The crow took off and didn’t look back, but Claire worried that it wouldn’t be able to fend for itself after being babied for so many years in an overheated apartment. All at once, she’d found she was crying, which was completely unlike her. When Philippe asked why, she told him it was because he was an idiot. They’d screamed at each other and called each other names. People in the Bois edged away from them, convinced they were lunatics. Then Philippe kissed her and everything else dropped away. She had never been kissed before and when she told him that, he laughed. “So it turns out you have been waiting for me since we were children.”
“Unlikely,” Claire had said haughtily, but he kissed her again and she wanted him to and that was that.
Philippe liked to fight, but he also liked to make up. Claire appreciated that. She appreciated everything about him, even his flaws, which were many. He was even more of a workaholic than she’d first suspected, gone on weekends, not returning from the hospital until late in the evening with no excuses. He was a restless sleeper and a picky eater. He still broke dishes when he washed them like the clumsy, curious boy he’d once been. He argued with his coworkers and gave away too much money and cursed the government no matter who was in office. He let her know that he would never have time to take a vacation. None of these flaws were fatal, not even the fact that he gave his patients his home number so that the phone was always ringing in the middle of the night. That was when Claire knew she was in love with him. She didn’t need the bells she wore to tell her that. She was sleeping at his place and without thinking had grabbed for the phone when it rang. A woman was crying. Her father was dying and she didn’t know what to do for him. Philippe got out of bed. He was on the phone for nearly half an hour.
“What did you tell her?” Claire asked when at last he hung up.
Philippe was so tall he took up more than his half of the bed. He had beautiful long hands and dark hair. He was a very deep sleeper.
“I told her it was an honor to be with someone when they died. I said she should be grateful for her last moments with him. That she should say her good-byes.”
“That took half an hour?” Claire asked.
“That takes a lifetime.”
“I did something terrible,” Claire said suddenly.
More and more often, she found herself wishing she could talk to her sister, the one person who might understand how easy it was to make a terrible mistake when all you thought you were doing was going for a drive on a beautiful blue day, taking the steps two at a time, leaving a door open, stepping on the gas too hard. When you had no intention of harming anyone, not even yourself.
“My uncle? I told you he was going to have a stroke with or without the burglary. Plus I’m convinced you’re as paranoid as he was. Claire, you locked the door.”
“Not that. Something else. Something unforgivable.”
“Is this about telling your sister Meg to get in the car? That was an accident. If every doctor gave up his practice due to some accident he was responsible for, there’d be no doctors. We’d all be dead.”
“No. Something worse. Something that ruined someone’s life.”
“Well, you rescued mine, so that cancels out whatever came before. I’ve been told I’d be an idiot without you.”
“By who?” Claire grinned. “Your grandmother?”
“By you!”
She never told him what she’d done. The only one who knew was Elv.
Elv, who’d turned to look back at her, who’d disappeared into the briars, who’d been taken by an unbreakable spell until nightfall.
BEFORE LONG CLAIRE and Philippe moved in together, to the top floor of Madame Cohen’s house. Their grandmothers did them the service of not saying they had told them so. It was a big apartment and they were slowly painting each room white. The woodwork was gold leaf, very old, chipped at the edges, but beautiful. They decided to keep it as it was. The bedroom overlooked a small garden, nothing as grand as the cobblestone courtyard of Claire’s grandmother’s building, but still lovely.
When Claire left Monsieur Cohen’s workroom at noon, she stopped by the shop to retrieve Madame Cohen and they went home together for lunch. Natalia often joined them. She was recovering from the loss of Samuel Cohen. She seemed more fragile. Her knees were bothering her, and Claire had to help her up the stairs to the apartment. Eighteen years had passed since the anniversary party at the Plaza Hotel, but Natalia still dreamed of that day. She dreamed of Annie and of Meg and of the Story sisters when they were young, wearing the blue dresses she had made for them. Just the night before, she had fallen asleep on the couch in the parlor and in her dream she went to her own party. Everyone was there: her husband, Martin, and Samuel Cohen, and her nieces Elise and Mary Fox. In the kitchen, the staff was hard at work icing petits fours in hues of pink and green and blue. There was the smell of sugar and vanilla. Waves of heat wafted from the huge restaurant stove and made her flush. “Make me something I’ll never forget,” she told the head chef. “Make sure I remember everything before it gets lost.”
When Claire made lunch for Madame Cohen and her grandmother, she used tomatoes whenever possible. She followed the recipe for her mother’s gazpacho, she re-created the cream of tomato soup she and Pete had made for Annie when she was so ill, she fixed green tomatoes on toast with olives, so simple and pleasurable, and of course, Madame Cohen’s favorite, risotto with yellow tomatoes and thyme. Claire grew her own tomatoes in earthenware containers set on the tiny balcony of their apartment, ordering heirloom seeds from catalogs. In the height of summer, she tossed a net over the plants to keep the birds from pecking at them. When Philippe came home on summer nights, he’d find Claire on the patio and he’d come to sit beside her, stretching his long legs out beside hers. He had no idea that tomatoes could be green and pink and yellow and gold. He preferred to eat them whole, like apples.