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“There’s going to be trouble,” Mrs. James told him one day as they sat outside and ate oranges cut into slices with a bone-handled knife that had once been on Madame Halevy’s kitchen table. “The daughter’s returning, even though she swore to her mother she’d never come back here. My daughter heard about it from a woman she knows who works at the hotel.”

“Why would she come now? Madame Halevy has been gone for some time.”

“Exactly why. Think about it. Now with her mother buried so long she can’t walk out of her grave, the daughter finally is here to see what she can get.”

Camille asked around on the docks so he might ease Helena James’s worries. He’d found that the old lady was right. The daughter had already arrived and was staying at the Commercial Hotel. She’d had a meeting with a local solicitor known for his aggressive manner. Camille posted himself outside the hotel at the coffeehouse, where he ordered one coffee, and then another. The waiter, a fellow he knew named Jack Highfield, pointed her out when she left the hotel, a woman in her fifties, well dressed, with a brash sort of American ease. She wore no hat, and white leather buttoned boots showed under her green muslin dress. Since Camille was adept at following people, he set off to see what he might discover. Madame Halevy’s daughter went directly to the St. Thomas Savings Bank. Camille went in after she left, but he didn’t know anyone there, and the manager was too busy to meet with him. There were now more than forty thousand people on the island, and it was no longer possible to know everyone, along with their business, although in the Jewish community news still traveled quickly.

Camille had Hannah question the women of the Sisterhood, and of course they knew the reasons behind Madame Halevy’s daughter coming to visit. Rebecca Halevy-Stein had come for her mother’s estate. The old mansion had stood empty—there had been talk of ghosts and bad luck—and was only now finally sold, to an Ashkenazi family recently arrived from Germany via Amsterdam. Mrs. Halevy-Stein had returned so that she might collect her mother’s belongings, but when she went to the house there was almost nothing there. Years had passed, and what Madame had not given away had been seen as abandoned and therefore fair game, taken home by various deliverymen and the construction people hired to repair the roof or the shutters or the falling-down stonework.

When Camille made his report to Helena James, the news of Mrs. Halevy-Stein’s doings did not comfort her. Rather it made her more anxious. “She’s going to come after me. Even though I helped raise her, she was always selfish and thinking about no one but herself. Her mother would say the very same thing if she was alive.”

In fact, Mrs. Halevy-Stein did intend to visit Mrs. James, along with her solicitor, Edwin Holloway, who was not from the community but was instead a resettled American from South Carolina. They’d known each other in Charleston. Camille was aware of their meeting because one of Helena James’s grandsons, a boy of seven or eight named Richard, came running into the store, out of breath, frantic, not even having taken the time to put on his shoes. He was a faster runner barefoot, he claimed, just as Camille had been as a boy. Camille slipped on his own shoes, however, when the boy came to tug on his shirtsleeve. He was no longer used to jogging along over sand and stones.

The boy hurried him. “My grandmother thinks you should come and speak for her.”

Frédéric overheard and took Camille aside before he could leave the store. “How are you involved?”

When Camille explained that Mrs. James had worked for Madame Halevy for years, and was afraid of the daughter, Frédéric slipped on his jacket.

“Shall we?” he said, with the clear intention of accompanying his son.

Camille grinned, surprised but pleased not to have to face Mrs. Halevy-Stein and her solicitor alone. After all, he knew nothing of business matters, as his father was well aware, and Frédéric was respected for his professional acumen.

They followed Mrs. James’s grandson out of town. He was indeed fast, and Camille and his father had trouble keeping pace.

“I used to be able to run like that,” Camille said.

“So did I,” his father informed him.

They went uphill as quickly as they could, clouds of dust rising. It was noon, and too hot for such activities. Camille and his father both wore jackets, due to the serious nature of the occasion, and were therefore sweating through their clothes.

“They’re going to take away my grandmother’s dishes,” the boy, Richard, said. “They came with boxes and some donkeys. They’re going to steal everything she has.”

“They’re not taking anything,” Frédéric assured him.

But when they got to the little house on a hillside, they saw that several wooden crates had, indeed, been brought from town and set out in the yard. Frédéric went and immediately introduced himself to Holloway, the solicitor, who although new in Charlotte Amalie, knew of Monsieur Pizzarro and his store.

“I suspect there’s been some confusion,” Holloway said. “There are some items here that belonged to my client’s mother. Perhaps this good woman Mrs. James has had them in safekeeping, but now my client wishes to collect them for her home in Charleston.”

Madame Halevy’s daughter, the one she had lost, was so cool the heat didn’t seem to affect her in the least. She was tall and well formed, an attractive woman. She came to join the discussion, and Pizzarro wondered if that’s what women from Charleston did, act as if they had the rights of men. “I’m thankful that our maid took care of these household items,” she said in her soft, measured voice, “but they belong to me.”

Camille glanced over at Helena James, who shook her head. He elbowed his father and motioned this was not true.

“I’m afraid your mother left these items to Mrs. James,” Frédéric Pizzarro said.

“Really?” Rebecca Halevy-Stein turned to the maid. “What kind of china is it?”

“It’s the green set. The one Madame liked to use for dinner.”

Mrs. Halevy-Stein smirked as she faced Monsieur Pizzarro. “It’s Limoges. Imported from France and quite treasured. They are meant to be in my home.”

“Your mother didn’t like for you to use them because you chipped them,” Mrs. James said. “You know that to be true.”

“Do you have a written statement in your mother’s hand that these are her belongings and meant to go to you?” Monsieur Pizzarro asked Mrs. Halevy-Stein.

“I am my mother’s daughter.” Mrs. Halevy-Stein was agitated. “You heard Helena. She admits they came from my mother’s house. They were used at dinner.” She took note of something else, and her eyes widened. “And that’s the table they set.” Mrs. Halevy pointed into the house. The door was open. “It’s there in the front room. Mahogany. Handmade.”

Monsieur Pizzarro shrugged. This proved nothing. “Perhaps the dishes were borrowed from Mrs. James so that Madame Halevy might use them in her home.”

The solicitor Holloway laughed at the preposterousness of the suggestion that a woman of wealth and standing within her community would need to borrow dishes from her maid. He then saw Monsieur Pizzarro’s expression. “You’re not serious?”

Monsieur Pizzarro turned to his son. “You dined with Madame Halevy. Did you ever see these dishes in her house?”

“I never saw them,” Camille said. But of course he’d never looked. He usually had his dessert on an earthenware platter.

Rebecca Halevy-Stein was a pale blonde; now her skin flushed with anger, even more so when she noticed a flash of gold on Mrs. James’s hands. “What do you have there?”

Mrs. James hid her hands under her skirts.

“Those are my mother’s rings,” Mrs. Halevy-Stein said, turning to her solicitor. “She has them on right now!”

“She gave them to me,” Mrs. James told Camille. “She wanted me to have them.”

“This may be an issue for the courts,” Holloway said.

“Not without some paperwork.” Frédéric stared the solicitor down. “Is there a will? You say there’s not. Is there a document connecting your client with Madame Halevy’s personal items? It doesn’t seem to exist.”

“I came from Charleston to take care of this,” Mrs. Halevy-Stein said. “I made a long trip, and I did so in good faith.”

“You didn’t come even once when your mother was alive,” Helena said before she could stop herself. “And you and I know why. It had nothing to do with faith.”

The younger woman turned to Mrs. James. “I should have my mother’s rings,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned they’ve been stolen, along with everything else. Does this woman have a paper that states they’re hers?” she asked Monsieur Pizzarro. “Did my mother sign a document stating so?”

Mrs. James gazed at Madame Halevy’s daughter and shook her head. “I made your porridge when you were a baby. I know you, and I know why you didn’t come back. You never wrote to ask what happened, just left everything in your mother’s hands. I’m the one who helped her. I helped her and she was grateful. So if you want to go to court and charge me with something, then I suppose you will.”

The air felt as it did when rain would soon begin, a prickly shock of heat with a measure of cold, dampness mixing into the atmosphere.

“Charge me, Rebecca,” Mrs. James said. “Bring me to court. See if what it gets you is worth the trouble. I have the story, and I’ve kept it to myself.”

Mrs. Halevy-Stein studied the maid, then turned to her solicitor. “This is ridiculous. Let’s just deal with the house.”

“But the crates?” Holloway said, confused. “All of your mother’s belongings? Surely they’re worth something.”

“I’m not going to fight with an old woman.” Rebecca Halevy-Stein reached for her purse so she could pay off the men who’d brought the crates and donkeys up the hill and were waiting to fill them with furniture and dishes. “I hope you’re happy,” she said to Mrs. James.

“Happiness is for fools.” Helena James shrugged. “So I wish that for you.”

When the unwanted guests had left, and the donkeys and the crates were gone as well, the Pizzarro father and son were given cups of maubie and thanked by the family. Mrs. James went in to get a coconut cake she had made. She signaled for Camille to help her inside. There was a hole in the roof so that the smoke and cooking smells could escape. The stove was tiny, but the oven was clearly big enough for Mrs. James’s baking.

“Your father’s a good man,” she said.

“Yes.” Today Camille had seen the righteousness inside his father that he hadn’t been aware of before. His father was a quiet, solemn man, and Camille had always assumed the battle with the synagogue had been his mother’s doing; now he wasn’t so sure. His father, he now understood, was a fighter.

“I’m going to use the green plates you never saw in Madame’s house,” Mrs. James said. “The cake will look just right on them.”

Because Camille was tall and could reach, she directed him to take the plates from a special place in the cabinet that had once stood in Madame Halevy’s kitchen. She still called him Jacobo, and he didn’t correct her.

“Madame Halevy would be glad you have the dishes,” he said. “They’re in the right home.”

“She didn’t live to tell you all of her story. She thought about it, and we talked about it, then she died. So I can say now that the end of the story was that she died and her daughter never came to see her. But it’s the middle of the story that matters. Rebecca had a baby when she was seventeen. No one guessed; she hid it with her clothes. A lady can do that, up to a point. When the time came and she might have begun to show, she got something from an herb man that made the baby come early. This lady who wanted the dishes that you never saw in Madame’s house, who never came home and never wrote a letter, gave birth all by herself when she wasn’t much more than a girl. It was brave or it was stupid. There was a storm, which brings on childbirth. The air comes down low and brings down whatever is inside you. Mademoiselle hid herself in the woods, and when it was over, she left the baby under a tree outside of the graveyard. Not the Jewish graveyard. Ours. I know because I followed her.

“Maybe somebody would find him and maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe he would be drowned by the rain pouring down or maybe he would swim like a fish. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She ran away like a shadow or a demon, so fast you’d never know she was there. I had followed her before when her mother directed me to. I knew she had been with a sailor who came from St. Croix. He was not one of your people. He was one of mine.

“I didn’t wait to find out if the baby would drown. I took that baby and brought him to Madame Halevy. Rebecca had already bought her ticket for Charleston. She was staying in the Grand Hotel, where she stained the sheets with blood—I know because my cousin worked there and I had her keep an eye on Rebecca. I thought she might do damage to herself, maybe decide to leave this world, but she wasn’t that kind of girl. She was already in the future. She left the next morning. Maybe she thought good-bye, but she didn’t have the decency to come around and say it to her mother. So Madame Halevy and I considered what would be best for this child and how we could ensure that he would have a good life. He was her grandson, but because I had found him he was mine in a way, too. We both knew he must go to a family where he would be loved. He had blue eyes and we decided that was a sign. We set his fate on that single fact.

Madame had a friend who had lost a baby son at birth. Her friend didn’t care that this baby’s father was an African man. She was in mourning and when she saw this child her mourning lifted. This baby was the man Jestine fell in love with, but couldn’t have because everyone thought he was a member of your faith.”

“Lydia’s father?” Camille was confused. If this cousin of his and Jestine both had African blood, why couldn’t they have married? Surely someone could have told this man the truth about himself. “Then why couldn’t he be with Jestine?”

“The truth of who he was would have led back to Rebecca. That kind of gossip would have reached Charleston and ruined her. Madame Halevy was protecting her daughter. She made your grandmother promise to do the same.” Helena put her hand on Camille’s arm. “Your cousin never knew who he was. Jestine still doesn’t know. Only Madame and your grandmother and me. Now you understand why I wear Madame Halevy’s rings, and why they will be buried with me, and why this story will be buried as well.”