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caught sight
of me himself. ‘Stop with that child!’ he called out to me. I
continued to run. Must’ve run bloody miles, in fact, I’m sure of
it. Carrying the girl, there. She’s a lot heavier than she looks, I
must say.”
    “And did Gerard follow you?”
    “Follow me? Dear girl, of course he tried to follow me. I was nipping his nipper, so to speak,
wasn’t I? But we dodged into some bushes that were along the way
and, well, there you are.”
    “Where are we? You jumped into some bushes
and he gave up?”
    “Maggeee...”
    Maggie looked at Laurent who smiled at her
admonishingly and touched his finger to his lips. “Let Roger tell
it.”
    She nodded and looked back at Roger.
    “Well, he gave it a mighty search, did our
Gerard, all the time cursing frightful things! The mouth on him, I
say, we captured her back just in the nick, say what? A few more
months of that sort of language and we’d have a right little Femme
Nikita on our hands!”
    Maggie glanced at the shivering girl-child
and could hardly imagine a less likely possibility. Elise’s baby,
her own niece, flesh of her flesh.
    “Does she speak English?” she asked
suddenly.
    “Ahh, no, as it happens, she does not.
However, I shouldn’t think that’d take but a tick to remedy. You
know how fast youngsters pick things up. She’ll be rattling out
American slang before you know it. Cowabunga-duding with the best
of ‘em. Wouldn’t you say so, Laurent?”
    Laurent didn’t answer but looked at the
child.
    “Has she eaten?” Maggie smiled at the
girl.
    “Yes, nabbed her right after tea-time, I did.
As for myself, thanks for asking, I am a bit peckish. Wouldn’t have
a stray pickle sammie hanging about would you?”
    Laurent seemed to snap himself out of a
daze.
    “There is some chicken left,” he said.
    “Does she respond to her name?” Maggie asked,
kneeling beside the girl and laying a gentle hand on one bony
shoulder. It twitched violently beneath her touch.
    “Why don’t you call her and see?”
    Maggie spoke softly, gently to the child.
    “ Nicole? Bonjour, Nicole.”
    The child lifted her head and looked at
Maggie. The eyes were blank.
    “She knows her name.”
    “It would appear so.”
    Laurent reappeared with the remains of their
picnic lunch and offered it to Roger who quickly fell upon it.
Maggie cut a small piece of Edam and wedged it into a shred of
bread. She presented it to Nicole who simply stared at her. Maggie
put the food morsel into the child’s small hand then touched the
girl’s forehead with the back of her hand. Again, Maggie’s touch
was light and again, the child flinched in response to it. Maggie
had an impulse to gather the child up into her arms and hold her
tightly, as if by doing so she could make it all right again. For
both of them.
    Her niece. Her own sister’s daughter. She
could see no strong resemblance to Elise or anyone in the Newberry
family, but then she never could see likenesses in people. The
child’s hair was dark, unlike Elise’s. Her eyes were wide and dark
and fringed with thick lashes. Her full bottom lip quivered
slightly. Maggie tried to imagine Nicole as a part of their family,
with a place at the Thanksgiving Day table, her own stocking at the
hearth, and knowing her new grandfather’s jokes and feeble puns as
well as the rest of them do now. Was it possible that this
little collection of bones and tremors would someday be a laughing,
happy, integral part of the Newberry clan in Atlanta? Maggie
knelt down and carefully pulled the child into her lap. She lay her
cheek against the little girl’s hair and closed her eyes. Nicole
did not resist her.
    2
    “You did well, me bucko, quite well. I’m
impressed.”
    “It is not like that, Roger.”
    “Well, whatever it’s like, old boy, I’m,
nonetheless, impressed. Although, I must say, to get paid on top of
your, shall we say, pleasure of the moment? seems a bit much under
the circumstances, don’t you think?”
    “I think I am a