While she settled down, Margot still wasn’t “right,” often not leaving her room for days—including not eating or bathing. The logistics of these episodes were difficult for a man trying to run a daily newspaper. Simon hired nurses to coax her to eat and twice a week to throw her into the bathtub. Then, as quickly as they began, the episodes would cease and Margot would be demurely seated at the breakfast table in her silk robe, buttering her toast and sipping coffee—having returned from wherever it was her mind had gone.

She’d also come and go at the circus in those days, Cecile dreading her arrival because she was unreliable, demanding her show be included but not practicing it enough for it to be safe. On a horse, Margot was an artist. While Cecile could ride, she couldn’t hold a candle to Margot. It was as though the horse weren’t even there—as though she were interacting with a chair, not a living, pulsing creature with a mind of its own.

After five years of marriage, Margot gave birth to a daughter, Audrey, in the fall of 1950. Margot’s eccentric and impulsive nature began to get wilder and she began to exhibit odd signs, claiming to see the devil in the field. One day, Simon found her standing in the apple groves, watching the first winter snowfall in her thin nightgown and bare feet, Audrey dangling loosely in her arms, chanting a spell and saying that he had asked to see the baby. Her husband had had it by then. It was one thing to endanger herself but another to harm their young daughter. Simon called an institution to take Margot, but within a day, she’d developed a fever, dying three days later.

Cecile, who had been on the road touring, moved back and took over much of the care of Audrey, letting her manager run the circus in her absence. Le Cirque Margot continued to thrive through the 1960s when Audrey picked up trick riding like Cecile and her mother, working the shows each summer. In 1972, when Audrey made it clear that she didn’t want a life on the road, Cecile, then seventy-two years old, decided it was time to retire the show. For years, ticket sales had been lagging, since families had other forms of entertainment. The age of the circus—and Le Cirque Margot—was at an end.

Now Le Cirque Margot lived on only in memorabilia. Posters and signs with Margot’s face could be found all over Kerrigan Falls. The historical society had an entire collection of circus memorabilia as well as original Zoltan’s mustard jars.

A jolt of nostalgia for Cecile gripped her, and she grabbed the frame. Her mother was right. This painting should be with her. She’d get Gaston Boucher working on it as soon as possible.