When the taxi parked, they could see the lake and the island. Mimi was utterly enchanted. “It’s the fairyland you invented,” she said to her mother.
“Go on,” Elv said, sending her off with her ama. “I’ll watch from here. This is fine.”
Mimi was too smart. She came to her mother and gestured so that Elv would lean close and she could whisper. “Is it because they all hated Daddy?”
“Oh, no,” Elv said. “Everyone loved him. He told people stories and they just sat and listened and they didn’t want to be anywhere but right there with him. Believe me, I know.”
“Your mom doesn’t like crowds,” Pete said. He had come up behind them. Elv threw him a grateful look. “Like at the school dinners. She has a good view from here.”
Elv waved to Mimi when she got on the little boat and Mimi waved back. She had a sense of loss just seeing her daughter float away. The boat was indeed like a faerie boat, leaving water lilies in its wake. Once it had drawn up to the dock, everyone got off and was greeted by the Cohen family. Music drifted across the water in bits and bursts. Every now and then Elv spied Mimi on the other side, exploring the island, and then she couldn’t see her anymore. Mimi caught sight of the bride standing by the reeds with a tall, handsome man. She ran right up to her gigi, and when Claire turned she knew Mimi immediately. She recognized the long black hair, the way she smiled. She was wearing the charm bracelet and she held up her arm for Claire to see. She shook it and there was the sound of bells. Mimi’s eighth birthday had just passed. She was exactly the same age Claire had been when she did the unpardonable, horrible thing for which she could never be forgiven.
She had gotten out of the car.
Claire glanced around and spied a woman on the other side of the lake. She asked Mimi if she would take care of her bouquet for her. It was made up of a hundred roses, all white. Each rose was small and perfect. Mimi nodded. She took her duties very seriously.
Claire could hear the birds in the linden trees; they always called when it was growing dark. The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can’t even see it, shifting in the dark. She remembered everything. The violets and the blood, the day when Elv hunkered down in the garden after refusing to cut her hair, the bird they had found with its tiny white bones, the charm Elv had strung together to protect them against evil. When they were in the garden looking up through the leaves, the whole world turned green. Elv thought she saw her sister walking toward the dock in her white dress. She had been waiting for her and she’d wait for her for as long as she was gone, and there she was, in the falling dark; she hadn’t gone anywhere at all.
Madame Cohen sat in an armchair that the waiters had carried out to place under one of the lindens. The air was still sultry. The last of the day’s light filtered through the shadows. It was lemon colored, exactly as Mimi had noted. Madame Cohen had been brought a kir pêche that reminded her of the peaches she and her sisters had once eaten on a picnic out in the countryside. Natalia pulled a chair next to her friend’s. She could see her great-granddaughter holding a bouquet of white roses, spinning in a circle on the dance floor that would later be crowded with couples. She and Madame Cohen had worked side by side in this world of grief. Today their grandchildren were happy. That was gratifying.
They could hear frogs splashing in the shallow water. There were white lights everywhere, as if the stars were falling down. It was twilight. The light would soon be turning to ink, another color for Mimi to write in her diary. Philippe shouted out and waved his arms, calling the two grandmothers over.
“They need us,” Natalia said.
“Let’s let them think so,” her friend suggested.
As they walked across the grass, Madame Cohen saw a small black shadow in the shape of a moth. It hovered above her glass of kir, drawn like the bees to the sugar and fruit, then it flitted away. She didn’t worry about it in the least. It was summer, and hot, and everything was just beginning.