If the cancer didn’t kill Margot, the medicinal stink mixed with antiseptic that pervaded the halls of the Hôtel-Dieu certainly would. I pressed my nose against Drew’s shoulder as we walked quickly down the long corridor toward Margot’s room, my emotions—anger, guilt, pity—all roly-poly and unable to separate. It was as if a red sock had been tossed in the wash along with the white ones, staining everything.
Drew remained outside the door of the private room, squeezing my shoulder for encouragement as if I were a fellow football player ready to run onto the playing field. And, I thought, perhaps I was.
The woman lying against the white pillow bore little resemblance to the woman whom I had met at the Ritz. But as I stood by the side of her bed and looked down at her, I saw that her light still existed in her eyes, and as long as that wasn’t extinguished, the essence of the woman remained.
“Daisy?” The simple word felt heavy on my tongue.
Her fingers opened, and she smiled. Without hesitation she reached for my hand.
My entire prepared speech evaporated, my thoughts and feelings suddenly unimportant. All that remained of all that was past was two women who’d loved the same man with all of their hearts.
I slid Kit’s ring from my finger and placed it into her open palm, a token of all the guilt I’d been carrying around like a valise for so long. “I’m sorry.” All of my rehearsed words were condensed into just those inadequate two.
“Sorry?” Her voice had faded, too, like the rest of her body. But not those eyes.
“The letter you sent to Kit. I never showed it to him. I don’t . . .” I stopped, knowing we didn’t have enough time for me to try to explain. I wasn’t even sure that I could explain it to myself. Instead, I simply said, “Forgive me.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “You loved him. You . . . gave him children. Made him happy. Nothing to . . . forgive.”
“He loved you,” I said, the words not hurting as much as I’d thought they would. “He never stopped. Until the day he died, he never stopped loving you.”
She took my hand, the bones of her hand as brittle as a bird’s. “Shh,” she whispered. “He loved us both.” Something warm and hard pressed against my palm as she closed her hand around mine. The indentation of the two swans pressed against my skin. Two swans, meant to mate for life. It made me oddly happy that Kit’s ring had belonged to Daisy for all of these years. It was somehow fitting. “For Kit’s son, yes?”
Tears fell on our linked hands and I was surprised to find that they were mine. “Thank you.” There was so much more I wanted to say, but the words were thick and stale in my throat, words of apology and explanation for which this remarkable woman had already forgiven me.
The sound of approaching footsteps came from the hallway outside. I looked up, recognizing an older Madeleine and Olivier as they rushed into the room. I leaned down and kissed Daisy’s forehead, her skin cold against my lips. “Goodbye, Daisy.”
Then I let go of her hand, taking the ring with me, and left the room. Drew put his arm around me as he led me down the corridor, pulling me out of the way as a young woman of about twenty rushed by us. She was tall and slender, and wearing chic Parisian clothes. Her golden-brown hair, much lighter than her straight, dark brows, flew about her head in wild disarray. I knew I’d never seen her before, yet there was something so familiar. If I could only see her eyes . . .
“Maman!” she called out as she entered Daisy’s room.
Drew pulled me away, leaving me no time to brood or to mourn a woman I’d barely known yet who had been a part of my life for so many years.
The ride in the taxi on the way back was subdued, which was curious considering how much needed to be said. There was Daisy, of course, but I couldn’t as yet wrap my mind around all of those implications. But there was also the matter of La Fleur, and whether or not she’d been a traitor. And the talisman. But mostly, the one thing that weighed heaviest in my heart, was that Drew was leaving. It was awful, really. I was a grown woman, a widow. I’d survived privations during wartime. I’d even discovered that my husband had loved another woman. But this, this hollowness felt alien to me. It was like a nightmare from which I couldn’t awaken, a nightmare where everything I’d ever learned, everything I’d ever loved and cherished, had been declared null and void.
We walked silently into the Ritz, the constant clacking of Prunella’s typewriter making me want to screech at her to stop. That nobody cared about her stupid memoirs, that a woman was dying—if not already dead—and my heart was being broken for the second time and I wasn’t sure how I was to survive it.
As if sensing my mood, Drew took my hand, stopping me as I headed in the elderly woman’s direction, intent on committing violence against a typewriter. “Babs, I’m sorry. I wish . . .”
“Is she gone?”
We both turned to see Precious Dubose, returned to her immaculate self, standing oddly composed and holding something in her hands.
“I assume so,” I said. “Her children arrived, and we didn’t want to intrude. Did you . . . ”
She shook her head. “After I’d had my little nap, I realized that we’d already said everything we needed to say to each other, and our goodbyes. I’m glad the children made it in time. They have always been her world.”
“Next to Kit,” I said, and I could tell that she already knew.
“Come on,” she said. “These are sitting down shoes, and I’ve got lots to tell you.” We followed her to a banquette in the long, carpeted hall and sat down. A waiter approached, and she immediately dismissed him. Without a word, she opened up her hands and what appeared to be a bundle of rags slipped onto the table.
I didn’t understand until Precious began pushing aside the soiled and torn cloth, exposing a scratched gold medallion with a cracked crystal window in the center, a gold ring around it where the prongs of missing jewels still clung. I knew if I flipped it over, we’d see an engraving of a wolf with a cross.
“It’s the talisman,” Drew and I said in unison, our gazes moving from the table to Precious and then back again.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve found La Fleur.”
We were both stunned into silence, even the sounds of the bustling hotel muted somehow. “But . . .” My brain felt waterlogged, swishing from one side of my head to the other, unable to settle on any one thought. “But what about Daisy?”
“She was La Fleur, too. She started the name, but I took over as La Fleur when her identity was compromised and she fled with her children and grandmama to Canada. I’d been working with the Resistance since I’d arrived from London, so I was already familiar with our other operatives. It made sense, and so I slipped from one persona to another.” Her smile became secretive. “Reinvention is my best talent, you know.”
“So you knew Kit,” I said, my head beginning to hurt with all of the implications.
“I certainly did. He was a very fine man—one of the best. He reminded me very much of someone I had known in London, someone with an equally good heart and strong sense of purpose.” She paused, swallowed, then allowed a small smile to tease her lips. “I knew you were his wife the moment we met and you said your last name was Langford. I had to assume you were here to find La Fleur.”