At the Edge of Summer

The soldier stood on the threshold of the caves beneath Brindeau. The caves were dark, but he kept to the splash of sunlight outside, holding a stick like a rapier.

He came alone, lurking in the entrance, not quite stepping in. Once fearless in the face of a trench wall, he was afraid of a cave. Inside, it still smelled of an army, of horses and wood smoke and drying wool. Debris littered the caverns—rotting hay, scraps of torn cloth, tins, bottles, forgotten letters. Memories strewn underfoot. The soldier who hesitated outside, he was afraid of that more than anything.

I moved from the shadows. “Luc.”

I was nervous, too. Taut from my journey from Paris, terrified that I wouldn’t find him, that, once again, he’d disappear from my life, I left Mille Mots for the place I’d once felt safe. I went to the familiar darkness of the caves.

And then here he was. Amazingly, beautifully here. I remembered an afternoon in the hallway of Mille Mots where he told me the story of his mother leaving and of his seven-year-old self wishing for her so hard that she felt it across the Channel and came to him. I’d come from Paris, sending wishes into the sky with every mile. And he came. I held on to the end of my coat sleeves and stepped towards him.

At the sight of me, the stick clattered to the ground. And suddenly he was there, so close I could have taken him in my arms. And I should’ve. Instead I said, “You were gone.”

He wore my red scarf, loose around his neck. “I’m not now.”

“But you were. I didn’t know where you’d gone, only that you left in the morning and you didn’t come home.” I pressed a hand, wet from limestone, to my forehead. “I wondered if you ever would.”

“I didn’t mean for you to worry.” He swallowed. “I just had to be sure the war really was over.”

“And is it?” I moved closer. I could feel the warmth from his coat.

He put a hand to the wall of the cave. “I think so.” He ran fingers down the wall. In the dim light from outside, I could see a roll of honor carved into the stone. “This is where it all happened, you know.”

“Where what…it is?” And I took a step back to look around. I’d known that the war came close to here. I’d seen the ground churned up outside, smelled the lingering memory of horses and men, saw tatters of cloth and discarded shoes. In one corner, I’d overturned an empty pot with my toe. Soldiers had stayed here, but to think that Luc had been one, so near to home, yet a world away. “This is where Michel…and Stefan…”

He inhaled and nodded. “I never thought I’d come back to this cave.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t?”

The question echoed, hung in the still air a moment. Water dripped deep within the cave. “If I hadn’t, it would be like pretending it never happened.” He hitched his haversack further up his shoulder. “It would be wearing a mask to forget the scars beneath.”

“I made that mask.” I straightened. “I meant it to help.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“You’re not wearing it.”

“Clare, all those days you spent sketching me, shaping the mask, painting it, all those days matter.” Shadows caught in the scars on his face. “You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”

“And do you now?” I wrapped my arms around my chest.

He touched his face, craggy without his mask. “I’m starting to.” He reached into his haversack and took out a slim parcel, wrapped in paper. He seemed almost nervous, turning the package back and forth in his hands. “I should have given this to you ages ago…” he said.

He peeled back the wrapping and held it out. It was a bundle of soft Conté pencils, bunched tight.

It was an odd gift, for someone who was once an art student, for someone who worked in a studio. “For me?”

He must have seen the question on my face, even in the dim of the cave mouth. He twisted the paper. “You don’t know this, but once before I bought you pencils. It was the summer you were at Mille Mots.”

“I remember you brought your father pencils.”

“They were meant for you.”

I stood silent for a moment. “Why?”

“Because I believed in you. I knew I’d see your drawings someday in a gallery.” He took a step closer. “Even then, you knew what you loved.”

You, I wanted to say.

“Did I?” I asked instead.

“You did. You do. Your Something Important.”

“Something,” I repeated. “It’s a singular word, isn’t it?”

“Clare,” he said, holding out the pencils, so much more on offer. “You’re not your mother.”

Though I never thought I’d make a promise, I said, “I won’t leave.” And I meant it.

“If you do, take me with you?” In the dimness, I swore he held his breath.

I smiled. “I always have.”

From his bag he took a stub of a candle and lit it. The flame jumped. “So did I.” He held out his hand. “Let me show you something.”

I took it.

We walked into the dark, his hand warm and safe around mine. I closed my eyes and let him lead me. Softly, under his breath, he counted. Steps in from the entrance, steps to where he’d eaten, rested, prayed, dreaded, hoped. “Where did it happen?” I asked.

He slowed and his hand tightened. “Outside, up by where the old farmhouse was. There was a cellar near the line of trees.”

“Did you…”

“It looks different in the daylight,” he said. “I buried the past.”

“I’m glad.”

He drew me closer. He didn’t say a word.

“Remember that summer when we’d walk here?” I said, as though he would have forgotten. “It’s silly, but when I would come back here into the caves, I used to scratch our initials on the wall with my fingernail. A little deeper, each time, so that it didn’t fade.”

He handed me the candle. “It didn’t.”

Right there, on the soot-streaked walls, was scratched a pale C.R. and L.C.

“So many years.” I reached out with a finger to trace the initials. “I wonder what the soldiers here thought of it.”

He put his hand over mine, the one that held the candle. “I can’t speak for all the soldiers, but those four letters helped one soldier get through it all.” He moved my hand and the candle along the wall. “So much that he carved right beside them.”

It was me. My face, charcoaled and half carved into the limestone. Me, wild-haired, with eyes wide. Through sudden tears, the candle blurred.

“It’s how I first saw you, in the front hallway, and how I’ve always remembered you. Fascinating and frustrating, determined and impulsive, fragile and strong as stone.” He lowered the candle. “A face I couldn’t forget, even in the middle of war.”

In his face, I could see the boy I’d lost and the man I’d found again. I loved them both.