A Lasting Impression

her father in age, Antoine DePaul was no more related to her than she was to Louis XVI, but she adored him as though he were family. He traveled frequently, and business had called him back north for well over a month now. Too long. She could hardly wait to see what latest fashion boot he’d purchased. Alligator boots were his trademark, but upon a recent trip to New York, he’d purchased ostrich and anaconda. Only Uncle Antoine . . .
    Turning the next corner, she purposefully inhaled, and wasn’t disappointed. The comforting scent of yeasty beignets and chicory-laced coffee strummed the heartstrings of her childhood home and triggered such vivid memories. And that with Café du Monde still over a block away.
    Her spirits began to lighten, as they always did when she ventured outside and took walks, when she was away from the gallery.
    She recalled the first time she’d laid eyes on Antoine DePaul—in New York City, upon their arrival in America ten years ago. She’d thought him so tall and dashing. He could make her laugh without even trying. Such a lucky twist of fate, meeting him as quickly as they had after disembarking. And he having recently arrived from France as well. “A small world, even in this very large and new one,” Papa had said. An experienced art broker himself, Uncle Antoine had a charm about him that seemed to draw patrons—and female admirers—by the dozens. He had soon become her father’s business partner.
    And, eventually, like a member of their family.
    With a crack of thunder, the gray skies unleashed their weighty promise, and Claire made a mad dash for the café’s striped awning. Feeling a little like a drowned rat and knowing she probably looked the part, she shook the moisture from her skirt and tucked her damp curls into place as best she could.
    “ Bonjour, madame! ” She smiled at the woman behind the counter and placed her order, glad to see the café wasn’t overcrowded.
    Balancing two beignets on a plate along with two bagged for home, she grabbed her coffee and found an empty table. A previous patron had left behind the day’s paper, so as she scanned the news, she relished the pastries between sips and licked the powdered sugar from her fingers, careful that no one was watching.
    After a while, she folded the paper and laid it aside and enjoyed the last of her coffee. She brushed the powdered sugar from her lap, but the black fabric of her only mourning dress was reluctant to give up the dusty white. Had it really been six months since her mother had died? It seemed like much longer, and yet also like yesterday.
    Seeing the rainfall had subsided, she started for home at a leisurely pace, surprised at how quickly dusk was approaching and at how warm and heavy the air still was. With purpose, she turned her thoughts toward which piece of art, if any, her father might have sold in her absence.
    She thought of her Jardins de Versailles but knew it was safe for another day or two, at least. Because a painting from François-Narcisse Brissaud, a lauded “master artist of Paris” whose work was highly sought after, couldn’t very well be sold in a New Orleans art gallery with the oils still tacky to the touch.
    The majority of their patrons came into the gallery requesting copies of famous paintings. Once Papa received their deposit, she gladly filled their requests, signing her own initials—all that he would allow. Americans seemed to love anything and everything European, and owning a well-rendered copy of a renowned European artist’s work was quite in vogue.
    Doing that didn’t bother her. In fact, she enjoyed it. Because those people knew they were buying a copy. A fake. A forgery.
    But when someone came in and purchased the work of acclaimed artist François-Narcisse Brissaud—whose style her mother had studied relentlessly and learned to imitate, as had Claire — they believed they were getting something of real worth.
    But in truth, the artist’s name on the canvas was as counterfeit as the documents her father and Uncle Antoine forged attesting to the painting’s authenticity. What they did was wrong, and she knew it. It was stealing.
    She never understood why her mother had agreed to do it in the first place. Maman had never said, and Claire hadn’t forced the issue, even at the end. It had seemed a trivial question as life painfully and surely ebbed away.
    She still remembered, some years back, the first time she’d seen a landscape her mother