The Reinvention of Love

more calm than Léopoldine, but perhaps I do not know him so well. I do not know what his face is supposed to look like.
    “Foolish, foolish boy,” says Madame Vacquerie. “How was he to know that we grow out of that romance. An older man would never have chosen to drown.”
    My Charles would die for me, I think, and I realize that this is the first time I’ve thought about Charles since I got here, and that it feels wrong to think about him now.
    “I’m so sorry,” I say, because it is one thing to know that your child died in an accident and quite another to know that he chose to kill himself in the name of love. I would not have wanted that for Léopoldine. Her death, terrible as it is, will be easier to bear over time. Madame Vacquerie will forever question her son’s decision.
    “I wish your son had not made that choice,” I say. “I wish he had loved my daughter less.”
    “You don’t mean that,” says Madame Vacquerie. “But thank you. It is kind of you to say it.”
    I don’t mean it. I’m glad my child knew love if she was to leave this earth so soon. I’m glad she was married to a man who loved her, and who proved it in such a dramatic fashion. It can never be doubted. From this moment forward, it can never be doubted that Léopoldine was beloved.
    “When should we have the service tomorrow?” asks Madame Vacquerie. “What time are you expecting your husband to arrive?”
    At last the question I have been dreading.
    “He’s on a walking holiday in Spain,” I say. “He won’t be able to get here in time. We will go on without him.”
    I do not know where Victor is. He said that he was tired, that he had been working too hard and needed a change. So he left for a walking holiday in Spain. Usually, when he goes off by himself, I am relieved at his absence and have no reason to contact him while he is away. But when I tried to find him this time, at the hotel where he was meant to be staying, they said that he’d never checked in, that they had no reservation for him. It seems he is not walking in Spain. God knows where he is, but the lie means he is probably with his mistress, Juliette Drouet. He is with his mistress somewhere and he has no idea that his eldest daughter has died so tragically.
    Léopoldine was always her father’s favourite. He was more affectionate with her than with the other children. He thought her the most brilliant child of the four.
    “It can’t be helped,” I say. “He will just have to miss the burial.”
    There’s no response from Madame Vacquerie, and when I look over at her, I see that she is weeping. She is holding on to her son’s hand and her head is bowed over his body. I back slowly out of the room without her noticing.
    Léopoldine is as I left her, lying on the library table, still dead. It seems absurd that she should still be dead. I don’t want her to be dead any more. I want her to get up, to move about, to become herself again. I want her to climb up out of the water and burst into the sunlight, opening her mouth to breathe in the sweet afternoon air. I want her husband to find her there,and to keep her afloat until the fishing boat arrives to rescue them both. I want them to have their child. I want it to be a girl. I want them to name her after Charles’s mother. I want their married happiness to continue. I want there to be other children. I want to die with my eldest daughter as a woman in middle years, sitting at my bedside, holding my hand.
    The candles gutter on the mantle, sputtering and flailing. The room grows darker and darker still.
    It is awkward, but I manage to climb onto the library table. I lie down beside my daughter and pull her into my arms. She is stiff and cold. It is as if I am embracing the sea itself.
    Did she cry out? Was she afraid? Did she know what was happening?
    This was my girl, my first living child, who was talented and beautiful, who could paint and draw and write poetry to rival her father’s, who had all the social graces, who was mischievous and kind and full of light, who had married for love. This was my child, this corpse, this heavy fish, this mermaid.
    The day of the funeral dawns bright and clear. My bedroom is at the back of the house. Mercifully, Madame Vacquerie saw fit not to put me in a room that overlooks the river. My room looks down onto the gardens and the tops of the fruit trees in the small orchard at the back.
    I had laid out my mourning dress the night before. A maid comes with