Everything Beautiful Began After Part 33

Then she is distracted by the hanging chandelier.

All those cobwebs.

Maybe the visitor will think it's a beehive. Delphine wonders if that's where honey comes from and that it's high up so she won't get stinged.

She was stinged in the summer. Her arm has a mark that's too small to see, but it's there.

Then without thinking she steps toward the stranger and lifts her bare arm.

"I was stinged here," she says.

"You were stinged?" the man says with a lulling sweetness.

Delphine nods, "Yes, right here-do you believe me?"

"You speak English," the stranger says. "Just like Rebecca."

"Yes, I speak English," Delphine says. Then she points with her elbow to the man sitting at the foot of the stranger's bed. "But Sebastian taught me, not my aunt."

The stranger is being very nice-maybe he prefers children to adults.

Tucked up in the white sheets reminds Delphine of her baby, her very own child, in the mouse village of secret plops in the hedge that stretches up bursting with birds who fly out chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp-scaring everyone, especially the plastic mice who pretend tremble. Birds just don't know where they're going.

The man's eyes are big and sad.

Plastic mice and their poisoning plops.

Delphine wonders if she is going to say: "I'll be your mother, little lost boy."

Then suddenly he says something to Mama.

"What's happening?"

Then he says: "Where am I?"

Mama doesn't answer but glances at Sebastian.

"Our house," Sebastian says. "Her name is Natalie, I'm Sebastian, and this is our daughter Delphine," Sebastian says.

"Natalie?" The man says, exasperated, "Delphine?"

Will he cry?

Will he cry?

Sometimes grown-ups cry.

Sebastian steps over to the strange man's bedside. "Yes, Natalie. She is Rebecca's twin sister."

Sebastian's accent is sharp and heavy, East London, he told her once.

"Twin? Her twin?"

"You called her Rebecca," Sebastian says to the visitor. "That's why we brought you here."

The stranger closes his eyes.

"Who are you?"

"Henry Bliss," he says.

Delphine giggles but everyone ignores her. She is repeating his name in her head. She can't stop herself: "Awnree please, awnree please, awnree please, awnree please."

She giggles again.

Sebastian turns to her with his finger held up to his lip, which means "I'm not mad but shush down now."

"What's happened?"

"You fainted," Mama says.

The man stares at her.

Delphine steps under her mother's arms and folds them over her little body.

"You knew my sister?" Mama says.

"She never mentioned that you were a twin. How could I not have known that?"

Delphine wonders who he is talking to. Should she say yes or no or oui or non? And then words just fall out of her small mouth.

"Maybe she forgot."

They all look at her without laughing.

Then the radiator starts banging again. There is no talking for a few moments, and then the radiator stops and Sebastian asks the stranger another question.

"But you knew she had a sister?"

"Of course," Henry Bliss replies.

Mama and Sebastian glance at one another quickly as if to pa.s.s a secret without saying it.

"Seems odd you didn't know she had a twin," Sebastian says.

"Do you know what happened to her?" Mama asks slowly. Her face is shaking.

"Yes," the stranger says very quickly. "Do you?"

Sebastian nods. "We got a letter from the French emba.s.sy in Greece. She had registered with them when she went to live there-all French nationals have to."

"When did you know her?" Mama asks.

"When?"

"Yes."

"In Athens."

"You weren't with her then?" Mama says.

Delphine looks at her mother to explain it all carefully, but her mother is purposefully ignoring her as if to say "Don't ask now because even though I'm not talking, it's still interrupting."

Henry Bliss doesn't answer.

"As I said, we brought you here," Sebastian said quietly, "because you said the name Rebecca before you fainted."

Delphine imagines Mama and Sebastian's questions softly raining down upon his head like pillow feathers.

"Were you in Athens for the earthquake?" Mama asks softly.

Delphine feels her mother's whole body behind her.

Her eyes have begun to take in light.

"I couldn't get to her in time . . ."

"In time?" Sebastian asks without moving his head. His eyes study the stranger carefully, as though waiting for the right moment to pounce on the truth.

"Before her building collapsed."

Mama starts crying.

"How long did you know her, Henry?" Sebastian says, but gently.

"Long enough to love her."

Then Mama runs out, but Delphine is rooted to the spot.

Sebastian sighs and puts his hands in his pockets. After a long silence, he says: "If you're up to it, Henry-why don't you get dressed and come down for lunch. Delphine will get you a towel and there's a bath down the hall."

"How long was I sleeping?"

"Almost fourteen hours. We even had the local doctor examine you while you were pa.s.sed out."

"What did he say?"

"He said you probably needed a good kip and that you should probably drink more water, but all French doctors say that."

Delphine rushes off to find the towel.

"Why did you come here, Henry? To tell us?"

Henry sighs and turns to the window.

Outside it's very green. The whistling of birds across the panes, a song only slightly muted by the uneven squares of gla.s.s.

"To see-" Henry says.

"Go on," Sebastian says.

"To see, if she had a family. Where is her grandfather?"

"He died about a year and a half ago. Natalie was living in Paris. It was before I met her actually."

Then banging from upstairs.

"It's Delphine," Sebastian says chuckling. "The towels must be on a high shelf and she's trying to get them. Let's take a walk after lunch, Henry Bliss."

"Okay."

"Be nice to get out in the fresh air."

Chapter Fifty-Seven.

You sit opposite Natalie and sip green soup. There is a clock ticking loudly from the mantelpiece, as if counting down to something. Natalie keeps looking at you. Her beauty is breathtaking. She's a little bigger than her sister, or an older version, but the eyes and cheekbones are the same. She holds her spoon with the same delicacy, between finger and thumb. You want to set your spoon in the bowl and grovel at her feet. You have to keep telling yourself that it's not her, it's not Rebecca, and that you must go on. You feel the sudden urge to leave, to stand up and run out. Watching Natalie eat is a strange form of torture, as it reminds you how wonderful your life will never be.

On the table is a shopping list. The handwriting is almost identical to the handwriting in the diary, but they were twins after all. It could still be Rebecca's child.

Then Sebastian asks where you are from, and you're telling him when suddenly Delphine bursts in wearing a bathing suit and ballet slippers. She's also carrying a plastic whale.

"Delphine, go upstairs and change," her mother says.

Sebastian smiles and puts down his spoon.

"Am I fancy enough for the circus?" Delphine says, looking at you.

Then Delphine begins to dance.

"Delphine!" her mother cries, and the little girl dances out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Sebastian laughs and Natalie glares at him.