I spend the next day avoiding the sculptures, poring over online archives, revising the little I know of Constance’s time at D’Arvor. Then at dinner, I tell Marie-Laure that I have booked a taxi to take me to Rennes in the morning.
“What on earth for?” she asks.
“There’s a collection of Sorel sculptures in the Museum of Fine Arts,” I say. “It will help my research.”
Her brow furrows as she tosses the salad. She’s more tanned than she was when I arrived. I have hardly seen her inside.
“Surely you can access their collection online,” she says.
“It’s not the same.” I look to Frédéric and Lila for support, but they’re pretending to study the cutlery, like a pair of children caught in a parental row. The thought comes that Marie-Laure doesn’t think I know what I’m doing. You shouldn’t have to justify yourself, Camille. You’re the expert. “They have works from the same period of her life,” I explain. “Yet they’re very different. I’m hoping, by comparing and contrasting, to be able to make sense of a chronology. That will really help.”
She seems absent, off in her thoughts. “How different?”
I’m about to answer vaguely, but Frédéric interrupts me, addressing his mother. “Didn’t we used to have one of those? One of the fairies—the one Max got a bit obsessed with?”
Obsessed? I stare at him, but Marie-Laure shrugs. “We donated it years ago. And now I have been made to feel like we shouldn’t have.”
I didn’t mean to criticize her—we’re off on the wrong foot, and I can’t quite understand why. Frédéric turns back to me. “I’m surprised you have to do so much, Ms. Leray. I mean it all sounds like rather hard work. I would have thought you’d merely take a quick look then slap a price tag on the things.”
I burst out laughing.
“Frédéric, don’t be so crude,” Marie-Laure scolds him.
“I wish it were that simple,” I tell him, thinking how it is often the people who grow up surrounded by priceless beauty who can’t appreciate it at all. “I’ll only be gone for the day,” I turn back to Marie-Laure. “And I assure you it’s an important part of my work.”
“A whole day? Rennes is merely an hour away,” she says, her lips pursed.
I can’t hide my surprise at her tone. “These things take time,” I say. I’ve had many a worse confrontation, but my hands under the table start to twitch. I don’t need to justify my time to her. I don’t need to ask her permission to meet up with Lowen in the evening. Not you, I plead with Marie-Laure silently, please don’t be like that.
Then, she relaxes. “Of course you have to go. Sorry if I seemed a little taken aback.” Her lipstick is so bright her other features disappear in it, as if absorbed. “We have been enjoying your company. It is quiet here, and you have been very welcome.”
So she wasn’t berating me—she likes having me around. My cheeks flush with this praise, the sustained attentions of her garden salads, and her quiet vigilance.
“Luckily,” she continues, “Lila is going to Rennes tomorrow as well.”
Both Lila and I move our gaze from Marie-Laure to each other. We’ve been avoiding each other since our confrontation that night on the stairs. And I’m to be strapped inside her car again? I imagine sinking into a pile of chewing gum wrappers, Lila standing outside, watching me disappear.
“I am?” she asks.
“Yes, dear. You were going to leave right after breakfast, weren’t you?”
Lila’s brow tenses. “Ah yes, I’m going because Maxime forgot his…” She trails off.
“…diary,” Marie-Laure says. “He is under such stress at the gallery. But you’re always so helpful.” Then she turns to me: “She’ll drive you. You can have a road trip, can’t you, girls?”
Lila and I both nod, and through the tension I also feel our shared puzzlement at Marie-Laure’s use of the word girls. Nobody ever called me that, not when I was nine, or fourteen. I was never a girl, always a mini-adult, functioning as such, and certainly not part of a collective bearing shiny hair and lacrosse sticks. I have to admire anyone who uses that word in reference to an adult woman wearing a black suit who has two master’s degrees.
However, it feels nice to have someone like Marie-Laure talk to me like I could be her niece. It is also, I suppose, nice for her to assume Lila and I could become friends. I wonder if she’ll give us pocket money for the trip. I smile to myself to try to stifle the growing ache of what a normal family the Foucaults are turning out to be, with their bickering and blunders. I suppose I’m not used to having someone look closely at what I’m doing because they care. I think of Maman and find a flash of anger where before there was only cold understanding.
Why could you not be part of this family, says a quiet voice, in any way possible? What if you please the Foucaults with your outstanding work?
What if you could even give them more—something nobody else could? Make yourself precious to them, unique and irreplaceable?
What if that’s the reason Maxime never forgot you?