One curious thing was, Justine was no longer unfaithful. Of this she had been cured. And one day it happened that from dawn until dusk, she wept, and then the next day, too, and the next. She felt she was dissolving, like a lozenge in the rain. She didn’t mind so much. It was Elliot, by now married, who told her father what was happening to Justine. Her father took her to stay with relatives in France for three months, and she remained there, moving to Paris and finding work as a portrait photographer through a family friend. She thought about Joseph all the time in the beginning. It was like an ache, an addiction. It was the first time she’d been without a guy since she was fifteen. Yet she found a grim pleasure in her solitude. She feasted on work for a couple of years, taking any photography job she could find, and rose gradually up the ladder of prestige to the point where she was shooting ad campaigns and some editorial for fashion magazines. One spring, she was booked for a major fashion shoot in the Garde Républicaine, an immured garrison on Boulevard Henri IV. The story would be splashy, with photos of the handsome gendarmes in their gold Napoleonic helmets alongside models in evening gowns. Justine got to the Garde Républicaine an hour before the appointed time with a single camera, to get a sense of the light. Her assistant for the day would bring the rest of the gear. She walked through the high, baroque stone archway of the entrance. Three mounted policemen practiced jumps in the center of the sunny courtyard. To her right, a square doorway led to the stables. As she entered, Justine smelled dung and hay, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. Scanty light fell from high, semicircular windows. The horses were largely turned away, blanketed behind the iron bars of their stalls, eating oats from small metal troughs set into the stone walls. Justine noticed a man at the end of the long room, standing on a crate, holding the bridle of a massive black horse tight as he trained a pinprick of light into its eye. Instinctively, Justine stalked the image. With a light tread she approached the scene, raising her camera. Through the lens she could now discern the man’s expression of absorbed concentration, his angular face resting against the horse’s dark muzzle as he pointed the needle of light into its wild, frightened eye. Justine pressed the shutter. The man looked down, spooked, and released the horse’s halter. Justine explained herself, apologizing for startling him. Blushing, he stepped down from the crate and introduced himself. Étienne was the veterinarian for the horses of the Garde Républicaine. Justine asked in her homely French about the animal he was treating now. He explained it had a cataract. This man had a manner new to Justine: self-effacing, yet steeped in his own competence. Justine asked him if she could take another picture. Reluctant, shy, he allowed it. She asked him to take a step to his left, into the light. He missed the mark. Without thinking, she reached out to adjust him. As her fingers brushed his bare forearm, a shock branched out through her hand and her body, causing a sudden and profound ache in her womb. Within six months, she was pregnant with Francis and had moved into Étienne’s small but charming apartment in the barracks of the Garde Républicaine.