“I—” he started, but stopped, glancing over his shoulder, then moved close to me. “I have a letter,” he whispered, putting a hand over his breast. “Mr. Myers brought it for me; it has my name on it.”
That would be startling, I thought. As was the case with Fanny, it was undoubtedly the first personal letter he’d ever received.
“Who is it from?” I asked, and heard him swallow.
“My mam,” he said. “It— I know her writing.”
“You haven’t opened it yet?” I asked.
He shook his head, pressing his hand against his chest as though fearing the letter might fly out by itself.
“Germain,” I said softly, and rubbed his back, feeling his shoulder blades sharp under the flannel shirt. “Your mother loves you. You don’t need to be af—”
“No, she doesn’t!” he burst out, and curled up tight, trying to contain the hurt. “She doesn’t, she can’t … I—I killed Henri-Christian. She c-can’t … can’t even look at me!”
I got my arms round him and pulled him to me. He wasn’t a tiny boy by any means, but I pressed his head into my shoulder and held him like a baby, rocking a little, making soft shushing sounds while he cried, big gulping sobs that he couldn’t hold back.
What could I say to him? I couldn’t just tell him he was wrong; simple contradiction never works with children, even when it’s the obvious truth. And in all honesty, this wasn’t obvious.
“You didn’t kill Henri-Christian,” I said, keeping my voice steady with some effort. “I was there, Germain.” I had been there, and I didn’t want to go back. Just Henri-Christian’s name, and it was all there, surrounding us both: the reek of smoke and the boom of exploding barrels of ink and varnish and the roar of flames coming up through the loft, Germain clinging to a rope, dangling high above the cobblestones. Reaching for his little brother …
It was no use. I couldn’t hold back my own tears and I held him hard, my face pressed against his hair with its smell of boy and innocence.
“It was awful,” I whispered. “So terrible. But it was an accident, Germain. You tried all you could to save him. You know you did.”
“Yes,” he managed, “but I couldn’t! Oh, Grannie, I couldn’t!”
“I know,” I whispered, over and over, rocking him. “I know.”
And slowly, the horror and the grief subsided into sorrow. We sniffled and wept and I found a handkerchief for him and wiped my own nose on my apron.
“Give me the letter, Germain,” I said, clearing my throat. I sat back against the bed. “I don’t know what it says, but you have to read it. Some things you just have to go through.”
“I can’t read it,” he said, and gave a small forlorn laugh. “It’s too dark.”
“I’ll go and get a candle from the surgery.” I got my feet under me and stood up; I was stiff from crouching on the floor, and it was a moment before I could be sure of my balance. “There’s water on the table, there. You have a drink and lie down on the bed. I’ll be right back.”
I went downstairs in that sort of grim resignation one enters when there’s nothing else to be done, and climbed the stairs again, the candle’s glow softening the rough boards of the stairwell, shadowing my steps.
The truth was that while Marsali naturally didn’t blame Germain for Henri-Christian, he was probably right about her not having been able to look at him without being torn apart by the memory of it. That was why, without much being said about it, we had brought Germain with us to the Ridge, in hopes that both he and his family would heal more easily with a little distance.
Now he probably thought that his mother had written to tell him that she didn’t want him back, ever.
“Poor things,” I whispered, meaning Germain, Henri-Christian, and their mother. I was quite sure—well, almost quite sure—that Marsali intended no such thing, but I could feel his fear.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping his knees, and looked up at me with his eyes huge, dark with longing. The letter lay by his side and I picked it up, sat down beside him, and opened it. I made a gesture, offering it to him, but he shook his head.
“All right,” I said, cleared my throat, and began to read.
“Mon cher petit ami—”
I paused, both from surprise and because Germain had stiffened.
“Oh,” he said, in a very small voice. “Oh.”
“Oh!” I said myself, suddenly understanding, and my clenched heart relaxed. Mon cher petit ami was what Marsali had called him when he was very small, before the girls had been born.
It would be all right, then.
“What does it say, Grannie? What does it say?”
Germain was pressed up tight against my side, suddenly eager to look.
“Do you want to read it yourself?” I asked, smiling and offering it to him. He shook his head violently, blond hair flying.
“You,” he said, husky. “You, Grannie. Please.”
“Mon cher petit ami,
We have just found a new house, but it will never be home until you are here.
Your sisters miss you terribly (they have sent locks of their hair— in case you were wondering what these straggly things are—or in case you’ve forgotten what they look like, they say. Joanie’s hair is the light brown, and Félicité’s the dark one. The yellow ones belong to the cat), and Papa longs for you to come and help him. He forbids the girls to go into taverns to deliver the papers and broadsheets—though they want to!
You also have two new little brothers who—”
“Two?” Germain grabbed the page from me and held it as near the candle as he could without setting it on fire. “Did she say two?”
“Yes!” I was nearly as excited as he was to hear it, and bent over the page, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. “Read the next bit!”
He straightened up a little and swallowed, then read on:
“We were all very surprised, as you might think! To be honest, I had been afraid all the time, to think about what the new baby might be. Because I wanted to see a child just like Henri-Christian, of course—to feel as though we had him back—but I knew that couldn’t happen, and at the same time, I was afraid that the new little one might be a dwarf, too—maybe your Grannie has told you that people who are born like that have a lot of troubles; Henri-Christian nearly died several times when he was very small, and Papa told me long ago about some of the dwarf-children he had known in Paris, and that most didn’t live a long life.
But a new baby is always a surprise and a miracle and never what you expect. When you were born, I was so enchanted that I would sit by your cradle and watch you sleep. Just letting the candle burn down because I couldn’t bear to put it out and let the night hide you from me.
We thought at first, when the babies were born, that perhaps we should name one of them Henri and the other Christian, but the girls wouldn’t have it. They both said that Henri-Christian was not like anyone else, and no one else should have his name.
“Papa and I agreed that they were right”—Germain was nodding his head as he read—“and so one of your brothers is named Alexandre and the other one Charles-Claire …”