The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  Estella shook her head. “Did she just say my name?” she whispered to Sam but she knew Babe must have because Sam was whooping and leaning over to kiss her cheek, grinning and saying, “Stand up! Go get it! You earned it.”

  Somehow she rose out of her seat. The sound of clapping rang on and on, several people pushed back their chairs to congratulate her as she walked past. Her path took her directly by Alex’s table and she felt as if she’d been knocked sideways when he pushed back his chair too, stood, hand grazing the bare skin of her back as he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Congratulations. I’m so proud of you.”

  Then she was on the stage, listening to Babe telling everyone more about Estella and her designs, one hand straying up to the ear into which Alex had spoken, hearing again the low murmur, that voice she’d never heard him use with anyone besides her: I’m so proud of you. And after that, so low she almost didn’t hear: God I miss you.

  Babe held out her hand to Estella and welcomed her to the microphone. Estella knew exactly what she would say.

  “This award should go to my mother, who taught me everything I know. She put a needle in my hand when I was four years old, along with a piece of fabric and she told me to make something; it only needed to be simple. I made what I thought was an exact replica of a Schiaparelli evening gown. I don’t think it was quite what she had in mind.” She paused for the laughter, saw Alex smiling too.

  “Nobody stands on a stage and receives an award because of what they alone did. It’s always because so many other people helped more than anyone will ever know. Without my mother’s devotion and dedication to me, I wouldn’t be standing here today. Without my friends Janie and Sam I wouldn’t be standing here today. Without my sister Lena I wouldn’t be standing here today.” She heard a squall of whispers at this official acknowledgment of Lena as her sister. “But, as well as being functional and technical, any kind of art is an emotional thing. It comes out of what you know and what you experience; what you feel. So there’s another person I have to thank. To the man from the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  With that she turned to leave the stage, knowing that to have done anything else would be dishonest; without Alex, an entire part of her would not exist.

  The rest of the night was a whirl, a blur. She danced with Sam for a while, laughing, spinning, twirling, trying out every crazy move they could think of. She drank many sidecars. She had her photograph taken by a dozen newspapers and magazines. She sat at a table to talk to Babe but people kept coming over to congratulate her and she started telling her story about being a sketcher and sending copied designs to America, and the euphoria and the whiskey made her put it together like a funny tale and more people gathered to listen and soon she realized there was quite a crowd assembled around her, that she was sitting in a circle of peers and they cared enough to listen.

  It struck her speechless momentarily and she lost her train of thought, which meant that somehow the next sentence came out in French. She shook her head and laughed. “I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

  It took some time for the crowd to disperse and, when they did, she stepped out onto the roof of the Met, breath stolen away by the view: New York City laid out around her like the most intricately patterned fabric, sequinned with light, embroidered with skyscrapers, a shining button of moon at the very center. She smiled, felt like shouting out because there was so much joy in her. She’d done what she set out to do when she left Paris. She had her own fashion label. She’d won an award for it. So why then did it still feel as if something was missing?

  Because it would be nice to have Lena beside her, to show Lena that the world was still capable of good things. Because she didn’t know if she could ever forgive her mother; acknowledgment and forgiveness were not quite the same thing. And because she wished there wasn’t a man in the same room whose very soul she’d once held in her hands, like the loveliest and most precious gift of all, but from whom she was now hopelessly and irrevocably estranged.

  Alex watched her for a long time. That smile; it hit you like whiskey straight from the bottle, making every part of you feel instantly alive. Those eyes: like the argent light of the early morning hours when he’d left her in Paris the night after they’d learned too much about the other and he had, against all reason, fallen more in love with her than ever. Her body: he could see the tanned skin of her back where the fabric had been cut away, the gentle curve of her spine and her slim and lovely arms. The only thing he wanted to do was to step up behind her, place both his hands on her skin, kiss her neck, watch her eyes close, feel her lean into him and then she would turn and he would kiss her the way he kissed her every night in his dreams.

  But he didn’t do any of that. Instead he walked up behind her and said her name and saw her stiffen, every inch of her body instantly alert, saw her hands grab the rail, the joy flee from her face. What he wouldn’t give to not be the cause of that; what he wouldn’t give to be the reason she smiled rather than the reason she tensed.

  “How are you?” she asked disinterestedly.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “How long are you back for?”

  “Just a week. Government meetings. Eugenie’s date pulled out at the last minute and her father asked me to chaperone her.” He hoped she’d hear the subtext: I never want to be with any other woman besides you.

  She turned around and looked at him and her next words were like a slap because he’d thought he was doing a good job of hiding everything he’d seen in France over the last year. But she saw everything.

  “It looks as though it’s been rough,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  How to respond? How to even speak? How to tell her that every night he went to bed with nightmares in his eyes even before he closed them?

  He’d been asked to liaise with America, to help the United States Department of War with a unit they’d set up to operate as MI9 did. But he’d said no and, after this, he was going straight back into the field, that place of living on one’s wits, where there was only danger and risk, where there was no chance to think of anything other than surviving. He couldn’t tell her any of it, couldn’t say that her country was ruined. Couldn’t tell her about all the people—not murdered because that would be the better option, but tormented, hoping to die yet unable to because their enemies wanted them to suffer. How to describe any of this and keep his eyes dry, his voice smooth, his face clear?

  “It’s worse than what we read in the newspapers then?” she asked, reading everything he hadn’t wanted to say into his lack of response.

  He nodded. “Just last week I saw a cattle train filled with Jewish children being taken to a camp.” He stopped abruptly. He’d said far too much.

  She let out a long breath. “And yet the world still turns indifferently. I still make dresses. We all stand around here and drink champagne.”

  “Stopping those things won’t change what’s happening.”

  “I know. But it seems wrong that we leave it all to a few people like you to take on the burdens that the rest of us are unable to face. Thank you.”

  Goddammit! He was going to cry. He could feel a tear leaking into his eye, welling up from a place he’d long thought had turned to drought and he busied himself with finding a cigarette and lighting it, turning away from her as if the wind was bothering him when in fact there was no wind at all.

  “Your mother’s alive,” he said abruptly. “I haven’t seen her. I just know she’s back working the escape line. Not in Paris though.”

  Estella froze at the news, tears the only part of her that moved, running freely down her face. She swiped at them before he could reach out to stroke them away with the pads of his fingers.

  “Thank God,” she breathed at last. Hands visibly shaking, she opened her purse and pulled out a cigarette, then fumbled some more, uttering a “Damn,” which made him realize she didn’t have a lighter.

  It meant he’d have to do i
t again, even though lighting her cigarette earlier had almost undone him. At least then they were surrounded by people but now they were alone together and he had to rely on his willpower, which he was finding, despite years of tempering, wasn’t as great as he’d always thought.

  He flicked the flint, saw the flame leap, saw her eyes flash, saw her curve her lips around the cigarette, saw her eyes fixed to his and as much as he wanted to look away, it was impossible to break that gaze.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. Then, studying his chin, “You have a new scar.”

  His heart leaped when he remembered the last time she’d traced each scar on his body. But he didn’t refer to that night at his home in the Hudson Valley over a year ago. Didn’t mention their last awful encounter because it hurt too damn much and her leaving him was what he’d always expected would happen anyway—that she’d wake up one day and realize she could do so much better than a peripatetic spy with a checkered past who all of Manhattan thought was dissolute at best. He didn’t want to hear her repeat those awful words—I made a mistake—not now, not when he was feeling so bloody tired.

  He was about to thank her for what she’d said in her speech but then she said the most peculiar thing. “I need to see you. There’s something I have to show you. For Lena’s sake. Please?”

  For Lena’s sake? What the hell was she talking about?

  “Gramercy Park. At nine tomorrow morning.” Then Estella spun around and disappeared into the party. He saw her cross the room and speak to Sam who led her onto the dance floor and she was, in a few minutes, smiling a little.

  Alex had a sudden and awful feeling about what she would say to him in the park tomorrow. For she certainly hadn’t smiled at him the way she’d just smiled at Sam.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The next day, Estella could hardly concentrate. She’d known that she couldn’t tell Alex about Xander at the party. It would be so unfair to him with Eugenie there, not to mention everyone else around, and, besides, she’d been unprepared, hadn’t known what to say. Not that she was any better prepared now. Thank goodness for Sam, who came over to the house to distract her. She could hardly brush her own hair, let alone look after Xander, so when Sam said he’d take Xander to the park early, would roll a ball with the little boy and give her some space to get dressed, she nodded.

  At a quarter to nine, she was ready.

  Alex arrived early, set himself up by an apartment building in the northeast corner, pretended to read a newspaper and watched the park.

  Twenty minutes later, Estella appeared and his whole body contracted with pain. That she could look so goddamn gorgeous should be a crime. She was clearly flustered, her hair undone and loose, her dress buttoned incorrectly. His bones ached the way they did when something ominous was about to happen.

  He saw Estella open the gate to the park with her key, saw her cross over to a man sitting on a bench, his back slightly turned to Alex, shielding something on his lap. Alex could tell that the man was Sam and the thing he was shielding was a child.

  Estella sat down next to Sam and Sam looked up from the bundle on his lap, as if reporting something in the way parents did about their child. He saw Estella laugh, saw Sam put his arm around Estella’s shoulders and kiss the top of her head. Three people looking for all the world like a family.

  Alex’s heart squeezed so hard he knew it had finally been wrung dry. He had to get out of there before they saw him. He’d received her message loud and clear—that she had a family and that Alex should forget all about her.

  He never would though.

  Estella reached out to take Xander from Sam. As she did so, the wind caught Xander’s hat, blowing it away. She whirled around to catch it and saw a man hurrying down the street, away from the park, a man she would have known anywhere.

  “Alex!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Alex!”

  She raced out the gates but by the time she reached the corner, he was gone.

  “Oh no!” she cried.

  Then she heard Xander, toddling over to her, say “Maman?”

  That one word made her suddenly see that she’d been wrong. Everything that she’d thought mattered, didn’t. Xander was the loveliest, happiest, most beautiful child regardless of the fact that he shared the same blood as Harry Thaw. With love and patience and kindness Xander’s principal family—Estella and Mrs. Pardy and Janie and Sam—had made sure that Xander would never be like Harry. Xander was his own person.

  And the realization Estella had had at the party about Harry Thaw was incomplete. Yes, there was nothing left for Harry to destroy but she herself was destroying her future with Alex—the man she loved inestimably—before it could truly begin. The scruples and the shame should belong to Harry, not to her. Rather than protecting Alex when she’d lied to him and told him she’d made a mistake, she’d handed Harry Thaw another despicable victory.

  She scrubbed her eyes with her hands. She’d never catch up to Alex. He knew better than anyone how to throw off a pursuer, how to hide. And she doubted he’d be back in Manhattan again for a long time. But that didn’t matter.

  As soon as this damn war was over, she was going to take Xander to Alex and she was going to tell Alex how she had made a terrible mistake. Not in loving him, but in pushing him away. She was going to tell him that she still loved him. That she wanted to marry him. That she hoped, with every filament of her body and soul, that he loved her too.

  So long as he survived the war.

  Please God, she thought, you couldn’t be that cruel. Please let him live. Please let me give him the gift of Xander. Please let us be together at last.

  Alex ran into Estella’s mother by accident in Marseilles. He’d never met her; Peter was the one who organized the minutiae of the safe houses. But when he saw a woman who looked enough like Estella, before he could stop and think, he reached out a hand to her and said, “Is Estella Bissette your daughter?”

  She looked at him blankly and he knew she was doing what she’d learned to do. To answer all questions with a “no” in order to keep out of trouble. He gave her his code name and only then did she follow him to a café where they sat down in the back, watching the German soldiers. They spoke in French because at that moment he was French, an essential munitions worker on his lunch break.

  She stared at him across the table with eyes like Estella’s, although less brilliant and more haunted by what she’d seen.

  “I know your daughter,” he said.

  “How is she?” Jeanne asked.

  “Happy,” he said. “But sad about you.”

  “You’re the one who’s been passing on her letters. You care for her.”

  He didn’t bother to reply. He knew it was written on his face; everything he felt for her. But also the heartbreak and the loss. Still, he tried to deflect. “Estella is a friend. She loves another man, Sam, and has a child with him.”

  “She’s found out about Lena?”

  He nodded again. “If you have a letter, something I can take back to her, it would make her so happy to hear from you.”

  And so she began to write, two pages of small, neat writing. When she was finished, she handed it to him.

  “You should read it,” Jeanne said.

  He shook his head but she only said, more urgently, “You should read it.”

  So he did. He read of how Harry had raped Jeanne too. And Alex knew, he goddamn well knew, how stupid he’d been. Thinking Estella had left because of him. She’d left because she couldn’t face herself.

  He closed his eyes and remembered how sick she’d looked that afternoon in the Hudson Valley when she’d told him she was sorry. He was sorry. A thousand times sorry. If only he’d not given up and run back to Europe. But now it was too late. She’d married Sam. She had a child.

  “I’ll make sure she gets it,” he said in a voice barely controlled as he opened his eyes.

  “Thank you,” Jeanne said before she left.

  That night, he heard fr
om Peter that one of his passeurs in Marseilles had been taken, tortured, and killed. He knew straightaway who it was.

  It took three months for that letter to pass through hands Alex trusted and to find its way to New York and to Estella.

  She opened it with surprise when she saw Alex’s familiar handwriting on the envelope. She tore it open. Inside was a short note, as well as another envelope, addressed to her in her mother’s hand.

  Alex’s note said: I’m so sorry, A.

  And she knew that it meant her mother had died. All she could do was read her mother’s letter and cry, I’m sorry, Maman, I’m so very sorry.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  It was early 1945 before Estella could take a ship to Europe. She had no real idea where to find Alex, but she had to start somewhere. She thought—or rather hoped—that he might have kept using the Rue de Sévigné house. But how long should she wait there praying she was right before she gave up and had to try somewhere else—but where else?

  She and Xander arrived in Le Havre and took the slow train through a broken country to Paris. Once there, carrying a valise in each hand, Estella led Xander to the house in the Marais. She stopped at the portal, one hand resting on the wood, and she had the strangest sensation that she could feel the house breathing, but shallowly.

  She held Xander’s hand and entered the courtyard. The notes of a piano cried out through the window. There was only one person in the world who played the piano like that.

  She tightened her grip on Xander’s hand, pushed open the front door and climbed the staircase. Xander began to chatter. The piano stopped.

  She kept walking along the hall, halting only when she reached the doorway of the room in which she’d once nursed Alex. Seeing him again after so long, alive, so very handsome, unchanged but for a deepening of the lines on his forehead, was so overwhelming that she had to hold on to the doorframe with one hand, the other hand clutching Xander’s even tighter.