I hadn’t considered that, either. “You studied psychology, too?”

Smiling, she said, “No. But Luc, when his mother left, he had some trouble adjusting.” She’d lost me again, only this time she noticed it, backtracking to explain: “She’s an American, Luc’s mother. From California. When Luc’s older brother was fourteen he went to a school in America, so she went with him, and Luc stayed in France with his father. They didn’t divorce, they were still all one family, but for a few years they were separate. And Luc, he was only twelve when she first left, and it wasn’t so easy for him.”

I was trying to follow along and make sense of this, feeling the sadness that Luc must have felt when his mother and brother had left, and attempting to draw the connection to Mary Dundas and her stories. “Did Luc act like someone he wasn’t, then?”

“Oh, yes.” Bending, Denise slid the king cake into the oven of the old enameled cooker and shut the door with a decided clang before she straightened. “He turned into a tough guy. Always making trouble.”

“Luc?”

“I know. He’s such an easygoing person, right? Such a good man. But when we were teenagers, to those who didn’t know him well, he was this very dark, bad boy.”

“Luc?”

With a nod she poured a cup of coffee for herself and held the pot up. “More?”

“Yes, please.”

She came to join me at the table. “In the end, I think it was just too exhausting for him, to pretend to be this other kind of person. People can’t pretend forever.”

She was talking about Luc, and maybe Mary, and I gathered from the way her voice pitched downwards on those final words that they were meant to be a statement, not to ask a question, so I only gave a nod and didn’t comment. But if it had been a question, I could easily and from my own experience have given her the answer:

Yes, they can.

* * *

I looked for some hint of the dangerous bad boy remaining behind Luc’s blue eyes, but I just couldn’t see it. I’d met his gaze several times over the course of the dinner, and from where I sat I could see the whole corner behind him where both walls were covered with framed family photographs, some very old and some recent and some showing Luc as a teenager, and even in the one where he was staring out unsmiling with his arms crossed he still looked like himself. He must have been either much angrier then or a very good actor to make anybody believe he was capable of doing anything stronger than mischief.

The photographs, all on their own, shone a light on the things that Luc valued. They crossed generations but focused on parents and large groups of children at picnics and sports days and holidays, everyone gathered in much the same way we were now in Luc’s dining room. It was a cozier room than the one at Claudine’s house. The table was neither as grand nor as long, and the food rather simpler than dishes Denise might have made, but the chicken was nice and the wine tasted good and the warm conversation was easy to follow and I felt included and very content.

“Don’t you dare,” Luc was telling Denise, though his grin undermined his own warning. “The boy is too young to be hearing these stories.”

“He already knows you’re not perfect.”

“Yes, but you don’t need to tell him all the crazy things I did. He might try doing them himself.”

Claudine said, “Luc, that drawing in the gold frame, just behind you. Is that new? I don’t remember ever seeing it before.”

He nodded, taking up the wine bottle to refill all our glasses. “Yes, it was my Christmas present from my father’s aunt. She’s moving house and getting rid of many of her things, and she remembered how I always loved this drawing, and the story that went with it. But that,” he said to Noah, “is another story you’re too young to hear.”

“Why?” Noah asked.

“It’s very tragic, very sad.”

Claudine asked, “Who’s the man?”

Luc told her, “Jean-Philippe de Sabran, the uncle of my great-grandfather’s great-grandfather. He fought in the Seven Years’ War, in America.”

Noah had leaned forward in his chair, expectant, waiting for the story, but Luc stopped it there.

“Papa!”

“There’s no ‘Papa’ about it. That’s all I can tell you till you’re older,” Luc explained. “Except to say there’s a museum in New York that keeps his sword in a display, and this”—he nodded to the portrait—“this was drawn by a young woman, an American, who loved him.”

Claudine was looking at the drawing. “It’s really well done, for an amateur artist.”

I followed her gaze and I had to agree. It was beautifully rendered in ink that had faded to sepia tones on the plain ivory paper, and had a partly unfinished look as though the artist had been more intent on capturing the moment than the details.

Claudine said, “It’s very lifelike. I would know this man, I think, were I to pass him on the street. And I would like him. She is showing us his character, his heart, the girl who drew this, and by doing that she lets us see her heart, as well. I can believe she loved him.”

When she said that, I lost interest in the portrait and instead began a study of Claudine. She looked, as always, effortlessly elegant in simple black, her dark hair with its strands of tinsel gray caught back and coiled at her nape to hold its more strong-minded waves contained. I found her difficult to read. She never seemed to show the obvious expressions on her face that let me know how she was feeling. When she smiled it was a smaller movement that might have been sad or insincere or truly happy, I was never sure. I wondered now, from what she’d said about the artist showing us her heart, whether Claudine let her own emotions show more clearly through the photographs she took. And that in turn made me reflect upon the portrait I had seen of Alistair in Claudine’s upstairs studio, and what that picture had to say about her private feelings.