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“Don’t ask me how I come to have my children and I won’t ask how you come to have yours,” Rachel’s mother had said to Adelle.

The island was so small everyone believed they knew everyone else’s business, but in a place where nothing was equal, there were always secrets, even in her household, even in this room where she sat in a caned chair and watched over her son whom she finally allowed herself to love more, since he seemed fated and determined to live.

CAMILLE WAS WELL ONCE
more and back at work in a matter of weeks. He did his best, and yet he seemed unable to control his true nature. He began to commit small acts of anarchy, charging the customers he knew could barely afford their provisions less than the usual price for beans and flour and bolts of cloth. When Roland’s wife, Shirley, came in, he arranged the ledgers so that it was possible to charge her nothing at all.

Mr. Enrique went to Rachel and asked if they might sit down to speak. They did so over cups chamomile tea, which was said to calm the spirit.

“Do you think this is the proper career for Jacobo?” Mr. Enrique asked, using Camille’s old, familiar name. He’d known the boy all his life after all. He’d known him before he was alive if it came to that. His own son, Carlo, now was old enough to come to the store to work every day after school. He was considered a mathematics wizard and could add long columns of figures in his head, then divide and multiply them at will without pen and paper.

“I take it you think it’s not his calling,” Rachel replied when the question of her son’s abilities were brought up.

Mr. Enrique shrugged. “We’re likely to see our children as we wish to, not as they are.”

“True,” Rachel agreed. She had been thinking more and more about the witch in the courtyard, and how her mother always sent her out to the kitchen house when Madame Halevy came to call. When Rachel complained about being cast out, her mother called her a spoiled, silly girl.

“Do you know any reason that would have caused my mother to hate me?”

Mr. Enrique pushed his teacup away, his brow furrowed. “Madame,” he said. “What a thing to ask.”

She looked into his face, and there it was. He knew something.

“Was it my character? Or my birth?”

“It was not you,” Mr. Enrique said formally. He could not have looked more uncomfortable. “And I could never speak ill of your father.”

Rachel thought this over. “Then I will ask no more questions about my parents.”

“Good. Because we are here to speak of your son, and whether commerce should continue to be his vocation. I owe the business my loyalty, as I owed it to your father.”

“Has my son done something wrong?”

“In his mind it is likely right, and perhaps it is, but it is not right for the store. He believes goods should be given freely, and that charging people who cannot afford to pay is a crime. That is a good thought, but not possible if the store is to continue. I would hate to see the business handled by someone who didn’t understand or care about such matters. And it would be a burden to him to do so.”

RACHEL WENT DOWN TO
the wharf. She still liked to walk the beach alone, looking for the miracles she had written down in her notebooks. There were several of them now, and she tied them together with ribbon so she would not lose or misplace them. She drank limeade and watched the boats coming in. The tepid drink was not enough to quench her thirst. She ordered a café au lait as well, for she remembered what Adelle had taught her: hot drinks in hot weather allow the skin and soul to breathe. She had left a note for her son to meet her. He likely would have it by now. It was August, white hot. The roads were chalky, scattered with shells dropped by the gulls. That morning she had watched her husband sleep, and when he woke she told him that one part of their life was over and another had begun.

“Then it will be so,” he said without question.

“Tell me what you remember about Paris,” she said, and he did, his arms around her, as if no time had passed since the morning when he came to breakfast and saw her in her white shift, with his eyes so wide she’d laughed and felt a shiver of pleasure after she went back into her bedchamber. She knew he was hers even then. He described the garden in the house where he’d grown up, the chestnut tree, the grass that turned silver in the dark, the streetlamps that were filled with yellow light, the women in their cloaks on the way to the opera, the men in tall hats, the horses pulling carriages, as they did in Perrault’s stories, white horses whose breath came out as steam into the cold, moonlit evening.

It was the end of lunch hour, and many people were on their way home to rest during the hottest hours of the day. Soon the café would be shuttered. Rachel saw her son walking across the square. He wore a white shirt and had cut his hair. She knew he was trying to fit in and do as they wished. He walked slowly, and waved a greeting to a fellow outside the Grand Hotel whom Rachel didn’t recognize, a West Indian man who clapped him on the back as they spoke a few words. Her son spied her then and ambled over, wary. He kissed her in greeting, then sat across from her, swinging one long leg over the other. On his feet were sandals Rachel didn’t approve of. She liked proper shoes to be worn. The table was small, the chair made of wood and rush. Fortunately there was a blue awning to protect them from the sun.

“I’m not quite sure why you wished me to come here,” Camille said. He guessed Mr. Enrique had told her about the missing supplies and the way the ledger had failed to add up correctly. The waiter eyed them, wanting to go take his rest on a cot in the back room of the café. “Just a coffee,” Camille called to him.

“The family believes you’re home to take over the store,” Rachel said. “But don’t make yourself too comfortable. We both know you won’t be here long.”

“I can explain what happened,” Camille began. He stopped speaking when the coffee arrived, for the waiter glared, impatient. Camille quickly paid the tab, then resumed his conversation. It was best to be honest and be done with it. “I just can’t overcharge people.”

“You think our store overcharges?” Her glare was worse than the waiter’s.

“Not necessarily. I think any charge for certain people is too much.”

She laughed. “You realize we have expenses. We have to pay for the goods we import, a rather high price, and a business is meant so that one can make a living.”

He shrugged, not convinced of her argument. “It’s not fair the way some people have to live.”

Rachel softened then. “The world is not fair.”

“Not yet,” he said.

One had to be practical in this unfair world, but her son was a dreamer. Many young men were, but there was more to him than that. Perhaps it was best that he had such hope in the world. It would likely serve him well to have faith in the future. Rachel did not laugh, as he feared she would, but nodded in agreement.

“Yes, not yet.” She reached for an envelope she’d brought and handed it to him. “One can always have hope.”

Camille gazed at her, more puzzled than ever, then tore open the envelope he’d been handed. Inside was a ticket for passage to France and funds enough to live on for more than a year if he was careful with his money. He didn’t know what to say. He was not a man of many words, least of all words of gratitude.

“Mother,” he finally said, deeply moved by her generosity. “You understand that if I go back to Paris, I won’t return?”

“Of course I understand. Before you go, you’ll help your father in the store. Without your two brothers, he needs you now. Then, when our business affairs are more settled, you can leave.”

There was a war brewing in America, and the effects rippled down to everyone. Ships were lost, ships were commandeered, with goods meant for Charleston or New York stolen. It was perhaps the bleakest time for their business, and Rachel was glad Mr. Enrique had long ago suggested to Frédéric that they no longer own the ships themselves. If they had continued in the direction Monsieur Petit had led them, they would likely be destitute by now, accepting charity from their community instead of helping those in need, something Camille seemed to have overlooked completely. Every Sunday food was brought down to the synagogue for those who were faltering in their businesses and their lives, and Rachel was more than glad to give what she could.

They had finished their coffees, and now began to walk together. The market square was nearly empty in this, the hottest hour of the day, with white cloths thrown over the fruit and vegetable stands to protect them from the sunlight. “Just do your best not to bankrupt the store before you leave,” Rachel told her son.

“I promise to try,” Camille said. It was the very least he could do.

That was enough for her. Rachel was ready to go home. She found herself exhausted by the heat, even though she’d known such weather all her life. The birds were so weighted down by the temperature, they didn’t sing at this hour. The only birds that managed flight were the pelicans, and then only far out at sea, where there were breezes. Rachel imagined that Adelle’s spirit was out where the ocean was the exact shade of gray that it was in the painting her son had given her. The idea of the wind at sea was a delicious notion on such a hot day. The clouds would be enormous, white, like a canopy. The spray would be chill, the waves as high as the roofs of the fruit stands they now passed. As for Camille, he was imagining not the sea but the street where his aunt and uncle lived, the way the dusk sifted down like black powder. He would arrive in November, the start of his favorite time of year, when the trees were red and gold and black and the grass was silver. He would write to Fritz’s brother Anton immediately and ask if he might be taken on as one of his students in preparation for attending a serious art school.

Rachel paused to lean on a low stucco wall for support, cooling herself with a small fan that had been made from bone and silk in Spain. Her son offered his arm so that he might assist her as they walked on, but she waved him away.

“I don’t need your help, even if you do think I’m an old lady.” She began to walk on, toward home, quickening her pace. They had already begun to climb the twisting street that led to the store.

“When I used to walk with Madame Halevy, she always said the same thing.”

“That old spider?” Rachel said, her mouth pursing with distaste.

Camille grinned at her response. When he did, he so resembled his father that Rachel felt her love for him rise up inside her. More, not less.

“I’ll be able to return the favor to Jestine for sewing my new jacket,” Camille said joyfully. Now that he knew his fate was his own, he was filled with good cheer. “I’ll bring the dress she made for Lyddie to Paris.”

“There’s no need,” his mother told him.

Soon she would be in the gardens of the Tuileries, where she would astound strangers when she told them about the turtles that arose from the sea on a single night, and the blood-red flowers that had been planted by the wives of the pirates, and the flights of stairs built to protect runaway slaves from the werewolves that chased after them. She had begun to pack that morning, making certain to leave room in the crate for Camille’s paintings.

She patted her son’s arm to assure him she was ready for what came next. “Jestine and I can bring the dress. We’ll already be there when you arrive.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Season of Rain

C
HARLOTTE
A
MALIE
, S
T
. T
HOMAS
/ P
ARIS
, F
RANCE

1855

RACHEL POMIÉ PETIT PIZZARRO

T
here was trouble brewing in America, a lawlessness that sometimes portends war. Our business was failing due to the unreliable shipping trade, particularly along the coast of South Carolina, where piracy was not only indulged but, it seemed, encouraged. Frédéric had made a promise to the ghost of my first husband to watch over his holdings, and therefore would not leave until this promise was fulfilled. I could see he was torn. He had approved my plan to finally go to France; my daughter Delphine was seriously ill in Paris, and my son Camille would soon be going there to study. There was no longer any reason for me to stay. Frédéric knew my heart’s desire had always been to leave this island. He wished to accompany me, but he was too good a man to shirk his responsibilities. Once the business was more settled, both my son and my husband would follow me to France. Mr. Enrique would then be the manager of the store, overseeing day-to-day dealings. A third of our income would belong to him; the rest would be directed to Isaac’s family. We might have paid Mr. Enrique less, but we owed him our lives. Had he not carried my father to the harbor in a wicker basket I would never have come into this world and my children would never have been born. There would have been no woman to greet Frédéric when he arrived in St. Thomas and no one to pay the herb man to save him from his fever.

As the time for my departure grew near, my husband and I were both seized with nerves. In more than thirty years we had never spent one night apart. After all this time, he was still in love with me, and each time I saw him I felt the same pulse in my throat that I’d had when I gazed out the window and saw him surrounded by bees. Frédéric was fifty-three, still so handsome that women in the market nudged each other when they spied him. I knew what they were thinking when they saw us together, for I was not remarkable in any way.
What does he see in her? What spell had she used to enslave him for a lifetime?
If they wanted to think I was a witch, I didn’t mind. Perhaps I was one. Perhaps I had called him to me, ensuring that he’d had no choice but to fall in love with me when he saw me in my white slip. It was the one morning I didn’t pin up my dark hair. I had chosen to stand there, half unclothed, even when I saw the desire in his eyes.

ON MY LAST DAY
in St. Thomas I went back to the house where I’d grown up. As I walked through the gate my skin pricked with sadness. I expected to feel the same turmoil I’d always experienced when I thought of the sort of daughter I’d been, never good enough. But there were only spirits of the past here now, jittery, fading things that sparked through the tangle of vines. If the new owners spied me, they didn’t chase me away. They closed the shutters and left me in peace. Perhaps they’d heard rumors about me, or it was possible they saw me open my hands so that the last stirrings of those who had lived here could gather, drawn to the heat of my flesh before they scattered into dust.