Page 41 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“A bully?”

“He would say that he is a patriarch. A man of consequence. His father is the same. They drink from an ancient cask handed down by the Allard men. A poisoned one.”

She made a noise of mirthless laughter.

“Justine?” I only used her name when I was being serious.

“No—we won’t speak of him anymore.” She pressed her lips in a decisive manner. “He does not belong here in this summer, not with us.”

I was an interloper in his house—his marriage—and yet, I experienced the prospect of Marcel’s intrusion as a blunt force. My guilt did not announce itself subtly. On its heels, the snapping jaws of resentment. Desolation. The triumvirate of a miserable heart. I moved my gaze from Marcel’s rifles onto the surface of the Turner, replacing one turbulence with another.

While the Chaton’s husband was away, we pretended. She brought me coffee and wine as I worked feverishly, inspired by our lovemaking and conversation. I completed my commission for her—Moonbathers,a blue dream lifted from the spread of land around Maison de Notre Rêve. Justine was not silent in any of her opinions; she let me know when a line wasn’t true or when a color jarred. Even Emil never went so far as to comment on my works in progress. But I liked her forthrightness. It tore down another door between us, so all that was left were the ones imposed by others.

On rainy days, she read books in her robe, the planes of her body rippling under the silken fabric. I often asked her to model for me, but she refused. She did not want to be immortalized, she insisted. She was no Saskia to my Rembrandt.

“And I am not young,” she told me sadly. “Older than you by years.”

“Not so many.”

“After all this time, I am another withering body.”

But I had seen every inch—touched every inch—and I longed to reassure her that no muse had ever been more cherished or flawless in her lover’s eyes.

I said, “After all this time, yours is the only body I wish to hold.”

“You’ve been reading too much poetry.” But she was smiling.

“Love makes one foolish. And greedy.”

“Be that as it may: your memory will have to be enough, my insatiable Cheval Sauvage.”

It wasn’t. I could summon her on a canvas at will, and I did, unable to resist the lure of seeing her come into being under the swipe of my brush, the wring of my imagination. Wretched and glorious alchemy. We artists are often more ego than empathy, willing to sacrifice everything we have for the promise of greatness.

I should have stayed inside that moment. Or maybe, if I’d been a different woman, I would have left before he came to shatter our peace. I’d have prized my memory of Arles and the Chaton, for it was: a temporary reprieve from a life ill-lived.

But I was not sensible, and I did neither of those things.

I cannot write more tonight. My pen is heavy with regret. I’m filled, as ever, with the knowledge that my memory is nowhere near enough when it comes to her.

May 16, 1943

The clear and rosy dawns of August. Flickering leaves, through which I spied vulpine streaks of red foxes chasing their prey. A chill creeping under the cottage door. On one such morning, the Chaton burst into our château with such excitement that I dropped my brush, upsettingmy jar of soiled water onto the floor. I was working on an oceanic landscape, not my secret painting, thankfully. She paused to survey what I’d done, head tilted in contemplation. I loved seeing her like that—still, intelligent. Fixed on my art.

“The colors seem thin,” she said at last. She was right. “But the movement is sincere. You are always painting water in some shape or form, did you know that? Water that is also fear.”

I wanted to tell her. But I was afraid that our love could not bear my confession.

Already, each moment drifted into the next in a peculiar lamenting rhythm, a dirge that only I could hear.

Just that week, Marcel had sent word that he would return to Maison de Notre Rêve at the end of the month, around the time when the sauniers would begin to pull salt cakes from the marshes of the Rhône. I wanted to go back to Paris before he arrived, but Chaton wished me to see the harvest. The Allards were planning to host a fête for the occasion. Many of their friends and family would be coming in for it, including Emil.

Chaton and Emi promised that there would be wealthy collectors who might commission work from me. Such work might get me through the year in Paris and—who knew?—perhaps I could come back to the Château des Miroirs in time. Marcel traveled often for business, Chaton reminded me. There could be more summers such as this, illicit but sublime. That thought alone made me acquiesce, albeit doubtfully.

At the cottage, my Chaton drew me to the table. Sweeping aside the breakfast crumbs, she laid out a curled piece of paper. It was a drawing of a stone bench; nothing unusual about it. I prepared to smile. Chaton knew I didn’t care about the embellishments she undertook on Maison de Notre Rêve. The excess of her lifestyle would never cease to bemuse.

But then I saw what was written across the face of the bench.

“After all this time,” I read. I swallowed, overcome.