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Bartholomew just grinned, and tucked the card into the front pocket of his shirt-jac. Good, he wasn’t going to get all prickly. For him, it was a wonderful gift. For her, no more than a large tip.

“Bartholomew!” a deep, French-accented voice boomed from somewhere behind Dolly. “What has been taking you so long a time? And who is this person you have brought back with you?”

She knew that voice. Her heart leaped. Henri! Dolly whirled, and a gust of wind scooped her hat from her head and carried it off. She felt her hair, which had been tucked up inside, spill down over her shoulders. She was momentarily blinded by the sun backfiring off the corrugated aluminum siding. Through the glare, she could make out a sturdy figure striding toward her, limned in a red corona, as if he were walking through fire. Somehow,

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she found she couldn’t move. Her feet were glued to the earth.

She blinked, and suddenly he was there. Henri. Standing before her, a shocked expression on his face. High color rode up his cheekbones, already ruddy with tan. His silver mustache, she saw, was bushier than when she’d last seen him. He wore khaki trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt open at the collar. As he lifted one arm to shade his eyes, she could see the veins that marbled the paler slab of muscle along the underside of his bicep. “Henri,” she whispered, finding her voice. He didn’t respond. His eyes fixed on her as if he didn’t quite believe it was her, not flickering, not creasing with happiness. His face still as stone. He’s angry i came.

Was he just being overprotective, or did he somehow sense the terrible thing she had to tell him?

At the thought of losing Henri, Dolly felt a shaft of pain in her chest. Her heart spun, down and down, like a wingshot bird.

Then, while old Bartholomew looked on in amusement, while Dolly stood dying in the West Indian sun, Henri stepped forward with a startled cry, and took her firmly in his arms, burying his face in the hair that tumbled loosely about her shoulders, and murmuring her name, over and over, as if by saying it he might somehow hang onto her forever.

“Henri, we’ve got to talk.”

Dolly moved away from Henri in the big bed facing the sunlit terrace of her hotel cottage in L’Anse aux Epines. Through the sliding glass door that overlooked a sloping green hillside, she could see splashes of crimson hibiscus and pinwoleander, and the deeper greens of calabash and lemon trees. Farther down, past the pool with its palm-thatched cabana, a crescent of freshly raked white sand gleamed against clear sparkling water. An early swimmer was stroking away from the dock, etching a thin trail of froth.

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The scent of lemon blossoms floated in on a gust from the sea. The only sound was the soft whirring of the ceiling fan overhead, cooling her naked body as she lay beside Henri, the bedsheet tangled about her ankles. But instead of feeling peaceful, Dolly’s stomach was in knots. The past seventy-eight hours had been paradise, she thought, but in just a little while she’d be leaving.

She had to tell him.

“Would you prefer that we talk or that I make love to you once more?” Henri teased.

Dolly closed her eyes, and felt hot tears squeeze out from under her eyelids. “I mean it, Henri. I …”

But Henri, no doubt thinking she was just getting herself all worked up over the two-or three-month separation that lay ahead, silenced her with a kiss, the ends of his mustache tickling her upper lip, his mouth soft and tasting faintly of rum. The memory of last night swooped up from her belly in a rush. All those punches they’d drunk … Lord, what had been in them besides rum? Some kind of aphrodisiac—crushed dragonfly wings and tiger’s teeth? She’d lost track of how many times they’d made love … two, three, five? Like dreams, but hot, sweaty, clutching, one tumbling into the next, from which only a little while ago she had awakened in a bloom of sweetly aching tenderness.

Now, he wanted her again, and her own not exactly youthful body astonished her. She couldn’t remember ever having so limitless an appetite. A drowsy heat fanned through her lower belly, and she became acutely aware of the slippery swollenness between her thighs.

Yesterday, she’d tried to tell him, again and again, and each time he’d kiss her, and she’d be lost. Now she’d run out of time … and excuses.

A band of pain tightened about her chest, and she felt as if the breeze drifting in had turned suddenly chilly. She would never again lie next to Henri like this. Never make love to him again. And who would love her?

Her nieces?

She thought of letters Annie had written from Paris, bubbling over with enthusiasm and warmth. But was Dolly

i

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kidding herself about Annie the way she had for so many years about Henri? Lord knew she loved that girl. She’d cut off a finger for her. But Annie, she’d never really let down her guard, not all the way. She wasn’t as distant as she once had been but she still held back a little when Dolly tried to get too near. Behind the smiles and hugs, there was an unspoken wariness.

And Laurel, such a dear, but now that she was away at school and so wrapped up in her art, Dolly hardly ever got to see her anymore.

Dolly had so wanted to make them into her daughters. But they were, and they would always be, Eve’s girls. A dart of jealousy nicked at her heart.

The story of my life, she thought. Second place. With Henri, too. He’d never divorce Francine. Never leave his children, though JeanPaul was off on his own, and Gabrielle married with a baby on the way.

And it wasn’t just Henri. She had changed … she was no longer the young, insecure widow who had wandered into his basement kitchen that long-ago day in Paris. Now she had a family of sorts, a business. She was on the board of the New York Film Society, as well as those of two corporations. She was a person of substance, a woman people looked up to, and she’d realized that what she had with Henri was far from being enough. And her caring for him was probably keeping her from finding a man with whom she could share everything.

So it had come down to this—a last moment stolen from the real lives they led, where they each belonged. A long and lovely good-bye, which was now almost at an end.

Dolly felt a hollowness inside—could a heart be broken so many times that finally there’s nothing left?

“I can’t.” Drawing away from him as he tried to snuggle against her, she sat up. Looking down at his dear face, gazing up at her with veiled amusement from his pillow, she almost couldn’t get the words out, but then she was telling him,, “Henri, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say”.

“What is that, ma poup้e?” He rolled onto his side,

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supporting himself on one elbow, his smile so sunny and innocent she nearly lost her nerve.

Just come right out with it.

“You’re never going to divorce Franchie.” It was a declaration, but she needed an answer.

Henri’s gray eyes clouded, but he did not look away—he would never lie to her, or be evasive. She could count on that, at least.

Now he seemed to consider her statement, to ponder it even, his face seeming to age before her eyes, to sag with jowls and wrinkles that hadn’t been there minutes before.

“It is not so simple as a divorce,” he told her. “If I leave, I lose everything, the work of my life. The business is the property of Augustin, though, of course, I direct it. He has the power … the right according to the law … to take …“He broke off, rubbing his face with his fingertips. When he looked at her, his gray eyes were bright. “But, you see, it’s not the rights of the law Girod is concerned with but the right moral. I know he respects me, even loves me. But his moral obligation—and Augustin takes such things seriously, believe me—is to concern himself first with his daughter.”

She had heard all this before … but she needed to hear it again. So she could be sure there was no hope, that she was doing the right thing.

If only she didn’t ache for him so! But how could she not cherish such a man? His way of remembering each little anniversary … roses for the day they met, and for the April night they first made love, a silk nightgown or a pair of lacy panties. And how in the morning he always got up before her, bringing her coffee in bed, milk and no sugar, just the way she liked it. Yes, she adored him, she loved him. More than any man … even Dale.

Seized with a new, desperate longing, she blurted, “We could start over, couldn’t we? Our own business! We’d keep the shop on Madison, only change the name. We’d find another supplier. Or make the chocolates ourselves. We’d-“

Henri was shaking his head, slowly, sadly.

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“Dolly, the house of Girod is my life. And even if I could find the heart to give it up, how would we live? To build a business like Girod’s, that costs money, lots of money. And Franchie is exact. If I go, I am fortunate if I have the clothes on my back. Dolly, my angel, think. Think what it is you love about me.” He managed a wan smile. “Without my independence, my pride, I would not be this man who you love.”

But, dammit, what about her pride? Didn’t that count for something, too?

Once before, out of despair, she had wavered making a choice … and ended up killing her sister and killing a part of herself. No, this time she would do the right thing. …

“I do love you, and in a funny way I even understand,” she told him, nearly choking on her words. “But, Henri, I … I just can’t go on like this. It’s … killing me.”

Henri got up out of bed and reached for his robe, which was draped over the rattan footboard. He wants to run away from what’s coming, but he can’t, not this time. Dolly shivered, sitting bolt upright, holding her pillow tight to her chest, as if it were a life raft without which she might just float away.

“If you would consider again moving to Paris …” he began.

She shook her head, her tears now spilling down her cheeks. “It wouldn’t work, and you know it. Even if I saw more of you, I’d keep on wanting something you could never give me. Don’t you see, Henri? If I can’t marry you, or at least live with you … then I … I’m better off without you.”

Henri, standing before her in his terry robe, raking a hand through his tousled silver hair, his eyes flat with disbelief, appeared too stunned to argue. He just stared at her, swaying slightly on his feet, making her think of a boxer who had just been given a knockout blow that hasn’t quite caught up with him.

“You have my love,” he said, his voice thin and rawsounding.

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“Yeah, I know … and that’s what’s killing me.”

“Dolly, I realize I have not been able to give you what we both wish for, but is it not possible to find some way to-“

She cut him off with a firm shake of her head. “No. I’d feel like … well, you ever see somebody with an old dog just barely alive that they can’t bear to have put down?”

“I don’t see what-“

“It’d be kinder, don’t you see? A whole lot kinder just to put the poor creature out of its misery. But people don’t think that way, do they? They’re always figuring what’s best is to keep going no matter what. But that’s not always true. Sometimes it’s better to have nothing than even a little piece of something you love that’s hurtin’.”

“I cannot imagine how I could ever love any other woman as I love you.”

Dolly closed her eyes, and let his words seep in slowly, slowly, so she could savor them. She wanted to remember them, so she could replay them again and again in the lonely days to come.

And it wasn’t Dolly Drake he loved, but Doris Burdock-the woman underneath the platinum hair and bangles. The woman who in her heart was still a little girl from Clemscott, sitting on a dusty stoop, poring over the Sears catalogue … dreaming of the fine house she would someday own, and the wonderful, handsome man who would live in it with her.

Only Henri, she reminded herself, was not going to share this with her. She remembered when she was a kid, entering one of those contests where you copy a cartoon off the back of a matchbook. And then, six weeks later, she got a letter saying she’d won this art scholarship. She’d been so excited, she nearly jumped out of her shoes. Running around telling everyone, “I won! I won!” And then her stepmother had spoiled it.

Dolly could still see her, clearly etched against the sun streaming in the kitchen window. Mama-Jo was standing by the sink, ironing, her hair done up in pink curlers, wearing a flowered smock with rickrack sewn around the

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neck and pockets. The Philco on top of the icebox was lit up, and she was humming along with Maybelle Carter singing, “May the Circle Be Unbroken.” Tomorrow was the church’s annual jumble sale, and she wanted to get over there tonight so she could help Preacher Daggett set up. And then she’d turned her gimlet eye on Dolly, hopping about in glee, and said with a little smirk, “Oh, everybody knows that’s a lot of hooey. They’d give one of those so-called scholarships to a one-legged chicken if they thought the silly thing would put up good money for the rest of the tuition.”

And now, once again, Dolly felt as if she were losing something precious that it turned out she’d never really had in the first place.

But then she thought, It’s not over yet. Not until I step on that plane.

“No more talking,” she told him. “I’m tired of talking. Come on over here instead.” Smiling through her tears, her heart aching, she held out her arms to him. “My plane isn’t for another three hours, and I’ve got this whole bed just goin’ to waste.”

Annie looked around Dolly’s living room, filled with party guests. Nothing much had changed in the months she’d been away. The white leather sofa that had always reminded her of a giant squashed marshmallow faced the fireplace just as it always had. Behind it, forming an L-shaped wedge alongside the entrance to the dining room, the wet bar with its buttoned-down leather base, a relic of the early sixties, made her smile—she could imagine Rock Hudson in a tuxedo leaning an elbow against the lacquered surface, sipping a martini, dry, with an olive. Even the bent coat hanger wedded to a lump