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  PROLOGUE

  When I was a little girl, I believed my mother was really an angel. Not my brother, not even my father knew she had told me so through her eyes, through her smile, and through the graceful softness of her touch. In dreams she hovered over me while I slept, her feathered white wings fanning the air gently, washing my face with warmth and raining down kisses tenderly, each one popping like a soap bubble against my cheek. Nestled in her loving embrace, I was unafraid of darkness and fell asleep easily.

  During my earliest years, we lived in a small beige stone house with white shutters so close to the beach that the Mediterranean Sea sang my lullaby every night. Its waves combed the shore for me to run barefoot in the morning, the sand caressing me between my toes with that evening coolness still clinging to the damp grains. My brother, Yvon, would be sitting behind me, “digging his way to China,” as my father would say. He dug with an intensity that made most people laugh because it looked like my father wasn’t exaggerating.

  Wearing a long white shirt, black pants, and his handmade tan leather sandals, Papa might already be at his easel capturing some vision he had of a sailboat smoothly riding the waves, a seagull born out of a cloud on the horizon, or something he could see but no one else could because he had the artist’s eye. His raven-black hair cut just below the nape of his neck fluttered around him as if his every creative thought made the strands hop with joy.

  Or he might just be sipping his coffee from a black ceramic mug and standing beside my mother, who was looking out at the water, her face a cameo with her perfect profile, her ankle-length indigo peasant skirt dancing around her legs, and her beauty feeling quite at home in a world that seemed untouched by anything ugly or dark. The soft fingers of the breeze brushed through her golden hair as lovingly as I would. Even the rain was apologetic here.

  “If you listen to the wind just before it showers,” my mother said, “you will hear the clouds say, ‘Excusez-moi,’ the rain sometimes remaining nothing more than mist. Good for your complexion, ma chérie.”

  I believed her. An angel would know. I listened for it, and when I was sure I had heard it, I’d run to my mother to tell her, and she would embrace me and laugh, with her laugh always followed by her kisses.

  “I did! I did hear it, Mama!”

  “Of course you did,” she would say, and tickle my ears with her nose. “Didn’t I tell you that you would?”

  She would press me to her soft, perfumed breasts and hold me so tightly that I used to feel she wanted me back inside her, safe in her womb.

  If Papa overheard us while he was working, he would pause like someone stepping back into this world, smile, and then quickly return to his own. We were never to interrupt him while he worked or make too much noise nearby. His artistic creations were gaining more and more in popularity. From farther and farther away, people were coming to consider and buy one of his paintings. A couple even came from Paris to purchase one of his landscapes. He placed them in the small gallery that Monsieur and Madame Passard owned in the village. They had been operating it for decades and ten years ago had met the world-famous Edgar Degas, who let them sell one of his smaller sculptures.

  Mama’s favorite of Papa’s paintings was the one he created of a swan in our village fountain. Everyone who saw it thought it was mystical, because although there were swans in France, there was none on the seaside of Villefranche. Papa would tease Mama sometimes by threatening to give it to the gallery, “just so we can see what it would bring in.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she would tell him, and he would laugh.

  He hung it over their bed, and there was never a time when I wasn’t fascinated by the look on its face and the beauty of its wings and neck. In my heart of hearts I knew that Papa would never, ever really even think of selling it.

  However, Papa was still often the gallery’s artist of the month. Jean-Paul Vitton, my father’s mentor and our godfather, had been their featured artist almost from the day they had opened the gallery. He was still Villefranche-sur-Mer’s most well known, but he didn’t work as much anymore. He was eighty-two and joked that Papa would soon catch up to him before he was half his age.

  “Your papa is driven by his work, perhaps even chased. Do not be angry at him if he ignores you for days,” Jean-Paul warned both Yvon and me often. “Artists hear other voices, but neither you nor your mama is ever far from his loving eyes. I promise. You are a special family.”

  Why shouldn’t we believe him? When Yvon and I were much younger, people in the village of Villefranche-sur-Mer told my father that his family was a beautiful living painting in and of itself. Just seeing the four of us walking over a pebblestone street toward the open market to get our fruit and vegetables or fresh fish, I holding my brother Yvon’s hand and my mother’s, she holding my father’s, would bring a smile to their faces. Papa brought fame to our little village, and Mama brought beauty and love.

  Older people saw their own childhood in Yvon and me. They would stop us when we walked together without my parents; Yvon, even at only six, would hold tightly to my hand, his back straight, his shoulders firm, and his face so serious that it looked like it was sculptured from granite. Nevertheless, he was always polite and attentive. They would tell us their personal childhood stories, tales that always ended with the same lesson or warning stated one way or another. “Love your parents. Listen to them. What they want for you, they wanted for themselves. Their dream is that whatever they couldn’t have for themselves, you will have.”

  We nodded, but Yvon and I were too young to understand or appreciate it fully. We spoke French fluently, of course, and our parents spoke and taught us English. They were both Americans. Language was never our problem, whether it was English or French or even a little Spanish and Italian. I think we were simply puzzled by how intensely people spoke to us when they spoke about our parents and us. Maybe we would never fully understand their admonitions or fully envision the images of dangers and disasters they projected with their terrifying expressions.

  Perhaps we felt too high above all that, too protected and too perfect. The difference between Yvon and me was that I didn’t want to think about it, ever, whereas he never stopped.

  Monsieur Appert certainly agreed there were all sorts of dangers swirling about everyone, and he was confident he knew why. “It’s Eve’s fault,” the village tailor would say, even if the disaster was merely his poking his thumb while he was sewing. He would look at the tiny pinprick of blood and shake his head, mumbling about the first female. He said the same thing after any mistake, any tragedy anywhere in the world: “It’s Eve’s fault.”

  “How could it be Eve’s fault that you stuck your finger, Monsieur Appert?” I would ask. “She isn’t here.” He’d look at me and smile. Then he’d suddenly stop smiling and nod.

  “It’s her fault. Everything would be perfect if she hadn’t disobeyed the Commandment. There would be no pain, no sickness. We wouldn’t even age!”

  He’d shake his poked finger with its spot of blood, holding the needle and thread in his other hand, and then he would laugh at me because I would look like I could cry at any moment.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he would say. “I don’t feel a thing. Nothing. Rien. I’m too old to
feel anything. Now, here’s the stitch you want to learn,” he would continue, and then demonstrate. I often wondered if everyone in the world but me believed I was destined to become a seamstress. But the list of opportunities for women wasn’t very long in France in 1912, or anywhere else for that matter.

  The truth was, I’d often stop at his shop to watch him work, mainly because he had a candy for me or a fresh apple. Then I would skip off to tell my mother what he had said and had done to himself. She would nod, which wasn’t anywhere near enough of a reaction to satisfy me. I’d have to get her to understand and react to how serious this was. I’d be bouncing on my feet and nearly crying.

  “There was blood!”

  She’d stop whatever she was doing and look at me as if my words had just caught up with her thoughts.

  “I’m surprised there’s any blood left in that man,” she would say. “He has so many holes in his fingers. And the next time he blames Eve, you tell him Adam didn’t have to follow her. Why didn’t he have a mind of his own? Men are always blaming women for what they do themselves.”

  My father would laugh, but Yvon would scowl. It was as if he distrusted his own laughter. He was afraid of not being tough. He often had a suspicious, angry look in his eyes as he panned our surroundings, wherever we were, especially at home. It frightened me a little more than I revealed.

  It was as if he was expecting something terrible, someone horrible to come to our front door. My heart might even skip a beat imagining the sound of a stranger pounding his fist on the gray wood built from the ribs of an old fisherman’s boat. He had come to tell us something so bad it would shake the foundations of our home. When I got older, I would ask Yvon, “What’s wrong? What are you worrying about now?”

  “Rien,” he would quickly say, and look away, his neck stiff and his shoulders raised and turned in as if he had just been whipped.

  Everything about him told me it wasn’t “nothing,” and his refusal to speak about it only reinforced my fears. Trepidation overflowed through his steely blue eyes, which were often firmly fixed on the incoming tide or the highway that led into our village.

  I, too, looked hard and looked often in those directions, even when he wasn’t there. Although I didn’t feel it as intensely as Yvon, I knew in my heart that there was something out there, something beyond the horizon, something riding the waves or bouncing in a horse-drawn carriage and coming toward us. In dark dreams, it was a hearse drawn by two black horses or a masked rider rushing toward us to bring the dreadful message he carried. Sometimes it was on fire in his hand.

  As I grew older, I was confident that Yvon knew exactly what it was, but he was always protecting me, even from bad news or thoughts. However, the more he kept it to himself, the more convinced I became that there was something, something that could rattle our family like an earthquake. Eventually, we would stop holding hands, and my mother would lose her angel wings. In nightmares, faces were torn and stretched in agony, and everyone’s kisses were blown away like dead leaves to float in the sea and disappear in the waves.

  Someday I would learn that Yvon had known about all this for years but harbored it in his heart and suffered with it alone. I would come to understand that his not sharing the pain it brought to him was even worse than what it was.

  No one was lonelier than someone lonely in fear.

  1

  “Louis is close friends with your brother only because of you, Marlena,” Regine Besnier said, or rather whined, while we were walking back to my new, larger home after going to the farmers’ market for potatoes and onions for my mother’s bouillabaisse. She had learned the recipe from Jean-Paul’s woman friend, Anne Bise. They had never married. Jean-Paul claimed it would ruin their forty-year relationship. But Papa told him he was as good as married and more henpecked than any other married man in the village.

  Regine’s voice was so nasal that you would think someone had his hands tightening around her long, narrow neck. I don’t know why I wanted her as a best friend. She often would utter nasty and mean things disguised as facts or supposedly helpful suggestions. Actually, I knew why but was afraid to admit it, especially to myself. Her envy of me stroked my ego, which was something for which my mother had a particular distaste: conceit and vanity.

  “Vanity, even in small bites, will poison your soul,” she told me more than a dozen times if she told me once. It was something she was particularly sensitive to herself. She made it sound like a trap set by the devil just outside the door, waiting to ensnare you as soon as you left your house.

  “You do me a disservice by encouraging me to think too much of myself,” my mother would tell those who gave her lavish compliments, especially about her beauty. She was so adamant about it, especially in front of me, that whoever had praised or admired her would stutter and apologize.

  Her anger and her intensity puzzled me. She wasn’t usually so unfairly sharp toward or critical of others in our village, but I assumed that this reaction to praise was her way of teaching me a lesson. I’d see she was looking to be sure I or Yvon had heard her. That was always the first reason our parents would do something unexpected or even unpleasant: they were showing us an example of what not to do. Our parents were perfect. How could they ever deliberately have done or do anything wrong? Refusing to believe that was true was the same as refusing to believe in angels.

  “Louis and Yvon have been friends for ages, Regine. I had barely grown out of diapers when they began to do everything together. Seeing them playing together in the yard is one of my earliest memories. Please, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m not!” she protested, her round, deeply set, coffee-bean-brown eyes practically exploding. “Maybe that was true once, but now he can’t stop looking at you every chance he has. I see it,” she insisted. “Besides, why be upset about it? Louis Pinault is one of the best-looking boys in Villefranche. He’s not as good-looking as your brother, of course, but few boys are.”

  She folded her arms and brought them down forcefully against her stomach. It was one of her And that’s that statements. Sometimes she could be so stubborn and determined that she would cause my stomach to be tied in knots. Few could stand it. It was another reason I was practically her only friend.

  But I wasn’t going to disagree with her about Louis’s looks. He was handsome, and if I was being truthful, I would admit that I had the feeling he was looking at me differently lately. I just didn’t want to give Regine the satisfaction of being right, being so astute, although I didn’t want to appear oblivious like some child. Truthfully, lately I had been wondering about myself, not about him. What was it about me that had suddenly opened Louis’s eyes?

  Perhaps it was how Mama was fixing my much longer hair or the clothes she permitted me to wear, which clearly revealed that my bosom was rapidly developing. I was afraid to ask her if I could use her lipstick. Once I had snuck it on, and Yvon got so upset that I ran to the spring to wash every trace of it away. He didn’t tell our mother. He never wanted to get me in trouble and often took blame for something stupid I had done, something I had misplaced or broken.

  For some reason I couldn’t quite understand myself, I thought if I ever responded to Louis’s smiles and looks, Yvon would be angry, not only with me but with Louis, and I’d feel terrible about breaking up their long friendship. Despite what she was saying, I thought Regine wouldn’t be happy if I welcomed Louis’s affections, either.

  “I’m not upset about it, Regine, but I think perhaps it is you who can’t stop looking at him,” I said.

  Showing her I could read her romantic feelings was like stripping her naked in the street. A flush came quickly to her face. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my effect on her. Mama would shake her head at me if she heard me doing it. I did tease Regine often.

  “That’s not true,” Regine said, but not with confidence.

  “Of course it’s true. Don’t be so coy. Give him a strong hint how you feel about him, and maybe he’ll start looking at you. Som
e boys need a little push or donkey tug. They’re not shy; they’re just… oblivious.”

  She looked at me askance, clearly wondering. “How do you know so much about boys? You’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  I shrugged. “Some things are just obvious.”

  “Or your mother told you,” Regine said sadly, her eyes filled with jealousy. Her mother had her late in life. She had two older brothers who were already married, with one’s wife expecting. “My mama won’t even say the word ‘sex’ to me and pretends I still haven’t gotten monthlies. Everything I know about it and sex, I know because of what your mother told you and you told me,” she whined. “You two are more like sisters.”

  I smiled to myself. Yes, I thought, we are.

  Regine was silent for a few moments. Then she just stopped, so I stopped.

  “What now?”

  “You really think Louis could like me?”

  “How will you know if you don’t give him some reason to hope?” I asked, as if it was as clear a fact as daytime. I smiled to myself. Only someone looking into my eyes could see that what I really believed about her and Louis was the complete opposite of what I had just said.

  Nevertheless, how sophisticated I sounded for someone just a little less than fifteen, I thought. The truth was that if Mama overheard me, she would hate it and give me one of her critical looks so sharp that Papa would say it would cut through the walls of the old fortress built by the Duke of the Savoy in 1557 to guard the port. He claimed to have the scars to prove it after she had given him similar looks.

  “Do you really think so?” Regine asked. Her face looked like a balloon blown up with hope. I had turned lights on in her eyes, lights that she didn’t dare turn on herself for fear she would reveal her true feelings and be the object of ridicule.

  “You have to think so yourself, Regine. You can’t go by what others think when it comes to romance.”