“You look like you expected something else,” she said, for she was fully clothed in her green dress and she wore a light cape.
Her amusement made him slightly angry, or perhaps it was the pure hurt he felt when he thought about the fact that she had belonged to his uncle, an old man who had ruined the business. “You came to me,” he said coldly, then instantly regretted his tone.
“So I did.” She nodded, chastised. “I don’t deny it.”
It was as though everyone else in the household had disappeared, magicked away in the blue night. Rosalie lived with them during the week. She slept in her own room when she cared for the children, the door open so she could hear the babies if they woke. All were asleep. No one seemed a part of this world, except for the widow and her nephew. The air was heavy, enchanted, and the frogs made a singing noise that was urgent and low. A few days earlier, Frédéric had discovered a frog under his pillow, green with a red dot on its back.
“Poisonous,” Rosalie had declared when he described the creature at breakfast. “You’d better watch out for yourself. This isn’t Paris.”
He’d learned later on from the children that this wasn’t true, the frog was harmless and Rosalie was having fun with him. Now every time Rosalie saw him, she said, “Are you watching out for frogs?” It had become something of a joke between them.
But his uncle’s widow leading him out into the dark night was not a joke. He thought he could hear his own heart, and he hoped she couldn’t hear the thudding, as if he were a schoolboy who couldn’t control himself. They went down the steep street, empty now, and headed out of town. The air was soft and thick as they approached a beach Rachel wanted him to see. It was the time when the turtles came to shore. She explained they could not hold a lantern, for it would confuse the creatures that had come to lay their eggs, drawn from the sea by the moon’s light. She blew out the flame, and then they lay down in the sand. He stretched himself out beside her, the length of their bodies against each other. She told him about the turtle that was half human, who looked enough like a woman, and made every man who saw her fall in love with her. Some of her suitors dove into the water after her, even the ones who didn’t know how to swim, but she didn’t look back.
This story worried Frédéric. Was it a warning or a confession? Was she telling him to stay away, or urging him to follow her?
“I used to come here with my best friend, but she doesn’t want to see miracles anymore,” Rachel confided. “She doesn’t believe in them, but I’m surprised to say I do.”
He was grateful to whoever this friend was; her lack of faith meant he was the one who was beside Rachel to see the miracle of this night. The sand was cold and damp, the air nearly wet as the sea, but he was burning up now. He couldn’t believe she didn’t know, and he half expected her to slap him for his thoughts, but when she looked at him he saw a sort of compassion in her eyes, as if she pitied him for being human, and perhaps she pitied herself as well.
There were hundreds of turtles coming from the sea. Some walked right past them, lumbering across the beach, intent on finding the perfect stretch of sand in which to nest. The moon was pale and full beneath banks of clouds, and there were pinpricks of stars. The brightest light came from the reflections of the whitecaps of the sea. And then the clouds shifted and the moon lit a path for the turtles; the beach turned green as more and more made their way ashore. It took all night for the turtles to lay their eggs, and to hide them under the sand, and then, at last, exhausted, to return to the sea.
As Rachel and Frédéric walked home, morning was breaking through the sky. The world was pale and beautiful, filled with a weave of birdsong, music so loud it seemed to Frédéric that his head would burst. They had not slept, and so the night seemed to have lasted far longer than any ordinary night.
“I should hate you,” Rachel said.
She was wound up in a nameless longing, and she blamed him for her raw emotions. His presence was like a spell, his name an incantation. She had been avoiding him, but that tactic hadn’t worked. She hadn’t been to the cemetery once since his arrival. She ignored her children when they cried. She locked herself in her chamber every night and stared into the mirror, wondering if she was old, and if there was a cure for aging, some leaf or herb she might ingest or apply to make him want her. She should have had nothing to do with him, he was the enemy, the unwanted relative, but now it was too late. She knew too much about him, and everything he did took on a cast of intimacy. How he hung his jacket on the chair before he set to work, how he cut his food so carefully, how he looked at her when he thought her back was turned to him, how he gasped when the first turtles went past, how he’d moaned when she accidentally touched him the first time. Adelle had told her that her fate was waiting for her, and that she would recognize it when it arrived.