When Marianne finally came downstairs she said she had been sleeping, but her eyes were red and her face puffy. Her hair had come undone, and for the first time Julien saw that she was, indeed, beautiful, just as his brother had always vowed.
Marianne offered to help him cross the border, but he told her there was somewhere he must go. He placed the map on the table. “Here.”
“It’s the doctor’s house,” Marianne said after a quick glance. “A day’s walk. An hour or two if Monsieur Cazales next door will take you in his truck.”
She sent Julien with two golden jars of honey to bring to Cazales in return for the favor of a ride. He wouldn’t need the map. Everyone knew where the doctor lived.
“You’ll be all right here?” Julien asked. She certainly didn’t look all right, but she nodded, and he remembered what his brother had told him. Marianne was strong.
She went outside to see him off. She hugged him and told him she would say a prayer for him at her church. They would likely never see one another again, but they had both loved Victor and they always would. Julien had no belongings, but Marianne packed a bag of Victor’s clothes that had been left behind. It made sense for someone to get some use out of them.
“What will you remember most?” Julien asked Marianne.
Everything, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud.
“Remember when he jumped off the roof?” Julien said.
They remembered the house in Paris, and the laundry being hung in the yard on Tuesdays. Long before Victor had become a fighter, or planted bombs, or taken Marianne to bed, he used to run through the fresh white linens, insisting he was a ghost. Marianne embraced Julien for a long time. He was so tall she had to stand on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. They wished each other good luck, for they both believed in luck now, good and bad, a fate cast for no reason, where some would live and others would die. Julien headed to the neighboring farm, just over the hillside, setting off on the path Marianne had always taken when she brought their cows home from the pasture in the dark.
Remember when I was his favorite brother, when he sulked whenever he didn’t get his way, how bad his temper was, how deeply he could love someone, how fast he drove, how bees didn’t frighten him in the least, how he was always convinced he was the best at whatever he tried, from explosives to kissing, how he filled up a room, how he would never follow his mother’s rules, how convinced he was that a plain woman was beautiful, how he always saw her that way, how he had promised he would never leave again.
When Julien reached the farmhouse he introduced himself to the neighbors and presented the gift of honey from Marianne, then asked for a ride over the mountains to the doctor’s house.
Monsieur and Madame Cazales muttered between themselves, wondering if this was the young man who drove too fast.
“No,” Julien said, having overheard them. “That’s not me. That was my brother.”
Monsieur Cazales recognized the look on Julien’s face. There was no need to say more. The people in this village knew sorrow when they saw it. Cazales got the keys to his truck and told his wife he’d be back late, for these were roads that were difficult to navigate even for the best drivers, those who had lived here all their lives and would continue to do so no matter the circumstances.
Marianne’s stomach was churning, and once Julien was gone, she knelt to be sick in the low bushes on the path where she used to walk at night to find the cows. The cows were white and their flanks had gleamed in the dark; when she had sounded a low whistle they would always follow her back to the barn. She could not go inside the house. It would be much too empty. That night she slept out near the hedges where there were migrating birds, little flickering golden things that darted through the dark.
In the morning, she decided she would make a wreath for Victor to lay beside the one she’d woven for her father. As she walked through the fields of Queen Anne’s lace, she was deeply aware of Victor’s absence. How selfish he could be sometimes, how sure of himself, how easy to love. She