He struggled not to laugh. “Please don’t bother. This is probably something I should handle on my own.”

Caroline tutted. “It has not escaped my notice that you have always looked out for Luke and me. Sometimes Dad could be a little scattered, but we could always count on you to remember our birthdays and school graduations. You might be in China or Patagonia, but there would always be a note and a gift delivered on time. When I lost my first tooth and couldn’t stop crying, you wrote me the kindest note. I still have it. Gray, there isn’t anything in the world I won’t do for you.”

He had no idea those gestures had meant so much to her. It made him regret again all the years he’d spent abroad.

“Caroline, please don’t worry about me.”

“But I do.”

Her hand covered his, and he drew comfort from her touch. His baby sister was now propping him up. The worst thing was that he needed it, for Caroline was all he had left of a family.

Twenty-Two

For a week Annabelle moved through life like a sleepwalker—eating, bathing, preparing dinner, but feeling strangely disconnected, as though it were someone else performing these mundane tasks. Elaine seemed unusually happy these days. Or was it merely that Annabelle was so miserable? Most evenings, while Elaine sat reading a braille book, Annabelle kept glancing at her watch, wondering if it was too early to go to bed at eight o’clock.

But one Saturday morning, as they put the breakfast dishes away, Elaine surprised her. “Is this real vanilla?” she asked.

Annabelle had been so engrossed in staring out the window that she hadn’t noticed Elaine twisting the lids off each bottle of Delacroix spice that rested on the shelf in the kitchen. Elaine held the little dark bottle of vanilla extract, delighting in the delicate aroma.

“Yes.”

Elaine brightened and took another whiff. “I’ve heard of real vanilla liquid. It’s shockingly expensive. Did Mr. Delacroix give this to you?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said, praying they could move away from the topic of Gray immediately.

Mercifully, Elaine was more interested in the vanilla than in Gray. She spoke about how Harry, the blind soldier she’d been helping at the Library of Congress, used to work in a grocery, and he said vanilla was the most expensive product in the whole store. There were some cheap imitations, but real vanilla cost twenty times what the fake version cost. Most people wanted the cheaper version, for surely once it was baked into a dish there would be no difference.

“Let’s try it!” Elaine said.

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s buy a bottle of the cheap vanilla, then bake two cakes. We already have a bottle of the expensive stuff, so let’s compare! I have an entire book of recipes I checked out from the library.”