Chapter 8 #2
"Maybe." I secure another section. "But it's also just how things are."
"Sophie's mama left. On purpose. That's different from not being close."
"It is."
"And Luc's mama left for another man. Papa told me that's different too, but I don't really understand how. They all left, right? Just different ways of leaving."
I finish the braid. Secure it with the elastic she handed me earlier, the one with a small plastic butterfly.
"Yeah. They all hurt. Just... differently."
Emma twists around to look at me. "You're smart."
"Thank you."
"And you're good at braids."
"Thank you again."
"And you smell nice. Like lemons but not the cleaning kind. The good kind."
I laugh. "That might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me in weeks."
Emma looks pleased with herself. "I'm good at compliments. Papa says I give too many, but I don't think that's a real thing."
"It's not."
She nods firmly, like we've just settled an important matter. "I'm going to keep doing that."
Dinner is nothing like the other households.
At étienne's, meals were elegant and efficient. Sophie critiquing the presentation, étienne checking his phone between courses, the silence filled with everything no one was saying.
At Bastien's, dinner was an afterthought I usually had to construct myself while he circled the kitchen sketching or stared at some piece he'd brought home like it owed him money.
Here, Raphael cooks. Actually cooks.
He moves around the kitchen with the easy competence of someone who learned because he wanted to. He chops vegetables while Emma sets the table with mathematical imprecision. He asks her about school and listens to her answer.
"And THEN Marcus said that butterflies aren't actually pretty, they're just bugs with fancy wings, and I said that's what MAKES them pretty, the fancy wings, that's the whole POINT, and he said that's stupid, and I said HE'S stupid—"
"Emma."
"—and then I had to sit in the thinking corner." She arranges the forks with great concentration. Only two of them are pointing the right direction. "But I was RIGHT."
"You can be right and still not call someone stupid."
"Can you though?" She looks genuinely uncertain about this. "Because if someone IS stupid, and you just OBSERVE that they're stupid, isn't that just honesty?"
Raphael catches my eye across the kitchen. The corner of his mouth twitches.
I busy myself with the napkins.
Dinner is simple. Pasta with the sauce he was simmering when I arrived, bread that turned out to be homemade, a salad Emma helped assemble with extremely creative interpretations of "evenly distributed."
We eat at the kitchen table, not the formal dining room I glimpsed off the hallway.
Raphael asks about my previous two weeks, how Sophie is adjusting, whether Luc has warmed up, if the schedule is working.
Emma interrupts constantly with urgent updates about her stuffed rabbit's ongoing medical crisis and whether I think it's possible to teach a goldfish tricks.
"Probably not," I say.
"But what if you BELIEVED in the goldfish?"
"I think belief and goldfish training are separate issues."
"That's what Papa said." She looks disappointed in both of us.
"Sophie's dad is scary," she announces between bites, apropos of nothing. "But like, fancy scary. Cold scary. Like a really expensive refrigerator."
"Emma." Raphael's voice carries a warning.
"What? I didn't say it was BAD. Refrigerators are important." She turns to me. "And Luc's dad is the kind of scary where he's just... staring at you. Like all the time."
"That's very observant."
"I know. I'm good at observing. Papa says I observe too much and I should let people have their secrets." She shrugs. "But secrets are interesting."
After dinner, Emma extracts a promise that I'll read her a bedtime story, then proceeds to debate the merits of seven different books before selecting one about a rabbit who wants to be a chef.
"It's about following your dreams," she explains, crawling into bed with the stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm. "Even when people say you can't. The other animals are really mean about it. Like, just let him cook."
"Agreed."
"I think Henri would be a good chef. He's very determined. And he has good taste. For a rabbit."
I settle into the chair beside her bed and open to the first page.
She falls asleep three pages in.
Just like that. Mid-sentence, between one word and the next. Her breathing goes light and even, her grip on the stuffed rabbit relaxing.
I ease off the chair. Pull the covers up. Stand there for a moment in the comforting glow of her nightlight, a small moon projecting stars across the ceiling.
"She does that."
I turn. Raphael is leaning against the doorframe, speaking low.
"Falls asleep mid-sentence sometimes. Like a phone that didn't warn you the battery was low."
I step into the hallway, pulling Emma's door mostly closed behind me. A thin strip of gold falls across the carpet.
"She told me I smell like the good kind of lemons," I say. "Not the cleaning kind."
His mouth curves. "High praise. She told her grandmother she smelled like old books and sadness. My mother didn't speak to me for a week."
"To be fair, that's a very specific observation."
"Emma has a gift." He pushes off the doorframe. "Get some rest. She'll be up at dawn with theories about what goldfish dream about."
"I look forward to it."
He holds my gaze. Or maybe I imagine it. Hard to tell in the dim hallway, with the nightlight casting stars across the wall between us.
"Goodnight, Madeline."
"Goodnight."
I walk to my room. Close the door. Lean against it for a moment, letting the quiet settle.
The bed is soft. The sheets smell like lavender. The window faces east, because a little girl researched where the sun comes up.
I lie in the dark and listen to the apartment settle around me. Creaks and sighs. The distant hum of the city. Somewhere downstairs, water running. Raphael doing the dishes, maybe, moving through the ordinary rituals of a life he's built around absence.
I think about the photographs in the hallway. The woman's face I don't have a name for yet.
Emma's voice: Mama used to make his eyes smile.
I turn onto my side. Close my eyes.
For the first time in two weeks, I don't set an alarm. I trust the sun.