“Fabrice,” Cady said, “you really do look a lot like Léon Morice, the head apprentice working on the carousel.”
“The one everyone assumed Josephine had an affair with?”
“Exactly.”
He shrugged. “I suppose that makes sense. It doesn’t particularly matter to me, to tell you the truth. Not after all this time.”
“In the end, I suppose official provenance doesn’t matter, does it?” Jean-Paul said, holding Cady’s gaze. “Maybe family is just what you make of it.”
“Sounds like a T-shirt slogan,” said Cady, taking a sip of wine, “but I like it.”
“You’ll be pleased to hear that I let Toinon’s girl, Élodie, come out to take a look at your progress on the carousel,” said Fabrice. “She said you’ve done an excellent job so far. Toinon yelled at me for letting you go. Louise came and gave me an earful as well. And Johnny—you’ve got a true fan in that boy.”
There was a long pause.
“Tell her the best part,” Jean-Paul urged.
“Arthur, the village mechanic, checked out the steam engine. He thinks he can get the mechanism running again.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve decided that for the Fête du Muguet, we’re going to have the carousel ready to ride.”
“But you have only half the animals,” Cady said.
“The mechanism can still run without some of the figures. And Jean-Paul thinks he can shake a few more out of the family clutches.”
Jean-Paul nodded. “One or two, at least. Apparently my grandfather has the pig with its tongue sticking out, the one he mentioned the other day.”
“And I’d love to reunite my carved rabbit with the rest of the carousel figures Maëlle helped to work on,” Cady offered on impulse. “It seems only right that Gus should stay at Château Clement, where he came from.”
“Once we get the thing actually functioning, I guess we’ll have to invite people around to see it,” said Fabrice in a cantankerous tone that no longer fooled Cady. “Johnny went and blabbed to the kids in the village, and now they’re all excited. Hard to believe they’d want to leave their video games for an afternoon, but it seems so.”
“What are you saying?”
“I guess you were right about Johnny; he’s a decent kid.”
“No, I mean what are you saying about... me?”
“I’m saying we need your help to finish everything up in time. The fête is only a couple of weeks from now.” Fabrice’s voice gentled. “Come back to the château, Cady. I told you a while ago that you should ignore me—I’m just a mean old man. The fact is, you can stay as long as you like. Stay forever, as far as I’m concerned. And you’ll have unlimited free rides on the carousel.”
Cady looked out over the river Sorgue, at a loss for words. She had experienced these emotions once before: when Maxine had asked herto come and stay. It was the offer of belonging, of family. Not of blood, but of kindred souls.
A dragonfly flew by their table, glinting green, yellow, and blue in the golden light of late afternoon. It skittered along the waters of the Sorgue, then disappeared in the direction of the source.
Three pairs of eyes watched, wondering at the many-winged descendant of the great dragon that had once terrorized the countryside.
And at long last a huge platter of oysters arrived.
• • •
“That makes twenty-one animals, with Gus,” Cady said, checking her notebook as she and Jean-Paul meandered down rue de Rivoli after leaving an antiques sale in Le Village Saint-Paul, a famousbrocantesdistrict of Paris. “Just three more figures to go, and we’ll have a full carousel.”
“What do you suppose Bayol would think of us adding non-Bayol horses to his menagerie?”
“Don’t forget the hippogriff,” she said with a smile. “I think he’d like it, actually. At the very least, I imagine he’d be glad that we’re bringing hismanègeback from the brink. And I think Maëlle would as well.”
“I think you’re right.”
