The Witch of Painted Sorrows Read Online Free

Lune?”
    “All in time,” my grandmother said with a smile on her face but a harshness in her voice. “First we need to discuss why you are here.”
    From the windows I could see a view of a charming garden, but it was not the same one where Leon and I had sat and fed the pigeons and stolen kisses when dusk fell, the shadows lengthening and dark enough to hide us. And there was no bell tower attached to the back of this building like the abandoned sixteenth-century leftover that rose out of the back of La Lune like a mystical shrine to the past. I was never allowed inside, but my bedroom in La Lune had faced the stone tower, and I used to make up stories about the princess walled up inside who was waiting to be freed. Sometimes at night, I thought I heard the ancient bells ringing softly, whispering to the stars, even though my grandmother told me the bells were long rusted and ruined.
    “We’ll have chocolat chaud, Alice,” my grandmother told her maid, who’d come to help us get settled.
    “Isn’t Bernadette still with you?” I asked.
    “No, she married a widower who owns a restaurant in Marseille. I get letters from her all the time. She’s doing well and has two little girls.” Grand-mère smiled. “She lets them draw on the envelopes.”
    All of my grandmother’s servants stayed in touch with her. She was more than fair to them, and they never forgot her. My grandmother may have been a sensualist and a businesswoman, but it was her streak of kindness and her genuine interest in people that endeared her to her friends, those in her employ, and the men she entertained.
    When I’d lived with her and commented on how the help seemed so much more informal with her that ours was with us in New York, she admonished me for having haut monde mores and being a snob.
    “I have more in common with them than with your mother, mon ange ,” she told me. “After all, I’m not a fancy married lady, but justanother working girl, toiling every day for my bread and milk.” And then she’d laugh. That throaty laugh—like her dramatic maquillage, unusual jewels, and voluptuous clothes—had always made her seem so exotic to me and did still. My grandmother inspired awe. She was like a rare jungle orchid.
    My mother, on the other hand, was more like a bouquet of pretty pale pink roses in a Renoir still life. She wasn’t interested in the things my father and I were. She didn’t like to visit museums or talk about architecture or literature or esoteric philosophies. She preferred gossip to going to the opera or ballet, a visit with the dressmaker to a visit to the museum, an afternoon tea with the ladies to a spirited discussion about a recent gothic novel.
    I loved her because she was my beautiful mother, and to be in her presence was to be treated to the scents of lilies and violets, to the sight of cornflower-blue eyes and skin as lustrous as pearls. I loved her, not because of how she thought or the things she said but because she cared for me and showered me with affection. But beneath her attentions I always thought she was uncomfortable around me. Once, as she brushed my hair off my face, she said, “How did I ever give birth to such a serious, dark little girl?” Unspoken was the rest of the sentence: . . . when I’m so light, so frivolous .
    From her I’d learned what would be expected of me. To marry well and raise a family. To create an oasis of calm in my home, to love and support my husband and be a good mother to my children. Now it seemed I’d never follow the example she’d set.
    Alice, who had riotous blond curls and a strong chin, brought in a tray of fine china cups and the silver chocolat chaud pot, with its long spout and horizontal ebony handle. There was also a plate of delicate golden madeleines dusted with powdered sugar.
    “There is so much to say,” Grand-mère began as she poured me some of the aromatic brew. “But first, nourishment.” She handed me a fragile cup and saucer. I