She settled in quickly. In less than a week, Bluebell became used to her when it was time for milking, and the chickens returned to be fed grain every evening when she called to them. Only the bees never became accustomed to her. As a girl she would let them hover near to perch on her arms. Now she had been stung several times.

“Bees are the least forgiving creatures on earth,” her father told her. She understood this was his way of letting her know that he forgave her for leaving, and that, all this time later, although he never said so and though he never would, he was overjoyed that she had come back at last.

CHAPTER NINE

THE REALM OF THE SHADOW

PARIS, SUMMER 1941

LEA HELPED AVA WITH CHORES in the mornings, but her afternoons were spent in the library with Julien. They were in a world of their own. Easy enough, as Victor ignored them. He had been in a foul mood ever since Marianne left, and had never had an interest in reading, even though the selection of books was quite incredible. The first Monsieur Lévi had been a collector of Greek and Hebrew texts, and the second Monsieur Lévi had followed suit, although he favored mythology, folktales, and novels. Lea and Julien read for hours, stretched out on the floor, each extremely aware of the other’s presence, though they both pretended not to be. What they held in common was their aloneness, and in time, thrown together, with no world other than their own, they grew close. Often they could finish each other’s sentences, and then they would laugh, embarrassed, lying on the floor, side by side, feeling the heat of one another’s body.

Lea read novels, one after the other, and then science books, texts about the natural world, psychology, and the miracle of the human body. In the mornings, Julien took lessons with his father. He was already ahead of most students his age, at the university level due to his father’s tutoring and his own innate ability to problem-solve. But he had very little interest in mathematics, a fact he had yet to reveal to his father. He preferred a blank notebook so that he could sketch. He could mimic most things found in nature with ease: a rose, a bird, a single leaf. It might be their own garden that inspired him one day, then the plane trees in the Jardin des Tuileries, or the imaginary landscapes he conjured, islands that were made of rock, rivers that were green as glass. Lea was the first person to whom he showed his work, and her reaction was all he could have wished for. She sat for him so that he could sketch her portrait, and in those hours a door opened for both of them, insight into one another, a close bond.