There was something comforting to Harry the second he stepped into the old warehouse. It was the familiarity of what lay before him, the stockpiles of old, the things people had discarded or forgotten all corralled together for safekeeping. Even the smell was something to which he could relate. It was the scent of old books, sweet and musty, and he realized with a sense of sadness that it sparked a memory of the home he had known for the last decade. The longest time he had ever stayed anywhere.
Tabitha was already rummaging through the goods, kicking up a bit of a dust cloud. She was searching for something it seemed, although from the frenzied movements nobody would have guessed what. Urgent fingers moved over glassware, crockery, old dolls. Then she stopped as they heard movement in a back office, the scrape of a chair, and footsteps on the wooden floor that steadily grew closer.
An aging man stood before them, slim and tall, his hair receding yet still long on top. The man spoke in French, and then converted into English when his two guests didn’t understand. “You are in the wrong place,” he said. “This is a storage warehouse. My shop is in the town.”
Harry looked to Tabitha, who was dusting off her hands. But Harry was transfixed by the man, trying to work out if he had seen him before, and how old he might be. Mid-sixties he thought. Maybe seventies. Although he seemed familiar, it was clear that he didn’t recognize either Harry or Tabitha; he did not look in the least bit pleased to see them.
“I’m sorry,” Tabitha said, “but Alex from the gallery directed us here. I’m an enthusiast, you see,” she said, nodding toward the tables. “The collection that you have here is wonderful.” The man stopped and turned to face them, and Harry couldn’t help but be impressed by Tabitha’s tenacity. “Isn’t that a Pairpoint?” she said, pointing to a lampshade set on what appeared to be a solid brass stand. Soft, muted colors decorated the shade, a motif of flowers and foliage.
The man was quiet for a moment, before his whole body seemed to shift into an altogether softer pose. In the silence, the building seemed to creak around them. “Yes,” he said, moving closer, smiling for the first time. “You know about glassware?”
She shook her head. “Not really. It’s not my specialty, but my father was a big fan of Pairpoint glass. We had a few pieces in our house. Still got them, probably.”
The man was nodding, and after a moment he approached. “Well, you have an eye for it, that’s for sure. This is a very rare example. Worth quite a bit, I’m hoping. It goes to auction next month.” Setting down some paperwork on the nearest table, he held out his hand. “Benoit Bonnet. Pleasure to meet a fellow enthusiast, as you put it.” He turned to Harry. “And you are also in the antiques business?”
“No, no. Not at all,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m just Harry. Tabitha is the expert here.”
“An expert?” he said, smiling. “What is it that you do?”
“I work as a museum curator,” she said, picking up a small china dish and inspecting its markings on the underside. “I specialize in twentieth-century art and its restitution.”
“Restitution?” The man sat back against the table and folded his arms. “I have a keen interest in that myself. Have you worked on any big pieces?”
This was the first Harry had heard of it, and he wondered if perhaps it was an elaborate fable to direct the conversation toward the Klinkosch box. As far as he knew she was curating a show about Chinese ceramics. But Tabitha nodded, totally convincing. “A few. A Picasso, and a Degas. Some smaller, lesser-known pieces.”
“That is most impressive.”
She set the little china dish back down among the litter of goods and Harry watched Benoit’s eyes follow it. “I believe every piece should be returned to its rightful owner, don’t you?”
“I do.” Harry could feel his heart racing. “If I may, which Picasso did you work on?”
“Buste de Femme.” Her gaze followed as Benoit gripped the table. “A few years ago, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes,” he said, hurrying forward. “Really, you worked on it?”
“Loosely. Those responsible for its recovery are friends. I did very little myself.”
“Anything you did garners you good favor with me.” As the two smiled, both understood a truce of trust had been won. “So,” Benoit continued. “You are not from around here, I take it. You are here on holiday, no?”
“We are staying nearby. At the painter’s retreat.”
“Ah,” he said with a sigh. “Madame Henrietta. I do believe she cooks a wonderful breakfast.” Harry noticed Benoit smiling at him, perhaps trying to lure him into the conversation. He nodded to show willingness, although inside his thoughts were all over the place, like a tangle of wires at the back of a television. “We used to be good friends, a long time ago. Many years have passed since then.” His gaze drifted, as if revisiting something or somebody from a distant time in the past. His eyes settled on Harry again, and then, as if somebody pressed a button, Benoit shook the memory away and got himself back on track. “Well, I don’t suppose there is any harm in you browsing what we have here. Please, take a look around, as long as you like. Can I tempt you with an espresso, or some tea while you are here?” He shrugged as if it was no bother. “I was just about to make some.”
While Benoit made tea for Harry and coffee for Tabitha she continued to rummage, cooing to herself as she came across items that took her fancy. Imagining his mother might have shared a similar joy when her collections began, when her logging of each item was a carefully managed inventory, sympathy grew inside him for her then. Joy, he realized, could go either way. Feelings needed expression, but they also needed to be shared. There was no joy in isolation, otherwise it could lead you down a path from which it was very difficult to return. That was something he had learned now. He stood up and wandered over to where Tabitha was sitting on a tea chest, flicking through a box of old postcards.
“Do you know,” she said, “there is probably something like the value of a thousand pounds in this one box. Some of these could go for fifteen, twenty pounds each, and look how many there are. This is all treasure,” she said, her eyes still on the box, her arm motioning behind her in the general direction of the shop.
“That may be so,” Harry whispered, “but we’re not here for all this, are we? We’re supposed to be finding out what he knows about my mother.”
“And we will,” she hissed in response. “But we can’t just blurt it out, can we?”
Just then Benoit arrived alongside them with a small tray carrying three cups.
“She is right, you know,” he said to Harry. “We have quite a lot of nice things at the moment. Like this.” Benoit handed Harry a necklace and as he held out his hand it fell like a silk thread into his palm. “Eighteen carat, diamond links. It’s a Van Cleef and Arpels.”
Tabitha dropped the book she was leafing through and rushed toward them. Her eyes widened at the piece. “Oh my goodness, is it really?”
“It is,” Benoit said. “You know the maker?”
“Yes. I know their pieces well. It’s beautiful.”
“And quite rare,” Benoit added, removing the piece from Harry’s grip. Benoit set it back on the side and turned to the small tray, picking up and handing them both a cup. “Let me show you around. Just”—he stopped, a sudden and urgent fear—“please do be careful. I really don’t have things stored as safely as I once did. I don’t get many visitors now.”
Benoit gave them a tour of the shop, showed them some of his favorite items. Shelves showcased paintings and books, first editions and rare copies, jewelry more beautiful than either of them had ever seen. Harry listened as Benoit and Tabitha discussed dates and painters and felt simultaneously impressed by Tabitha’s knowledge, and bewildered by the fact he knew so little. It was in a moment of contemplation when Harry realized that Tabitha was raising the idea of the box.
“We saw it in the church,” she said. “The photo in the chapel.” Benoit was nodding. “The placard said it was still lost.”
“Since the war, my dear.” He shook his head and let go of a heavy sigh. “A terrible shame.”
“And it belonged in your family? Your name is Bonnet, but I thought it belonged to the Ellison family?”
“You are a remarkable historian,” he said with a smile, “and also quite right. My grandfather was Jacob Ellison. He gave it as a gift to my mother when she married my father. But where it is now, we could never hope to know.”
Harry saw something on her face change, a bitten lip that couldn’t contain whatever was coming next. “What if we knew where it was?”
Benoit sat back against the side, folded his arms slowly across his chest. He set down the small trinket that he had been holding in his fingers, looking from Harry to Tabitha and back again. “Well, first off I’d say you were lying, and then if you persisted, I’d ask you what you wanted, and what exactly you were doing here.”
The mood had changed, each now suspicious of the other. Tabitha was shaking her head. “We’re not lying. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly or not at all?”
Tabitha slumped against a wooden post. “The Klinkosch box is somewhere in his mother’s house.”
Benoit stood up. Harry could see the small hairs on Benoit’s forearms standing on end, and a bead of sweat tracking down a crease on his face. His eyes darted around a little before landing on Harry. “Your mother’s house?”
Harry’s body shook, and a strange taste flooded his mouth. He couldn’t remember feeling so nervous before in his life. It was as if he was on the cusp of a confession, although he had no idea what it was. Slowly, Harry nodded. “Apparently so.”
For a moment Benoit was dumbfounded. He sat and stood several times. His breathing had changed. It was almost as if he had just gone for a quick run and come back red-faced and out of breath. “And who is your mother?”
Harry spoke quietly, the sound of the name bringing back a whole host of memories, many of which he wished were different. But some, he now knew, thinking of the photograph of him sitting in front of the small igloo, were good. “Frances Langley.”
Both Harry and Tabitha saw the shift in Benoit’s mood. He sat for one final time, but it was an entirely passive moment, his body slumping under the weight of what had been said. It was as if somebody had just told him that he was the president of his country and that they were on the brink of war. The information had taken the breath right out of him, visibly deflating right before their eyes. His hand found the countertop and some of the knickknacks went awry.
“Frances,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to either of them. “My Frances.”
“Are you okay, Monsieur Bonnet?” Tabitha asked.
“Fine, fine.” He batted her hand away, appearing anything but. “I have these dizzy spells,” he said, wafting air toward his face. “It’s hot in here.” His gaze weaved its way across items until it settled on Harry. “Your mother? Frances was your mother?”
“Yes.”
Benoit was quiet then, his eyes unblinking as if looking for an answer and not wanting to miss it, fleeting as it might be. “And she told you of this box? Of its location?”
“She asked me to find it, and said only that it was in her house. It was after she died.”
“What?” In that moment he became even more desperate. “Frances is . . . is gone?”
“A few weeks ago.” And that was when they noticed that Benoit was crying. “I’m sorry, I’ve upset you,” Harry said, trying the best he could to recover his composure.
“You knew her, didn’t you?” Tabitha probed.
Benoit wiped his eyes on the handkerchief from his top pocket and nodded. “She spent her summers here when she was younger. I cared for her a great deal. A very sweet girl.” The confusion clouded his thoughts. “But she is too young to have died,” he said, and the thought seemed to lead him to some unknown place neither of them could have pictured. “Too young to . . . too young for . . . Please,” he said, eventually looking up. “Tell me how?”
“A blood clot formed in her leg, traveled to her lungs.”
Tabitha still wasn’t sure what they had uncovered here, but she was sure it was something both as painful as it was pertinent. She looked at Benoit, whose limp face appeared red and puffy, and then to Harry, who looked as lost as a small boy on his first day of school. What was it that had moved Benoit so? Why was he so upset to learn of the death of a girl he once knew so many years before? And it was then she realized, finally seeing the facts before her, that everything made sense. She recognized the look on his face, and realized she understood it as something from her own past. It was the look of a person who had just lost the love of their life. It was her own reflection when she lost Harry.
Tabitha stood up, moved a little closer to the two men who were still not saying or doing anything.
“Benoit,” she said. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“What is me?”
“You weren’t shocked that his mother had the box, only that we knew she had it. You gave it to her, didn’t you?”
Benoit seemed to compose himself then. He stood up, his damp forehead creasing at the idea, his face wrinkled and puckered. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tabitha was smiling. She sat next to Harry and held his hand. “I thought he was too old at first, but it makes perfect sense. The letters. The book. B.” Harry understood where she was going with the idea. Tabitha gazed at Benoit. “It’s you. You loved her.”
“I said I don’t know what you are talking about,” Benoit protested, but Tabitha knew from the way he couldn’t meet her gaze anymore that he was lying.
Tabitha turned to Harry. “Don’t you see?” It took a moment to process the implication of everything she was saying, all the loose connections finding their complementary half until the picture was complete. He was trying to reconstruct a history he had no idea about, and the strangest thing was that, despite all the gaps, it didn’t seem so implausible.
“But he’s . . .”
“Old,” said Tabitha for him. “Yes.” She stood up then, moved closer to Benoit, who despite all appearances of wanting to flee seemed rooted to the spot. “That’s why you never signed your name on the letters, isn’t it? Why nobody ever knew who his father was.” She reached back, pulled Harry toward Benoit. “Don’t you see it?” she asked Harry, looking from him to Benoit. “Don’t you see what Alex saw? This man is your father.”
Could he see it? The man before him sure was older than he had ever anticipated his father to be. But he couldn’t deny that it made sense, that the links in the chain seemed logical. But before he could answer Benoit broke the silence. “You don’t look like me. You look like her,” he stuttered, another tear forming in his eye. Muttering his apologies, he ran from the room, tipping a table and a box of greeting cards as he fled. The sight was so plaintive that neither of them tried to stop him or said anything in return. They watched as he slammed the door and then heard the clunk as he locked the office from inside.
“Are you okay?” Tabitha asked after a moment, both standing there watching with hope that Benoit might return. When Harry didn’t answer she didn’t push it. Not at first. But then she heard the whistle of his breath as he gasped for air. “Harry, do you need to sit down?”
“I’m going to have an asthma attack,” he said, before he staggered forward and pushed the door to the warehouse wide open. Rushing onto the gravel driveway, he fell to his knees. Tabitha joined him, rubbed his back until he managed to pull his inhaler from his pocket. With the inhaler against his lips he went to breathe in before pausing, pulling back slightly to regard the device. After a moment’s thought, he remembered what the doctor had said at the hospital, and tossed it to the ground.
“Harry, you should take it.” Kneeling beside him she reached for the inhaler, and with a smile and soft movements she brought it to his lips. “Just one puff. You’ll feel better.”
“No,” he said, pushing her away. “I don’t have asthma.” Leaning in, Tabitha appeared confused. “They told me at the hospital. It’s just a panic attack. It’s all in my mind.”
Tabitha chose not to question him, only held on to his hands, and after a while, sitting together, his breathing returned to normal and he could bring himself to speak. Warm sunlight caressed his face.
“Are you okay now?”
He felt his face flush. “A bit embarrassed, if I’m honest.”
“Well, you have no reason to be. There’s no shame in having a panic attack. It was pretty big information you just got delivered in there.”
“I don’t know. I can’t really believe that man is my father. He’s so old. I think I just want to go back to the farmhouse. Can we please go?”
“Of course we can,” she said. “Let’s take a steady drive back. There’s no point staying here right now. He obviously needs time. Come on,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Let me help you up.”
Driving back to the farmhouse, slower than their journey there, they didn’t speak of what had just happened. All the way her hand cupped his, holding him close to her side, and despite the recent revelation concerning her departure for New York, he found comfort in her presence. There was a certainty to it that he cherished, and he knew he would continue to revere that connection even once she was gone. While they hadn’t quite solved the mystery of the box, it felt as if they were almost close enough to touch the answers. Even the possibility of having found his father didn’t seem as farfetched as it once had. All the clues were there. Was it possible that Benoit had loved his mother and fathered a child? It seemed not only a possibility, but more likely than anything he had ever considered before.
“Harry, I’m only going to say this once, so make sure you listen to me,” Tabitha said as they arrived back to the quiet of their bedroom, bags half packed on the bed. “We can’t, under any circumstances, leave now.” Their skin was damp with sweat. The sounds of the painters chatting over lunch thrummed through the heat of midday. Harry was sitting on the edge of the bed, still in shock. Tabitha was pacing back and forth, fired up and ready to dig. “It all makes sense. We have to go back another time and talk to him again.”
But Harry didn’t hear her. He wasn’t listening to anything but the thunderous sound of his own thoughts, raining down on him like a torrent. “Even then he would have been, what, thirty? Thirty-five? Mum was sixteen when she got pregnant with me.”
“It would explain everything, Harry, including why she never told you. She loved him, so maybe she was protecting him.” A memory came to him then, of a holiday they had once shared in Greece, the way her nose tanned deeper than the rest of her face, and how she got freckles in a small patch on her left cheek. The little moped they’d hired, the day on the beach where they found a stone in the shape of a heart. Where was that stone now? What had happened to those hopeful people? What had happened to him? “We have found your father, Harry. We must stay. You can’t let it go now you’re this close.”
His weight shifted as she sat beside him. Harry watched as her hand slipped over his. “He didn’t look very happy about it though, did he?”
“He was in shock. Your aunt said that your mother left France in a rush, so maybe he never even knew about you.” Harry felt her fingers grip his. “He didn’t know what to say to us, that was all.”
Harry found himself thinking about the man they had met just an hour before. He didn’t know him of course, had no idea about his life or beliefs or the things he liked. But he had warmed to him. He had seemed familiar, as if perhaps he had met him before. But perhaps it was not Benoit he recognized, but instead himself in Benoit’s features. Could they have that conversation? Could Harry finally have the answers he had always hoped for?
“You really think he’d want me to go back?”
“Yes, I do.” She knelt on the floor before him, resting her arms on his legs. Lowering her voice, she spoke as she once had in the past, when it was just them, as close as skin, watching her eyes glisten in the dark. “Who wouldn’t want you in their life?”
Their time together that morning had made him forget that France was coming to an end. That she was leaving him, as he had once left her. Remembering now, it was as if it was happening all over again.
“You, Tabitha.” For a moment she was confused, but he had to tell her he knew. “I’m going to lose you, aren’t I? I overheard you this morning. I know about the job in New York.”
She sat back on her heels, rubbed her hands across her face. “So that’s why you wanted to leave? Get it over and done with?” He shrugged. Scrunching up her eyes, she shook her head. “You think I’m leaving because I care more about a job in New York than I do you?”
“Don’t you?”
Fingertips pinched at her eyes as if it was all too much. “Why do you always do this, Harry? Of all the times to raise this, you raise it now. If you knew, why didn’t you ask me about it? You always make decisions based on your own thoughts without even talking to the other people about how they feel first.”
“Tabitha,” he said, amazed that somehow, he was to blame in this. “You took a job in New York. I heard it with my own ears.”
“And on your own you decided that meant I didn’t care about you? After coming here with you, staying with you at your house? You really think that’s what this boils down to?”
“What does it boil down to?” He was feeling nervous then, could tell that she was on the verge of tears.
“I applied for that job before all this began. I was looking for a way to get away. But you still have no idea how I feel about you, do you? I’m going to protect you. Because I’m scared that if I’m with you Daniel will get to us both, that he will hurt you.”
“I’m not scared of Daniel.”
“You should be.” Sinking to the bed, her head dropped into her hands. She began to half laugh, half cry. Harry wasn’t sure which it was, but knew there was nothing funny to be found in what was happening. “But that aside, I wasn’t even sure whether you still wanted me in that way.”
“How can you not know that? I was just trying to give you space. I thought that was what you needed.”
“Harry, I’ve never needed space from you. Ten years ago you walked away from me, and I tried then, really tried to forget you. I didn’t want to still love you ten years later.”
“So, what, you do still love me?”
Shaking her head, she said, “I can’t believe you still have to ask.”
He knew it was now or never. There was never going to be another chance for him to get this right. “Tabitha, I still love you too. I was just trying to do the right thing. I wanted to give you space to get over Daniel, and what he did. And, I guess, a chance to leave if that’s what you really wanted.”
Picking up the hem of her skirt, she wiped her eyes. “You’ve been giving me the space to leave, while all along I’ve been trying to work out how I can stay. But I can’t, Harry. I can’t stay. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”
Words hovered on the tip of his tongue. Just a simple request, one wish, and it would be done. Stay with me. But he also knew that it would be selfish. How could he ask her not to go now? Daniel had been controlling her for years, making decisions on her behalf, and he didn’t want to step into his shoes, despite the fact he knew he would be lost without her. He didn’t want to hold on to something just because he could. For years he had been trying to hold on to people he loved, and it hadn’t got him anywhere fast. From the moment his mother left him on that bench, he had been begging for somebody to keep him, always looking for somebody else’s love to define exactly who he was. But he didn’t want to be that little boy on a bench anymore. He didn’t want to define himself or measure his worth by whom he had managed to hold on to. And he certainly didn’t want to hold Tabitha back. He’d had his chance, and he’d blown it over a decade before. They both wanted the same thing, but there was no way to achieve it.
“I do love you, Tabitha, but I know what it’s like to live in a situation that hurts, and I can’t do that to you. You need something different now.”
When he felt his own tears coming, he leaned forward and held her close, their foreheads pressed together. “What if I told you that ten years ago all I ever needed was you?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Then I’d tell you I don’t believe you. Nobody could ever need just that.”
That night his great-aunt Henrietta prepared another feast. A family get-together, she called it, just his aunt and uncle and him and Tabitha. It wasn’t easy to sit alongside Tabitha knowing that what they had was coming to an end, but their confession of love had brought them closer, and they held hands the whole evening. Harry still hadn’t decided whether he was going to leave as planned the next day or whether he was going to try to talk to Benoit one last time. But by then his aunt had confirmed her own suspicions about what went on between his mother and Benoit, although when questioned she said his mother had always denied it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Benoit,” she said as they finished eating. “You see, he often had trouble following him, dodgy types on the hunt for stolen art, and I didn’t want to expose you to it. I was never certain that he was your father, but I do admit I had my suspicions.”
“I wish you’d have told me anyway.”
“I should have,” she said, staring at the table. “But I didn’t want you to get hurt. I felt sure that he was the reason your mother would never come back here. I didn’t want him to be the reason that this was your one and only visit too. There’s not much more I can say, other than I just really didn’t want to lose you.”
A smile crossed his lips at that. “You won’t, Aunt Henrietta. I promise you won’t.”
They climbed the stairs silently after kissing Harry’s family good night. Harry was about to suggest he sleep elsewhere when Tabitha opened their bedroom door a little before midnight and prompted him to go inside. After closing the door, she moved to be close to him. Just as it always did when she was so close that he could feel her breath, his mouth ran dry, his muscles tightened, wondering what she was going to do next. The moment was so alive that he could feel its heartbeat. It could just have been his own. Then, hooking one of her thumbs under the strap of her summer dress, she brushed it down, away from her shoulder. She did the same on the other side and the dress fell away, leaving her in just her underwear. Her body was slim, her tummy rounded, full of food from the meal they had just shared. His gaze followed the curve of her hip, then back again, to her chest, and finally to her face. To see her again like that made it hard to breathe for anticipation. Blushing as she removed the rest of her clothes, she took his hands in hers, and placed them around her waist.
“Look at me, Harry.” Eventually, after a moment of hesitation, he looked up. “How did you never try to kiss me during one of those nights we slept under the same duvet?”
Fear was the simple answer, but how could he tell her that? How could he explain that his fear of being unwanted was still greater than his fear of being alone?
“I wanted to,” he said. “I wanted to so much.”
“But you never did,” she whispered.
With nothing left to say, no mutual conclusion upon which they could agree, she pushed herself against him, and placed her lips on his. For a second it was like it had been the first time, when he couldn’t believe how perfectly they fit, how she knew just where to kiss him to awaken his desires. In her arms he found the comfort of home, of a place he truly belonged. With her, with the person whose body fit against his as if she was a part of him, he felt as if there was nowhere else he was supposed to be. Edging him back to the bed she pushed him to the mattress, climbed on top. Their bodies moved against each other, rocking together, sometimes fast, then slowing down. When it was over, he lay against her, her hair rough in his face, their legs pressed together like clay in a mold. Her fingers stroked against his thigh as he shivered.
“Tabitha,” he whispered, his lips against her neck.
“Yes?” she asked.
Part of him dared believe that what he had found with Tabitha could last forever. All he had to do was say the words. Stay with me. Please don’t leave.
“I never stopped loving you, you know,” he said instead. “Not once since the day I left.”
Patting his hand, she pulled him close. “I love you too, Harry,” she said. But even then, in that perfect moment, he knew that love wasn’t enough. But what he didn’t know was that by the time he woke up, what they had shared together would already be over.