I took Elise to the Petit house, and we had lunch with the children, who were all on their best behavior. She was especially charmed by the girls, Hannah, who was so lovely and polite, and the younger ones, Delphine and Emma. They were charmed in return, arguing over who would sit next to her, delighted by the way she approached a banana with a knife and fork.
“You’re so fortunate,” Elise said to me when Rosalie took the children inside for their naps. “Those children are treasures.”
I introduced Elise to Jean-François, our pet, and after her initial fear, she calmed down and fed him oats from her hand. She told me more of her life with Aaron, the house they had in Passy, on the right side of the Seine, which her father had bought for her, the garden with linden trees, the little park she went to on sunny afternoons. I had an edge of guilt when I thought of Jestine, and how she would ache when she saw Elise. I knew my cousin had forsaken her, but I was inside a story of Paris, and I simply couldn’t hear enough. In the afternoon I took Elise into the hills to search for wild donkeys. She was telling me about the goats that ate grass in the Tuileries when we spied some of the local beasts of burden. She grabbed on to me as one approached, then laughed when the donkey ran away, more frightened of us that we were of it.
“See,” I told her. “No lions.”
“I feel so free here.” Elise had taken off her boots and was barefoot, arching her beautiful, pale feet in the tall grass. “My family always babies me, and so does my husband. I want to do something Aaron would never imagine I would do.” The end of the day was nearing, and the sky was turning violet above us. “Something daring.”
I asked if she’d ever been swimming in the ocean, and she laughed and said, “That’s it! I’ll be a mermaid! That will shock him.” We went to the beach in the fading light. It was a secluded cove, surrounded by greenery, the one where the turtles came. The path went through the tamarind trees. The air was silken and the water pale blue. We wasted no time in undressing. I felt happy to be free for an afternoon. As we laughed and hid our shoes in a log, I forgot who I was with, the woman who had come to possess all that my dearest friend wanted. Or perhaps I thought I could not blame Elise for the ways in which my cousin had hurt Jestine.
We hung our dresses on a branch and walked into the water in our petticoats.
“This is madness!” Elise grinned as she went deeper into the water. A blue crab scuttled across the seafloor, and Elise shouted out, then recovered and laughed, diving in where the water was deeper and bluer. “Actually it’s heaven,” she called to me.
The water was so calm here. Sandfish floated below us, and we tried and failed to catch them in our hands. Even though the evening was perfect, I had a nagging feeling of dread. I thought I saw a woman, out at sea, so far in the distance it did not seem possible a human could survive.
“What do we do if someone comes onto the beach?” Elise said, when we ran out, soaking wet, our undergarments clinging to our skin. We were as good as naked if anyone spied us.
“No one ever comes here,” I assured her. “It’s a secret beach.”
But I heard something. When I looked up I spied a figure beyond the trees, where the shadows were dark green. I recognized her shadow as she fled, for I knew her better than anyone.
AS SOON AS WE returned to my mother’s house, we could hear my cousin’s raised voice. He was speaking with such fury that Elise and I didn’t dare go any farther. We stopped inside the corridor. My husband was in the parlor with Aaron. His expression was grim as he tried to calm my cousin. “I’m not the one who wrote the provisions of the will. That was your uncle.”
“How do I know you didn’t write it and force him to sign? He was an old man.”
“You are a ward, though you were called cousin. There is no relation by blood.”
My father had left a gift to the synagogue and one to the Lutheran church, which was the custom. It was expected that he would leave my husband in charge of the business. To divide the company would be to weaken it, and my father wanted to keep the family’s holdings together. Aaron would have a monthly check, but he was to have no say over how things were managed. After all, he had proved himself a poor businessman in France, and had lost money for our company. Our French relatives had relieved him of his duties, and he now worked for his wife’s father, who had a prestigious store in Paris. Still, he’d clearly come back with expectations. I wondered if he though he might inherit everything and stay on and reclaim his life, perhaps have two families, as so many men did. The one he brought to the synagogue and the one he visited on Sundays as dusk spread across the sky and he would not be spied as he made his way along the alleys beside the wharves.