Page 205 of Saint Céline
I glanced at him. That was almost healthy. Suspicious.
“Did you read that in a book?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“My love, I have been called many things, but emotionally well-read is not one of them.”
My mother made a small sound from the back seat. I turned. She was smiling.I finally felt at peace.
37
Epilogue (Selena)
France was warm. Not merely beautiful—though it was. Not romantic—though Vincent had chosen a city built by people who forgave sunlight more easily than Blackwater ever had. Warm. The kind of warmth that entered rooms without permission and settled on skin like a blessing no one had to earn.
The studio had tall windows, wooden floors, and walls still bare enough to feel possible. My name was on the enrollment papers: Selena Martin. I had stared at it so long that the administrator asked if something was wrong.
“No,” I said, and meant it.
Vincent did not come to the first meeting with me. He walked me to the building, kissed my temple once, and stopped at the door.
“You’re not coming in?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
His gaze moved to the nameplate beside the entrance, then back to me. “Because this part is yours.”
I hated that my eyes burned. “You’re learning.”
“Slowly.”
“That must be painful for you.”
“Agonizing.”
I smiled despite myself. Then I went inside alone.
The first assignment was simple. A self-portrait. I almost laughed when they said it. I had spent my whole life making one—only never in paint. Céline had been a self-portrait drawn from hunger, envy, fear, silk, and survival. Beautiful, perhaps. Effective, certainly. But never honest. Not fully.
The canvas stayed blank for two days. On the third, I painted hands. Not my face. Hands. My mother’s hands folding laundry. Katherine’s hand over the ledge. Vincent’s hand holding the box. My own hand loosening. My own hand choosing to paint anyway.
My mother moved into an apartment ten minutes away with a balcony full of herbs she kept forgetting to water because she had never had leisure before and did not know what to do with it. She took French classes with an intensity that frightened everyone involved. She bought yellow curtains. She stopped waking before dawn. Sometimes I caught her sitting in sunlight doing nothing. The first time I panicked and asked if she was all right.
She looked at me strangely. “I am resting.”
I had never heard her say that before. Not like it was allowed.
* * *
Sophia and Anya visited in late summer. Anya arrived with three suitcases and announced that France needed better snacks. Sophia arrived with one suitcase and an expressionthat suggested she had already researched every hospital, police station, and embassy within thirty miles. They hugged my mother first, then Miss Astoria, then me—in that order because Anya insisted the cat held grudges and required diplomatic priority.
Vincent stayed politely out of the apartment for the first evening.
Anya noticed. “Did you train him?”
