Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
MADELINE
"The roses are mauve."
Bastien has materialized beside me, too close, arms crossed, glaring at the centerpieces like they've personally insulted his mother.
It's Sophie's ninth birthday. The Luxembourg Gardens are already filling with guests, white chairs arranged near the Medici Fountain, a string quartet warming up by the water.
"Bonjour to you too."
"Sophie requested lavender. Lavender has blue undertones. These are pink. Sophie will notice too," he says, voice dropping. "Sophie notices everything."
Raphael appears on my other side. His hand finds the small of my back, brief, grounding, and every nerve in my back knows exactly where his fingers are.
"You've stopped breathing," he says quietly.
"I'm breathing."
"Barely." His thumb moves against my spine. Just once. "It's going to be fine."
It's absolutely not going to be fine.
étienne arrives. Dark suit. Immaculate posture. Jaw set in that way that means he's controlling something: the party, himself, the universe. His eyes find mine across the gravel path, ice-blue and direct, and I'm back in his study. The amber light. The hair pin sliding free.
"The balloon arch is collapsing," he points out.
"I'll fix it." I'm already moving. "Tell me what to do."
We end up on the grass together, all four of us gathering silk ribbons and retying weights.
It's practical, slightly ridiculous. Bastien's shoulder bumps mine as he reaches for a knot.
Raphael's knee presses into the grass beside me.
étienne works with controlled efficiency, close enough that I catch vetiver and black tea and skin.
"Papa?"
We all look up.
Sophie has appeared at the entrance with Luc and Emma, all three children watching their fathers kneel together in the dirt.
"Almost done," I say brightly. "Sophie, you look beautiful."
She does. She wears a pale blue dress that she almost certainly chose herself and her hair is in an elaborate updo. Most strikingly, of all she has the composure of a tiny empress.
But her eyes aren't on me. They're moving between the three men, then back to me, cataloguing something.
"The arch is crooked," she finally observes.
"The arch is artistic," Bastien counters. "Asymmetry creates visual interest."
"Asymmetry creates chaos."
"Spoken like étienne's daughter."
Sophie turns to me, ignoring Bastien entirely. "Is that for me?"
I hand her the wrapped vintage copy of Eloise in Paris, the one I found after visiting three separate rare booksellers and inscribed at 2 AM:
For Sophie, who knows that being sharp doesn't mean you aren't soft underneath.
She takes it, examines the wrapping, then tucks it under her arm with unusual care. "Thank you. I'll open it later."
She moves toward the fountain. Then stops. Turns back.
"You have grass on your dress," she says to me. Then, quieter: "So does Papa." Her eyes flick between me and étienne. "The same knee."
She walks away before anyone can respond.
The party fills the garden. I throw myself into the details. Intercepting Emma when she tries to climb into the fountain. Finding Luc a quiet corner to sketch. Keeping the caterers on schedule.
Every time I look up, one of them is watching. I stop looking up.
Midway through the afternoon, étienne finds me behind the dessert table, reorganizing macarons that don't need reorganizing.
"Sophie won't stop reading the inscription," he says.
"Is that good or bad?"
"She's read it four times." He's standing too close. Or I'm not stepping back. "That's unprecedented."
"Well. I know her."
"You do." He says it like it surprises him. Like knowing Sophie is something he thought only he could do. His hand reaches toward my face, and I forget to move, but he only picks a piece of grass from my hair. His fingers hover near my temple then drop.
"The party is going well," he says. "You've done excellent work."
It's the most personal thing étienne Laurent has ever said to me, and yet he's used entirely professional words.
He walks away. I lean against the table and count to ten.
The cake is four tiers with Sophie's name in elegant script. She stands before it like a queen receiving tribute, and when the quartet shifts into "Joyeux Anniversaire," I hang back at the edge.
I'm their employee. I take care of their children. I am not supposed to want any of them, let alone all three.
"Madeline?"
Sophie's voice cuts through. She's looking at me, face lit by nine tiny flames.
"Will you come stand with us? For the photograph?"
"That's… I'm not family, Sophie."
"So?" She looks at me like I've said something mildly stupid. "Just come."
I have to look at the candles instead of her face.
Emma grabs my hand and tugs me forward. When I look up from my position behind Sophie, all three fathers have gone still.
étienne on the left, jaw tight. Bastien on the right, perfectly still, his face unreadable, which is worse. Raphael in the center, looking at me like I'm the answer to a question he's been afraid to ask.
Sophie closes her eyes. Makes her wish. Blows.
Nine candles flutter out at once.
I watch the smoke curl up into the evening air and think, absurdly, that I'd give a lot to know what she wished for.
Emma tugs my hand while I'm cutting second helpings. "Madeline, whose house do you like best?"
The garden goes very quiet around us. Or maybe that's just what it seems like to me.
"I like all three houses, Emma."
"But if you had to PICK." She looks up at me with those big brown eyes. "Like if you could only live in one forever and ever."
Somewhere behind me, three men are pretending very hard not to listen. I can feel the pretending. It has a physical weight.
"Each house has different things I love," I say carefully. "Your house has the garden. Luc's house has all that amazing art. And Sophie's house has—"
"The best closets," Sophie finishes from across the table. "Obviously."
"I like our house best," Emma announces loudly. Loudly enough for the entire garden. "Because Papa cooks and we have the fireplace and you can fall asleep on our couch."
Nobody says anything. The kind of nobody-says-anything that has texture.
"Okay okay," I say. "Who wants more cake?"
Two small hands shoot up. Sophie's rises last, with dignity.
The rest of the afternoon blurs into cake and chaos, and for a while it almost feels like a normal family birthday. You could almost forget that three grown men in this garden can barely stand to be in the same room.
The collision happens at dusk.
Fairy lights have given the garden a golden haze. I'm carrying favor bags toward the exit when my heel catches a tree root.
I stumble.
Three sets of hands reach for me at once.
étienne catches my elbow. Bastien catches my waist. Raphael steadies my shoulder, thumb on the bare skin above my collar. And somehow they're all bracing against each other too, Bastien's hand on Raphael's forearm, étienne's shoulder pressed into Bastien's, all of them holding me up together.
Nobody speaks.
The quartet plays something soft in the distance. Children laugh somewhere behind us. And here, in this small pocket of stillness, six hands are on my body and not one of them is letting go.
I can feel each point of contact. étienne's grip precise. Bastien's palm sliding a fraction lower on my hip. Raphael's thumb tracing one small circle against my collarbone.
Someone clears their throat. Bastien, I think. He steps back first. étienne's arm drops a beat too fast. Raphael looks at the ground.
I feel every place their hands were. And every place they aren't now.
"Careful," Bastien says. To me, apparently. But he's looking at étienne's hand, the one that was on my elbow.
"She's fine," étienne says. Clipped.
"I can see she's fine. I'm just wondering why your hand is still—"
"—It isn't."
"It was."
"Are we really doing this?" Raphael says quietly. "At a child's birthday party?"
Bastien and étienne look at each other. Then away. Like magnets that got too close and remembered they were supposed to repel.
"Thank you," I say, my voice steadier than I deserve. "All of you."
I walk into the crowd without looking back. But I feel them, three gazes pressing into my back like heat, all the way across the garden.
The guests thin out. The fairy lights keep burning. I help the caterers pack while the children chase each other through the empty chairs, their mirth carrying across the water.
When the last guests leave, Bernard drives us home. Emma falls asleep in the car with her head on my lap, one hand still clutching a deflating balloon. Raphael sits across from us, watching her sleep, and our eyes meet once in the dim light of the back seat. Neither of us says anything.
I carry the favor bags inside while Raphael carries Emma. He takes her upstairs and I hear him tucking her in, then her door clicking closed.
I say goodnight and go to my room.
I can't settle.
I lie on the bed and scenes from the garden keep replaying.
Not neatly, not in order. étienne's fingers near my temple, pulling grass from my hair.
Bastien's mouth curving when he caught me staring at the roses.
Raphael's thumb on my collarbone, that single circle.
The weight of all three of them holding me at once.
The want is tangled now, knotted together, and I can't separate who I want from how I want them.
It has names. It has hands. And it won't shut up.
I press my face into the pillow and will myself to sleep, but two hours later I'm still staring at the ceiling.
Then my phone lights up on the nightstand.
2:17 AM. A text from étienne.
Sophie had a nightmare. She's asking for you.
I sit up in the dark and read it twice. It's Raphael's week. This breaks protocol. This breaks every careful boundary I've built.
But Sophie is asking for me.
I'm out of bed before I finish the thought, pulling on jeans and a sweater.
Another text.
She won't settle. Please come.
Please.
étienne Laurent said please.
I stare at the screen. The right thing to do is wake Raphael, tell him where I'm going, follow the rules I built specifically to prevent moments like this.
Instead, I reply, grab my keys, slip past Raphael's door on silent feet, and step into the Paris night.