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.
“I have someone I’d like you to meet,” she said to Alex.
Alex’s hands remained on the piano. He wouldn’t look at her. “Your son,” he said in a voice so expressionless she knew it held more feeling than any sob ever could.
“No,” she said quietly. “Your son. Yours and Lena’s.”
“What?” A whisper, so soft, like a tear in the fabric of the air around them.
“You have a son. Lena fell pregnant after you were together. I’ve been keeping him for you; I knew you wouldn’t want him to grow up alone.”
“What?” he said again and Estella almost wished he would revert back to the expressionless tone of before because his voice was now so loaded with emotion, so close to the brink of breaking that she wondered if she could bear to hear him speak like this and not hold him in her arms.
“This is Xander,” she said, willing Alex to lift his gaze to meet hers. “Your son.”
Xander was watching Estella, slightly fearful, able to tell that something wasn’t right with the adults in the room. “Maman?” he said.
Estella blushed. “He just calls me that,” she said. “Because I’ve been looking after him. He’s too young to explain anything to just yet.”
Alex lifted his hands from the piano, stood, and took one step toward them. He stopped as Xander pressed himself into Estella’s side, wary.
Alex crouched down, halfway across the room, so he was at the child’s eye level. “Hi, Xander,” he said. “We have the same name, sort of. I’m Alex, short for Alexander.”
Estella bent down too. “Alex is my…friend. I told you we were coming to meet my friend.”
Xander smiled shyly at his father and Estella saw Alex’s eyes—so like his son’s—bloom with tears, saw his jaw working as hard as it could to keep his face still, untroubled, so he wouldn’t frighten the child.
Alex held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Xander.”
Xander looked at Estella and she nodded. Then he walked over to Alex and slipped his hand inside his father’s.
“Can I give you a hug too?” Alex asked. “I’m a bit sad, you see, and a hug would make me feel much better, I think.”
And Xander, lovely, sweet child that he was slid his arms around Alex’s neck and gave him the softest and most gentle hug. It destroyed Estella. Her sob was so loud that Xander turned back to her, a troubled look on his face, as if he thought he’d done something wrong when of course he’d done the one perfect thing.
Estella saw that the dam had broken in Alex, that the tears were now flowing freely down his cheeks. That a child, a small and tiny child, could have so much power.
“Thank you,” Alex said, voice raw, to Xander. “That’s better.”
Xander reached out a hand to touch one of Alex’s tears, to pat it away. Then he grinned at Estella, as if to say, See, I helped.
“Good boy, Xander,” she managed to say.
“You did this?” Alex asked. “You’ve been looking after my son. For how long?”
“Three years,” she said. “I tried to tell you I had him. That’s why I wanted to see you in Gramercy Park. But you left before I had a chance. And since then I haven’t known how to find you.”
“I thought…” Alex paused, drew in a shaky breath. “I thought Xander was your child. Yours and Sam’s. That you’d married Sam.”
“If you’d hung around to ask,” she chided gently. “But I was so awful to you…” She couldn’t continue; the memory of her telling Alex she couldn’t marry him hurt too much.
“After I saw you and Sam and the child I thought you didn’t want to be with me because you’d fallen in love with Sam.”
Estella shook her head. “No. I found out that…Harry Thaw is my father.” She managed, just, to not look away as she spoke.
Alex stood up then and so did she, straightening slowly, eyes fixed on one another. “I know,” he said. “Your mother asked me to read her letter to you. I think she wanted us to understand that it doesn’t matter who your father is. Or where you come from. What matters is what we make of it. And we’ve both made so much of everything. Except for one thing.”
“What?” Estella breathed the word out quietly in case what she hoped he would say and what he actually said were two different things.
“This.” He slid his arms around her waist and up her back, drawing her to him. “Us.” Then he turned to Xander who was gazing up at this strange performance with wonder. “Xander, would you mind if I kissed your Maman?”
Xander shook his head. No, he didn’t mind at all.
And nor did Estella.
Later, after they’d shared a riotous dinner with Xander, after they’d bathed him together, dressed him together, after Alex had told him a story about a young boy who grew up in a land far away and who had to battle pirates and thieves, after they’d tucked him into bed and they’d both kissed him goodnight, Xander’s arms snaking around Alex’s neck the same way they did around Estella’s, Alex led her to the room with the piano. Actually, led is not an accurate description. He shut the door to Xander’s room and they stumbled, arms wrapped around each other, mouths locked tight, hands raking desperately at clothes until they found the sanctuary of the bed in the music room.
Once there, Alex took his mouth away from hers. “I need to see you. So I can believe you’re really here.”
“I’m here forever,” she vowed.
He didn’t kiss her again, even though he wanted to so much it hurt. Instead he kept his lips a breath away from hers, because watching her was bliss. It meant he could see the moment her breath came faster when he undid the buttons on her shirt, could see the way her eyes darkened as his fingers grazed the nape of her neck, could see her cheeks flush as he slipped her skirt off, could see her mouth open when he traced a slow and sensual line along her collarbone, down the center of her chest, across to one breast and then the other. It meant he could see the desire written in the most discernible of languages on her face as his hands came to rest at the top of her hipbones.
“I love you, Estella,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said. Four words he’d never thought she’d say to him again. Four words he now believed he would hear every day for the rest of his life.
They shared three months of bliss. Later, that’s how Estella would think of that time. Even though it was February, they opened the windows of the house on the Rue de Sévigné to let in the air and the sunlight. They had men, wounded soldiers who could no longer fight out the dying weeks of the war and who had moved across from Germany, eager for work, come in to paint and repair and restore. They watched the house unfurling, which was like watching a rose blooming, the petals of beauty finally released from the tight bud they’d been trapped in for so long.
Alex had to fly back and forth to London. Estella and Xander went with him and, when they were in Paris, he had meetings there too and Estella had appointments with Printemps and La Samaritaine to show them her samples and to organize for the grandes dames of the Parisian stores to stock the Stella brand.
In between all of that, there was the simple joy of sitting in the Place des Vosges and watching Xander run, of playing the piano together, Alex and Estella in perfect harmony, Xander hitting the keys whenever he felt like it, keeping everything new and unexpected. And then there were the nights when Huette would come to watch Xander and Estella and Alex would go to the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.
Estella would wear the gold dress, which hadn’t dated a bit, for the sake of nostalgia and something more: to see the pulse in Alex’s throat beat faster when he saw her, to feel him draw her in as close as she could possibly be, to have him whisper in her ear, “God I love you”; to have to resist the temptation just to stay inside, in bed, naked together, but to feel that same intensity passing between them at the theater; to feel the impossibility of even looking at him or the almost unbearable sensation of his hand on her leg, or his fingers caressing her wrist, knowing what would come later when they were at home together.
Until the day Alex came to her with a frown on his face and she reached up to smooth it away.
“I have to go away for a few days,” he said. “Tonight. To Germany. I can’t take you with me.”
“We can survive a few days apart, I’m sure,” she said lightly, knowing that, sometime soon, they would have to return to New York and resume a more orthodox life where they didn’t see one another quite so much.
“I handed in my notice,” he said. “This is my last trip. I’m going to be a boring Manhattan attorney and we’re going to have summers in France and…” He stopped and looked at her so intently, with so much love, that her breath caught. “The life we’ll have, Estella,” he said.
“The life we’ll have,” she repeated. And she believed it, believed their life together would be extraordinary, unforgettable.
Until the next morning when Xander climbed into bed next to her and she heard something clinking.
“What’s that?” she asked sleepily.
Xander opened his pajama shirt and there, resting against his chest, far too long for him, was Alex’s medallion. “Daddy gave it to me yesterday,” he mumbled as he snuggled in to her. “Said it would keep us safe while he was away.”
And Estella felt it, felt the explosion, the moment Alex ceased to exist, felt his soul kiss her forehead—oh, too lightly—as it flew past and all she could do was clutch the medallion in her hand, draw Xander closer, and scream: No, no, no, no, no.