As angry as I am about what happened with Madame Simon, I give Anna credit for throwing herself into the job instead of complaining about the avalanche of paperwork. So I grab an apple and follow her to the square tower where, two months ago, I slipped a fabricated school certificate into Gabriella’s applications file.
Anna filed the admissions paperwork without question. And voilà. Gabriella Kohn became Gabriella Beaufort, and all I had to do was pull a fast one on a friend . . .
I tell myself Anna would approve if she knew what I was really up to. She might even admire the way I blotted the blue ink to make the fake stamp look more authentic. “So, how’s it going up here?” I ask, settling in with my own meager lunch.
“Oh, you know.” She looks frazzled as she scurries around file cabinets. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I keep wanting to ask Madame Simon a question—only to realize she’s gone.” She bites her lower lip. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from her?”
“Nothing much,” I say, but can’t help adding a little more, hoping it will get back to the baron and twist in his gut. “She’s gone to Marseilles in the hopes she can get a visa from the American consulate.”
Anna nods and sighs. “Maybe Aunt Bea can help her.”
We don’t know yet if Madame Beatrice is out of the hospital, but when she hears about all this, I hope there’ll be hell to pay. “So how do you like being in charge?” I ask.
Anna stops what she’s doing to say, “Don’t tell Maman, but I rather like the feeling of being useful for a change—even if I’m mucking it up. Last admissions day was a nightmare and this one will be worse.”
I put my feet up on the desk and take a big bite of apple. “We do get more sick kids in winter.”
“I’ve got an idea that might help once the warm weather returns.” Anna pauses and taps her lipsticked lips with a pencil. “Half the trouble with admissions day is trying to keep the new arrivals away from the recovering children. We have parents all over the grounds getting lost. Kids crying for their moms. Visitors coming and going. Classes interrupted . . .”
“That about sums it up,” I say.
“Well, I’m thinking.” I love the way she turns her head, as if to illustrate she’s deep in thought. “Dr. Anglade wants the scoutmasters to take the boys on more camping trips to get them out in the air. What if every admissions day in warm weather we sent all our Lafayette kids—the ones healthy enough to go—on a camping trip?”
I think about that. But when I don’t say anything, she throws herself into a chair next to mine. Her face is near mine, the warmth of her arm against my elbow, and I feel a yearning that all but undoes me. Then she asks, “What’s wrong? You’re furrowing your brow. Is it a bad idea?”
“It’s a brilliant idea, actually.” Getting two hundred of our healthiest and most rowdy hooligans out of the dormitories would give the nurses, teachers, and the rest of the staff time to focus on the newest and most needy patients.
You’re brilliant, I think. Brilliant and beautiful and I wish I could tell you all about Gabriella and her secret name and the fact that I might have had a mother and that I’m desperate to find out who she is. That I want us to be as close as we were last winter when we cuddled together in my bed against the cold. But I can’t tell you any of my secrets because then I might tell you the one I’ve been keeping from myself. The fact that I want to kiss you . . .
I want to press my lips to hers. Really kiss her. Like I used to kiss Henri. Even though she’s a woman. A married woman, at that. I’ve been telling myself I like Anna so much because I felt invisible before she came here. But now I know there’s something else that I feel; it’s something like desire, and I’m confused, and upset, and even a little angry. There’s a sound like bees in my brain, and I push my chair back. “I just remembered—I just forgot something—I need to go.”
Anna frowns. “What did you forget?”
I forgot that I’m engaged. That there’s a man who loves me in a prison camp somewhere near Poland, and I’m sitting here eating an apple and laughing with a beautiful woman and thinking about kissing her. What the hell is wrong with me? “It’s nothing,” I say. “Just that I need to finish some more sketches for your mother so I can convince her to let me sculpt a better version of Adrienne Lafayette.”
With that, I head for the door.