There are faces again here. All male now: some of them smiling, joshing in a farm courtyard, others unshaven and shadow-eyed. There are faces that Harry does not know, but so many that are familiar. Will is standing on his hands in a Yorkshire field. Pembridge is exchanging cigarettes with a French soldier. Wilkinson scowls at a jar of insecticide powder. Bartley is in the orchard. Harry is by Francis’s side on the docks in Boulogne. Francis is everywhere.

He hears footsteps behind and turns. Marie-Thérèse opens the far door, steps into a kitchen, and beckons Harry after.

“C’est trop, tout ça,” she says. “Too much. It is necessary to try to forget. Il faut essayer. It is necessary to think of tomorrow, not yesterday.”

She takes a bottle from a shelf, pours two measures, and squeezes Harry’s arm. He watches her as she moves around the kitchen. Her broom shoos cobwebs from corners. There is a stale smell, a rust mark in the bottom of the sink, and husks of dead centipedes on the tiles. She gathers them together with a dustpan and brush and, straightening, says, “C’est trop triste. Too sad.”

Harry takes it all in—the row of wooden spoons and the rosy-sprigged coffeepot, the pans that hang from the ceiling and the bar of soap by the side of the sink that has shrunk and cracked. Who last turned it in their hands? Whose domesticity is this? There are bird bones and snail shells on the window ledge, a piece of quartz, a clay pipe, and a collection of flints. Harry considers the imagination that has salvaged and arranged these small treasures. He sees his brother, long ago, pull a triangle of flint from the wall of a trench and turn toward him with an outstretched hand. “Look,” says Francis’s once-upon-a-time voice.

He glances up at a scurry of noise above. “Que les souris qui dansent.” Marie-Thérèse laughs at Harry’s alarm. “Only the mice. While the cat is away, the mice dance.”

Harry drains his glass. The spirit is strong and hot at the back of his throat. He coughs, and Marie-Thérèse widens her eyes in amusement. She clinks her own emptied glass against Harry’s and crosses her arms over her chest. “Alors, you wish to view the house, monsieur?”

Harry suddenly feels like he is trespassing.

“No. I mean, thank you, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. The gentleman is out? He is away today? Le monsieur, il n’est pas ici?”

Marie-Thérèse looks at him for a moment before she answers. She counts it out on her fingers and holds up five digits. “Capitaine Rose, il est décédé. He is dead, monsieur. He is dead for five months.”