They count. They recount. It’s the only thing they know to do, except there’s no more to count. Tristan and Emma don’t have a penny to their names. The prefect’s money transfers stopped coming one month after his protégé left the university and his room at Mrs. Klimt’s.
Tristan didn’t go back to Hector’s. He lives at Emma’s, in her arms, in her vision for the future. He is more alone than ever. Yet he’s with her. The two of them are alone, and that’s worse.
“Tomorrow, we’re leaving,” she announces to him. “We’re going back to France.”
“How?”
“I have a plan. Someone will bring us over on a boat. After that, we’ll hitchhike. We can’t stay here anymore. There’s my stepmother’s house. She’s dead. I have the keys. We’ll go there. It’s in a field, in a village. Life won’t cost anything. We’ll plant vegetables.”
“I have to say good-bye to them,” says Tristan.
“To whom?”
“To Mrs. Klimt, to Hector. I have to say thank you.”
“We don’t have time. We have to pack. We have to leave.”
“Let me go see them.”
“No. They’re old. They’re used to it.”
“They’ve already lost a son,” argues Tristan, not sure of anything, ignorant of his host family’s true history, as crumbled as his own existence.
“That’s every parent’s destiny,” Emma responds. “All parents lose their children. You’re not going to change that.”
On the boat—a feminine vessel leaving the port of Dover, a masculine navire coming up alongside Calais—they wrap their arms around each other’s waists. “Happy” isn’t the right word. Ambitious, afraid, armed with orphans’ courage.
“I’m going to write books,” she promises him. “I’ll sell thousands of ’em. We’ll get through this.”
“What about me?” asks Tristan.
“You?” says Emma, laughing. “You’re young, you have time. You’ll find something.”