The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

  “You did not just say that to me?”

  He hadn’t closed his drapes, and the Opéra-Comique’s courtyard was lit up. Skateboarders and lovers made use of the steps near the ticket window. The view was magnificent. She heard the cork pop and the sound of bubbles meeting glass.

  “I can’t seem to make myself shut the drapes.” He walked up and stood behind her but did not touch her.

  “Did I ever tell you where my love of a man in uniform came from?”

  “I didn’t know you had a love for a man in uniform.”

  “Chief Brody in Jaws.” She chuckled.

  “His sleeves were not nearly as well starched as mine.”

  “No.” She turned to face him. “They weren’t.”

  He held out her champagne glass. “I thought you were dead. As I watched your mother walk down the hallway, crying, I had a minute where I imagined my life without you.”

  Lara kissed him, hard, hiding the dreadful secret that he would, indeed, be without her soon enough. She belonged to Le Cirque Secret now.

  Finally she pulled away. There was something pressing that he needed to know. Both now and for the future. “In whatever state I was in, Todd came to me. He was sitting on his car and asked me to come with him. I knew it was a choice.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But I told him I couldn’t go with him.”

  With the lights of Paris shining on his face, Lara looked up. “I know now that I came back for you.”

  Back in her old bed at the farm in Kerrigan Falls, Lara had slept soundly. The absorption of Cecile was still taxing her body. Yet the voice inside her had remained quiet ever since they’d left Paris. “Are you still there?”

  Nothing.

  There was a temptation to think it had all been a dream, except the desire to go to Montparnasse and the market at Rue Mouffetard that last day had not been hers. There were small signs that she wasn’t alone in her body and that Cecile was observing the world, having been gone from it for over seventy-five years.

  This time, there was no question that she would be staying at the farm. Since she’d gotten back last week, Audrey had been fussing over her. Her mother was out getting groceries. Lara had no doubt that she’d be picking up chocolate chips, pierogies, and turkey pastrami—all her favorite comfort foods. Caren would join them and they’d watch old Hitchcock films and eat popcorn. She could tell that Cecile’s heart had quickened at seeing Audrey and Lara together. Her granddaughter and great-granddaughter—her legacy.

  Like a tour guide, Lara had visited the old Kerrigan Falls Cemetery to show Cecile Margot’s grave as well as the one marked CECILE CABOT that was actually Sylvie’s final resting place. Lara thought Cecile would like that. “She wanted you to live on,” said Lara out loud to the voice inside her. Sylvie had been the one living connection between them. They’d both known and loved her.

  “What happened to her?” asked Lara finally. “I saw Margot and you at Le Cirque Secret, but not Sylvie.”

  Finally, the voice inside her head spoke: Because she was human, she passed on normally. She wasn’t bound to the circus like we were. We’re half daemon, so we return to him. You will return to him as well, in the circus.

  “So I’ll end up in Le Cirque Secret one way or another,” said Lara to the voice, reassured that she wasn’t alone. Having someone, even a disembodied voice in your head, sharing this secret made it bearable. “Can’t you tell me what Esmé looks like?”

  I can only describe her to you.

  “The painting,” said Lara. “You can’t share your memories with me?”

  No. Sadly, I cannot. But if I see her, I will tell you.

  “So we just wait for her?” asked Lara. Althacazur had given them no plan; they were just blended for battle.

  She’ll find us, Lara. Be patient, plus enjoy the time you have here.

  The next morning, the sound of her bedroom shutters snapping open woke Lara from a sound sleep. Lifting her head, she saw the morning sun filtering in on her. “Jesus,” she groaned. Somewhere in the distance she heard a rooster crow and the sound of a tractor firing up. “What the hell?”

  Audrey stood there, arms folded. “We’re making jam today. The berries are in.”

  Lara covered her head with her pillow. “I’m not making jam today, Mother. I’m sleeping, then Caren is coming over.”

  Her mother lifted the pillow, so the sun seeped into Lara’s eyes. “The huckleberries have come in this past weekend. I need help before it gets too hot.” Audrey’s hands clapped, and as if on cue, Lara felt a firm thump on her stomach as her Welsh terrier, Hugo, peered down at her and sniffed along her ear. Hugo shared a name with the catcher from Cecile’s diary. This furry Hugo was also a great catcher… of tennis balls. While berry picking was, indeed, one of his favorite activities, apple picking in the fall delighted him even more. He mistook the apples for balls and could be found slobbering over the wooden baskets, heaping with fresh apples, one or two marred by tooth marks. Most of the top layer of apples with Hugo bites in them had to be discarded when baking pies.

  “Seriously, Hugo? Why do you always take her side? It’s always the tiny ones who are trouble.” The terrier cocked his head and dug at her covers. “Where are the rest of them?”

  “Penny and Oddjob don’t care for berry picking, as you know. Hugo is going, though,” added her mother, like there was ever any question about Hugo’s participation. For dogs, Oddjob and Moneypenny didn’t like to do much of anything except guard her. They hadn’t left Lara’s side since she’d gotten back from Paris, and she was surprised to find they weren’t on the bed.

  She put her feet on the floor and looked up to see her mother standing in the doorway, arms still folded. She snapped the duvet back and wiggled out of the tangled covers. “Are you frozen in that position, Mother?”

  Audrey snorted and walked out of her room. Lara could hear her mother’s shoes on the steps followed by Hugo’s frantic scrambling feet behind her. Audrey called from the stairwell, “Come on.”

  Lara threw on pants and a gray zippered sweatshirt and pulled her hair into a ponytail, searching for her sunglasses. It was seven in the morning and it would be cold down in the groves, plus the mosquitoes could eat you alive some days. She moved like a zombie down the stairs, grabbing a cup of coffee. Then she headed out to the tractor.

  Audrey had her hair in a tight ponytail and was wearing tortoise Wayfarers. She smelled of recently applied mosquito spray and suntan lotion. Starting up the dusty old John Deere, Audrey put it in gear, the old machine’s cadence competing with another, newer tractor in the next field. She steered it down the windy road past the gas wells and into the wooded groves. Lara, with Hugo in her arms, was being pulled behind the tractor on a wagon with empty buckets at their feet.

  It had been her grandfather Simon Webster who’d first brought Lara to the wild huckleberry groves, located in the back acres of their farm. He’d shown her the secret hiding place of the lush bushes off the mowed path. The complete opposite of what you’d expect, Simon was a masterful canner and pie maker; he taught Lara how to roll out piecrust, always making cinnamon rolls with the crust scraps. As the road wound past the wells, the house faded from sight. The tractor rumbled and thumped across a wooden bridge over a small spring as they headed into a thick forest. The sun was bright overhead, peeking down occasionally from the canopy of branches above them and shining in patches on Audrey’s gold-colored hair.

  The tractor slowed enough for Lara to hop out and walk ahead to investigate the ripeness of the berries. Lara and Audrey each took a giant bucket and headed out, Hugo yapping ahead of them. The sun came down in patches around her, and the stillness was welcome. Once Lara pushed through some dense thickets, the fragrant smell of the ripe dark-purple clusters baking in the sun hit her before she saw the light-green leaves of the bushes. You never knew what condition you’d find the berries in each season, and that was half the anticipation. Had Simon never shown them to her, Lara would have passed by them. Assessin
g the grove, Lara began plucking the berries, which fell into the basket with heavy thuds.

  Audrey was humming what Lara knew to be a Hank Williams song, “Your Cheatin’ Heart”—one of her favorites. She’d move on to Patsy Cline soon enough because she couldn’t yodel. Midway through the song, she stopped humming. “You took far too many chances in Paris. You know that.” Audrey’s voice was sharp and tight. Her berry picking came to an abrupt halt.

  Lara couldn’t see her mother’s face. “I know.”

  “I was out of my mind with worry,” said Audrey, her voice calm and measured. “You were gone three days. They said you were dehydrated and feverish when they found you lying outside a bistro.” The bushes shook again as Audrey pulled them, plucking the ripe fruit from the leaves. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “I didn’t think I was gone that long. It seemed like hours.” Lara tugged at the bushes without much enthusiasm, feeling she needed another coffee. “The place was indescribable.”

  “Well, try.”

  Lara studied a leaf with a ladybug on it.

  The bush rattled from Audrey picking on the other side of it. Then there was a pause. The berry bushes were still, her mother thinking.

  “When I was six, I first saw him in the field. He was with a woman—your mother, Margot. They were talking about whether I was ‘the one.’ Sylvie told me never to tell anyone.”

  “You should have told me,” said Audrey.

  “I know I should have, but Sylvie—Cecile—whoever—specifically said to tell no one. Also, the day you showed me the spell, I should have told you that he’d been at the gala the night before.”

  “At the Rivoli gala?” Audrey shrieked, pulling the bushes back so she could see Lara’s face.

  “He said I needed to come to Paris. If I did, he’d give me answers about Todd.”

  Audrey laughed and shook her head. “Of course, he’d never do anything without something in return. I told you that I wanted no part of him. I wanted us to be normal.”

  “He called you a clever little minx.”

  “Did he, now?”

  Lara could hear the contempt in her voice. “He honored his part of the deal,” she said, plucking at clumps of ripe indigo berries, the smell of them wafting up as she pulled them from their stems. After years of doing this, she was fast. Lara tossed the berries into her bucket and pulled two lawn chairs down from the tractor and unfolded them. “It’s just you and me out here, so can I ask you something?” To be safe, Lara had decided to keep the fact that Cecile was hidden inside her a secret from everyone. “Did you read Cecile’s diaries?”

  “I did.”

  “At the circus I found out that Esmé likes to kill the men we love… a sort of revenge against Cecile. She started with Émile. Then there was Desmond, Peter, and Todd.” Lara bent down to pick at a blade of grass and let the last name hang in the air. She didn’t want to be looking at her mother when she asked her what she knew she had to ask. “Do you want to tell me something about Peter Beaumont?”

  Lara gazed over to find her mother staring up at the sun coming down through the trees. The cicadas—the soundtrack of a Virginia summer—were fading in and out. Audrey looked to be absorbing everything—the story, the sun—like it was precious. It was such a serene setting, the green hills lush and ripe.

  “He and Jason were in the band together. They were best friends. I met Jason first, but when Peter walked in a room…” She paused, lost in thought. “I’ve never loved anyone like that in my life, Lara.” She looked over at Lara. “Never.” She took a deep breath, like she needed it to keep going. “But Peter was a wandering soul, untamed. Not unlike Todd.”

  Audrey stopped to let that sink in. As if a layer of an onion was peeling away, Lara was seeing a side of her mother that she’d never imagined. Her mother picked at something on her shorts. Lara was sure nothing was there, it was just giving Audrey something to do as she unpacked her history, something she’d tightly stored away from everyone.

  “I knew from the beginning that he was wild. For the summer that year, it had been a bit of a triangle—Jason, Peter, and me—but I knew they were going to Los Angeles after Thanksgiving. I’d be left here.” Finally, Audrey put her hands on her hips. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time—forever—but I didn’t want to ruin any part of your relationship with Jason. You clung to him so tightly. Peter is your biological father, Lara, not Jason. The day before he went missing, I had told Peter that I was pregnant. Honestly, when he disappeared, I just thought he’d bolted. Like you, I was confused. And until Todd went missing, I think some part of me always thought Peter had left to avoid the responsibility. We didn’t know what to think. Jason and I were both devastated. The police were involved, of course, but they always thought he’d just up and left. His mother pushed them for years, finally getting him declared dead in the early 1980s.”

  “You didn’t think it was like Desmond Bennett? No one did the math?”

  Audrey laughed. “You have no idea what it was like back then. Simon and Cecile were so secretive about Mother. Now, knowing what you’ve told me, it was probably Desmond disappearing that undid Mother—along with Althacazur. I’m sure he didn’t help.”

  “Why didn’t either of you tell me that Peter was my father?”

  Audrey lowered her sunglasses and met her daughter’s eyes. “I never told Jason. I didn’t see the point—and I still don’t.”

  Lara inhaled sharply. Jason Barnes was not her biological father. Worse yet, he didn’t even know it. There were things that Lara had clung to about her identity. That Jason Barnes was her father was one of them. She’d inherited her musical talent from him, she’d thought, but it hadn’t been him at all—it had been Peter Beaumont. Then she remembered the way he’d looked at her as she’d played Peter’s song. Like he’d seen a ghost.

  “Are you sure?” Lara, too, sank in her lawn chair. “That he’s my father?”

  “Have you ever seen a photo of Peter? I mean everyone always said that he and Jason looked like brothers, but I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration. You look like Peter.”

  She’d seen the one photo. The one Jason had shown her when they’d closed on the radio station. Something had pulled her to Peter that day, but she’d thought it was just that he was the focal point of whoever had taken the photo. She’d been wrong. It had been something else, a familiarity.

  Audrey stood and began tugging furiously at another patch of bushes, the berries dropping heavily into the bucket.

  “It isn’t my place to tell him, but you should,” said Lara.

  “I think both Jason and I had tried to move on in our own ways. I believe he knows on some level, but he loved Peter, too. One look at you and I can’t imagine that he doesn’t know the truth,” said Audrey. “It was as though neither of us could continue without him, so you filled the void.”

  “Until I couldn’t.”

  Audrey turned. “Until it was unfair to ask you to do so. The reality is that Peter would have been a terrible father. I never would have stopped him from going to Los Angeles—it was his dream, but it was never really Jason’s dream. When I told him I was pregnant, he just seemed to find purpose around you. Had Peter lived, things would have turned out much different. I loved Peter, but in the end, you got the better father.”

  “But you settled. You said so yourself.”

  Audrey was silent, unmoving. “The absence of Peter nearly toppled me. I did the best that I could.”

  Lara looked down at her bucket. It was full. She walked over next to her mother, this mysterious creature who had always seemed so much larger than life, so put together, and began to help her mother carry buckets toward the tractor. She would drive back to the house and help her mother cook jam today. She’d pour it into little Mason jars, seal them tightly, then label and date them. Lara climbed into the driver’s seat of the tractor. Everyone had their secrets and reasons for keeping them.

  Forgive her, Lara. The secr
et inside of her was right.

  When they got back to the house, Lara checked her email. There was one from Edward Binghampton Barrow with the subject line: URGENT! Third painting found!

  Gaston et Lara:

  The painting Sylvie on the Steed was featured in Le Figaro this weekend along with an article on Émile Giroux and the three paintings. We have found the third painting—the one of Esmé! With all the publicity around the paintings, we received a call from the woman at Giroux’s old apartment building. She claimed to have a painting in her attic that matches the description of the missing third painting of Esmé the Lion Tamer. Micheau and I immediately went to see it today. I’m so excited to tell you that it is authentic. I’ve attached a photo!

  Lara clicked on the attachment and felt her blood drain.

  When he got back to the office, Ben found he’d missed three calls from Doyle, but there were no written messages. He hated when Doyle did that. He also had two emails from Kim Landau. He hovered over them but couldn’t bring himself to open them.

  There was a stack of mail that he started to work his way through, mostly junk mail; police stations got a ton of flyers. As he was tossing sale flyers into the garbage, he stared up at the board. He’d asked Doyle to take it back down to the basement, but his deputy never followed an order. Lara had said that Todd, Peter, and Dez were all dead and there was no point in looking for them anymore. He went to pull out the thumbtacks that held all the notes and photos, but he found he couldn’t dismantle the board yet.

  Then something caught his eye. It was the photo of Peter Beaumont that had hung up on the board for nearly a year, but today he noticed something about it. He’d been so busy thinking about the subject of the photo that he’d never thought about the photo itself. Pulling it free from its pin, he turned it over, running his finger on the edge.

  He dialed Doyle’s cell phone.