The Benefactor did not ask to see me again, and I did not dare search for him in the city. It was enough—more than enough!—that he had acted. Maman sang for the studio, and they, captivated by her voice, recorded her and began to find outlets in Paris where she could perform. I believed the Benefactor acted as her agent, but I knew that to me he was a hero, a man who had taken up the mantle expected of him and become a true benefactor to those who needed him. Maman's spirits lifted weekly, until it seemed she might fly away with joy, and then at the end of the summer, a little more than a year after the war started, Papa found work, improving our lot even more. I believed that, too, was the Benefactor's doing, but I could not ask, only hold the hope to myself in secret and relieved joy.
My parents flourished, and I, my secrets intact, began to find reasons to steal away for hours at a time. I had faced le Monstre once, and his threat lingered: I believed I would face him again, and that he would try to instill fear in my heart. But I would not be so unprepared the next time. Montmartre was the hub of many questionable activities, and even a girl of fifteen could find an instructor in the art of Savate, if she was determined enough.
I was determined. I learned to hit with open palms, closed fists, with canes and sticks, and most of all I learned to kick: high and fast and deadly, for my teacher cared nothing for the niceties of formalized fighting. The only rule he respected was survival; the only one I cared for was serving justice. Never again would I be caught unarmed by the likes of le Monstre. Between my parents' happiness and my training, the winter rushed by. Yet each week, when the Benefactor visited, I was banished to the kitchen to watch an adult life unfold through cracks in the wall, tantalizingly near and still untouchable.
He seemed less old to me as my parents blossomed: they seemed less old, as though the years fell away through the gift of song, for Maman sang more joyfully now than ever before. The Benefactor glowed with pleasure to hear her voice while Papa, more reserved, sat with steepled fingers, behind which I could not discern his expression. But it was not Papa whom I watched, mostly; it was the Benefactor, whose vivid gaze and sharp features seemed larger and more handsome than life to me. My baking attempts grew worse, but even above the scent of burning bread I could smell his cologne, subtle and rich. When he left I would slip to the coat stand and breathe in the lingering bouquet as I pretended to tidy after his visits.
Each time Maman would watch me at my invented chores, standing as she had sung, alone in the middle of the room with a brightly colored scarf wrapped tight around her slender shoulders. Each time she would take me into her arms and kiss my forehead and murmur her thanks, always spoken in her native tongue, for me being a good girl. Each time I would think guiltily of my Savate lessons, and of the heart-hammering lightheadedness I felt when I saw the Benefactor, and return her embrace without meeting her eyes.
Each time the importance of staying out of sight seemed increasingly absurd, until one winter night just after my seventeenth birthday, I slipped out of our small Parisian apartment and followed the Benefactor into the city.
I do not know if he always stopped on le Pont des Arts, perhaps to admire its nine iron arches bending gracefully over la Seine, or to stand in the heart of Bohemian Paris, with la Louvre upon one bank and Notre Dame visible in the distance, or if somehow he knew that I crept after him through snow-damp streets, not quite clinging to the edges of electric light shadows. I only know that he stood waiting that night, gloved fingertips making indentations in the slowly building snow on the bridge's rail, and that he did not look around, not even when I came to stand beside him. The snow did not melt on the leather of his gloves, though it turned to water in an instant on my own fingers, pressed much more deeply into the rising flakes of whiteness. Snow settled on my eyelashes and cheeks, too: I had not been wise enough to wear a scarf or hat when I had escaped our house, and so in no time at all I was a thin shivering thing beside him.
Finally he chuckled instead of speaking, and swept his cloak off to wrap around my shoulders. It had a velvet collar, high and soft, that brushed my cheeks as warmly as his laugh did, and the intoxicating scent of his cologne was strong. I felt a hot sharp pain of excitement in my bones and struggled not to tremble.
"You are Estelle's daughter through and through," he said then. "She also believes that the African sun of her childhood could not have abandoned her, and that she can walk through wintery Parisian streets to no ill effect. It is Amélie, is it not?"
"Amelia," I whispered, for my father had chosen the name and my mother had accepted his American way of saying it.
"Amelia," the Benefactor said thoughtfully. "I have not seen you properly for years. Not since you so passionately petitioned me on your parents' behalf. I had thought we might see each other again after that."
He turned me toward him as he spoke and tipped my chin up with a finger. Laughter lines crinkled around his eyes, reminding me that he was ancient, as old as my parents at least, but age enhanced, rather than diminished, his beauty. I drank in his smile and the greenness of his eyes like a woman denied water across a desert march, and forgot completely to speak. I could not have, even if I had thought to: the breath in my lungs was squeezed away, not even a trace of steam to linger on the cold air.
"Why did you follow me, Amelia?"
"Amelia," he repeated when I did not, could not, speak, "why did you follow me? Your parents wouldn't approve."
"My parents think I am still a child!" The answer burst out childishly, and mortification burned my cheeks.
"All parents see their children as children, long past the day they should know them as adults." The Benefactor—Monsieur Laval; I struggled to think of him that way and failed—the Benefactor offered me his arm, clad now only in his beautifully made suit, though he showed no sign of chill in the cold night. We began to walk, although I had no confidence that my feet even touched the ground. On his arm I thought I might be flying, and was loathe to look down and discover I was not. "I am sure your parents have many names for me, Amelia, but you may call me Paul-Gabriel."
I whispered, "Gabriel," though to a Frenchman, to use only part of a name was an oddity. But my father was American and, as Maman said, besotted with nicknames. "Gabriel is the angel who whispered to Joan of Arc. The angel of voices."
"As I hope I have been to Estelle," he said with gentle self-deprecation. "Does it please you, then, this name? Gabriel?"
I nodded, mute with the power of my heartbeat, and the Benefactor stopped at the bridge's corner to lift a gloved finger to my lips. "Then it shall be my secret name between us," he murmured. "You shall be my Amélie, and I, your Gabriel. Do not let your mother see that you wear my cloak, Amélie. She would fear for you, when you and I both know that is hardly necessary."
Then he was gone, taken by the quiet night, and though I spun and searched, I saw no footprint to follow in the snow.