Starting in his eyes, which dimmed like the chandeliers in the circus just before the performance begins, I watched the light leave him. The fade of his normally bright smile came next, once my words had fully reached him.

“But I only love you, Cecile. I don’t love her.”

“I won’t destroy my sister, Émile. I do love you, but I love her more.” A flush came over my body, causing me to become sick again in one swift wave. Searching for something, I ran to the window, reaching for the washbasin and throwing up in it.

Émile led me to the bed, where I gripped the bedsheets with my fists in anticipation of the next wave that I could feel forming. He touched my cheek lightly. “You don’t have a fever.”

He slid next to me and placed his arms around me. “Cecile.”

“Yes,” I said, briefly allowing myself one last moment to fully embrace the warmth and weight of him as he pressed against my body.

“Are you pregnant?”

July 1, 1925

I visited a doctor. Everything was strange to me, from the small office where Sylvie and I waited to the entire process of discovering that I was, indeed, pregnant. For me nothing has changed. I have decided to raise this child in the circus world. It would be the little piece of Émile that I could keep.

I found Esmé in her dressing room. She was about to bar the door with her arm again, but I would not be begging her to talk to me anymore.

“What do you want?”

“He is yours,” I said, spitting the words out. “I have told him that I will not see him again.” Pulling my sweater around my neck, I turned to leave. As I walked down the hallway, I knew that I’d left her standing in her doorway both speechless—and elated.

True to my word, I refused to see Émile, despite his pleas. If my sister wanted him, then I would step aside. I was sure it would only take a modest bit of coaxing on her part to change his devotions from me to her.

August 8, 1925

Before tonight’s performance, I was sick again and went to the animals’ stalls where I wouldn’t be discovered vomiting. I was near His Majesty’s stable—an elaborate, lavish corral with a velvet curtain fit for a king—when I spied Esmé, covered in blood, scrubbing herself in a nearby empty stall.

I had always suspected there was a pattern to our circus. Tomorrow, Father was planning to return, and we would likely move our location again, finding ourselves back at the Bois de Boulogne for the month. As she dried herself with a towel, I could see bloodstains on it. She stood there shivering in the hallway, her silk slip illuminating the outlines of her nipples and the tops of her thighs.