“Come,” said Lanh, standing and helping me up. “I think I know what’s wrong. We will find Lucie and Monsieur Lesage soon—I’m sure they are worried about where you are, too—and they may just be at the house. But there is something else that’s even more important than the whereabouts of your family.”
He helped me into the car, and we traveled in silence toward the house. I was still processing Lanh’s words. The stationmaster had lied to me. But more importantly, my family had not disappeared.
Lanh turned toward our neighborhood, maneuvering the car around the usual potholes, but turned off before our street. He parked the car near the lake, in a quiet spot, and turned to me.
“Madame Lesage. Jessie,” he said. It was the only time he’d ever said my first name.
“Lanh,” I said softly, as if our relationship had somehow just shifted by him saying that one word.
“I know why you’re feeling the way you are,” he said, his hands in his lap, fidgeting. “And why you were too distraught to find your family.”
“Victor would say it’s because my mind is broken.”
“Your mind is not broken,” he said very quietly. He tilted his head up and looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time.
“What is it, then?” I asked, searching his dark eyes.
“You are a woman being preyed upon.”
“By Victor?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.
Lanh looked away but said nothing, letting the silence sit with us for a moment.
“Do you remember when we drove back to the yellow house after I took you to the hippodrome? After the horse race? You were very upset.”
“I was,” I said, thinking back to my conversation with Red. Of Marcelle.
“I asked Trieu to bring you something to eat and to make you very hot tea. Something to soothe you.”
“I remember,” I said, though it was blurry.
“I stayed near you that day because I was worried, and you’ve always been very kind to me. To us,” he said, indicating his sister without saying her name. “When I wasn’t by your side, I was in the shadows, not far away, making sure you were being taken care of. Trieu brought you what I asked, but you didn’t drink all the tea she’d prepared, maybe only half, then you fell asleep. Trieu pulled all the curtains closed and then took the half-full cup downstairs with her when she was clearing your dishes, and I followed. When she was in the living room, on her way to the kitchen, she separated the cup from your plate and placed it aside. Lucie, who had been playing in the living room with her funny doll, that one with the pale face—”
“Odile,” I whispered. I had bought it for Lucie before she was even born.
“Odile,” he repeated. “Lucie left the doll and picked up the cup, smelling its contents and then lifted it up to drink from it. But before Lucie could drink the tea, Trieu, who was coming back from the kitchen, rushed over and knocked the cup out of her hands, causing it to shatter on the floor. I think she was as startled as Lucie was, in a way. It was forceful. She didn’t think anyone saw it—I was in the shadows, like I said. She stared at the mess and then quickly apologized to Lucie. She said that her mother was quite sick and that if she used the same cup she could fall ill, too.” He paused and looked at me. “I’ve seen you with your daughter. You share everything. You’re a good mother. I knew you wouldn’t have minded about the cup.”
I looked at him, my layers of confusion multiplying.
“But Lucie never mentioned anything to me about that,” I said, thinking back.
“I think she’s very sensitive about your being sick,” said Lanh.
I nodded, thinking of her words earlier that morning.
“With Lucie standing there, shocked, Trieu ran to the kitchen for a broom and rags to clean up the mess, and then Cam came and pulled Lucie away to wash her.”
“But you were still there.”
“I was, watching from the dining room. When they were gone, I quickly went over to the shattered cup, took some of the herbs out of the fragments, and wrapped them in a napkin.”
“Why did you do that?” I asked, looking at him quizzically.
“I had a bad feeling. Trieu has never been anything but kind with Lucie. For her to push the cup like that was strange. It was out of character.”