. voila, c’est toi . . . there, that’s you

3. bon travail . . . good work

4. chante . . . sing

5. Je suis désolée, papa . . . I’m sorry, papa

6. ma chère coeur . . . my dear heart

7. Je ne sais pas . . . I don’t know

8. chère . . . dear

9. ma cauchemar- un, deux, etc. . . . my nightmare- one, two, etc.

10. Oui. J’ai pensé alors . . . Yes. I thought so

11. ma chère fille . . . my dear girl