Seen and Not Heard (Maggie Bennett 4)

He’d known exactly where he was going when he’d left work. As the rain started to fall a compulsion had come over him, a blind, mindless need that had sent him out into the rain-drenched streets, walking aimlessly until he’d ended up in this small, residential neighborhood in Beaubourg, not far from the Pompidou Centre.

On good days he would walk to work, and his path would take him by this old town house. He’d seen the woman before, watched her slow, stately grace as she walked her tiny little dog around the corner. On the sunny days it would amuse him to watch her patrician calm as she monitored her dog’s basic biological functions.

But now it was raining, night was falling, and there was no amusement in Yvon Alpert’s wintry heart. He stood in the rain outside the old lady’s home, hidden in the doorway, and wondered whether she’d fight him, whether she’d scream and struggle. And he wondered if the black hole in his heart would take over and consume him, or if his damp hands would continue to shake.

“Where were you today?” Nicole’s sallow face was accusing as she sat at one end of the formal table, buttering an overlarge piece of bread. When Marc had left, Claire had suggested she move closer, to the seat beside her, but Nicole had declined with unconcealed contempt, and they’d continued their stilted dinners from across a wide expanse of polished walnut.

Claire dropped her fork with a clatter, then looked anxiously at the dinner plate, terrified that she might have chipped the scalloped gold edge of the Limoges. It was still intact, and she breathed a sigh of relief, followed by a wave of anger as intense as it was unexpected. She was damned if she was going to live in fear of Marc and his possessions. Tomorrow she would go out and find a store that had cheap dishes. Failing that, she’d buy paper plates and plop them down on Marc’s priceless walnut table, and to hell with everyone.

“I asked you where you went today,” Nicole repeated with the faint sense of hauteur that sat so well on her nine-year-old shoulders. “You weren’t here when the taxi brought me home. We had to drive around the block for hours and hours, waiting for you.”

Claire stifled the guilt that had been plaguing her. “Nicole, I got back here at five-thirty. You leave Madame Langlois’s apartment at five every day. You couldn’t have been waiting for more than fifteen minutes.”

“What if I told you Grand-mère was ill today? That she sent me home early?”

More guilt, Claire thought wearily, squashing it down. Nicole wore the expression she’d long ago perfected, the testing, manipulative smirk that lingered in the back of her flat brown eyes, and for not the first time Claire wondered why she cared. Why such a prickly, unlovable child mattered to her. She wasn’t simply a surrogate for another nine-year-old still recovering from a hit-and-run accident—Nicole was too strong a personality for that.

“Did she send you home early?” Claire asked calmly enough.

Nicole shook her head. “No. We waited only five minutes,” she admitted, a rare, mischievous grin lighting her dark face.

Claire smiled back. “You’re a beast, Nicole.”

“I know,” the child said calmly, stuffing another piece of bread into her small mouth. “Did you know, Claire,” she continued, mumbling through the food, “that you’re a lot happier when Marc isn’t around?”

Claire dropped her fork again, her smile vanishing. Damn the child. “Don’t be absurd,” she snapped. “I miss him terribly.”

“Oh, I imagine you do. Marc is very good in bed. All his women say so.”

“Nicole!”

“But he’s not very comfortable to be around,” Nicole continued, unfazed, her precocious, old-woman’s face serene. “Don’t you find that you like it better when he’s not creeping around, watching you?”

“Don’t be disrespectful,” she murmured, echoing Marc’s words absently. She could think of a great many things more important to Nicole’s well-being than proper filial respect, but she owed it to Marc to make an effort.

As usual, Claire’s reprimand didn’t faze Nicole. “But it’s true,” she insisted calmly. “He does lurk around, watching one. He says it’s for research, but I know better. Grand-mère says he gives her …” For a moment the child looked blank, struggling for the right word, then triumphant as she found it. “He gives her the creeps. Isn’t that how you say it?”

“That is not how I say it.” Claire hated the prim, repressive sound of her own voice, but she couldn’t let Nicole sit there and tear her father apart. It would break Marc’s heart if he knew. Wouldn’t it? Or did he already know—had his own coldness and distance been part of the cause? “Your father loves you, Nicole. He’s just not a demonstrative man.”

“What is ‘demonstrative’?”

Claire pushed her plate away, no longer hungry. Nicole was so absurdly precocious she’d forgotten that she was talking to a nine-year-old. One with an amazing command of English, but even most American nine-year-olds wouldn’t know what demonstrative meant.

“When someone is demonstrative they show, they express their emotions and thoughts, rather than talk about them.” She was sounding like a schoolteacher again, and Claire felt a sudden, searing loss. She missed it, the work, the children, the sense of being needed, making a difference.

“Then don’t you think it strange,” Nicole said quietly, “that a mime, someone who never uses words, is not … demonstrative at home?”

Claire had no answer, but then, Nicole wasn’t expecting one. They finished their meal in strained silence, listening to the steady beat of the rain outside their windows.

Yvon looked down at his hands. They’d clenched into fists, and it took all his strength to open them, flex them. The fingers were cramped, useless, and he held them out into the pouring rain, watching as the water splatted against them. They were still shaking.

It was after eleven. Lights were blazing in the old woman’s apartment, but he’d seen no shadows against the heavy curtains for a long time. The old bitch was probably too rich to worry about electricity bills. She probably left all her lights on, afraid of the dark. Tonight, he told himself, it would be a waste of time. The lights wouldn’t keep her destiny at bay.

He started to move, out into the heavy rain, oblivious to the passersby, the cars sluicing through the deep puddles, oblivious to everything as he crossed the street. He had no plan, no thought at all beyond the certainty of what he must do. The black hole in his heart grew larger, devouring him as he stood in front of the heavy wooden door that fronted the residential side street. When he reached out to press the bell, his hand no longer shook.

Thomas Jefferson Parkhurst was whistling as he raced up the endless flights of stairs to his artist’s garret. Even the final flight failed to wind him, though the whistle became more strained. Nothing could quench his buoyant spirit, not flights of stairs, not the empty apartment, not even the memory of Claire’s eyes when he’d asked her about the man.

Because the rest of the time Claire’s eyes had been on him, and they’d been warm, happy, and full of promise.