J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: The Rousseaus #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 14) (22 page)

She took a halting, gasping breath, her hands clawing at his arms. “Her name. Her married name was…Lévy?”

He nodded, his eyes as wide and shocked as hers felt. “Camille Trigére Lévy.”

“My grandmother was—Jean-Christian, my great-grandmother was Camille Lévy.”

“I know, baby.”

“She was…Do you think she was my great-grandmother?”

He looked away from her, started to say something, then shut his mouth and shrugged. “I don’t know, but you look like her. You look exactly like her, Lib.”

“Do you know what this means?” she asked, vaguely aware of tears falling down her cheeks. “She survived!”

He nodded. “It also means your great-grandmother modeled for my great-uncle.”

“My God!” she cried, rubbing her forehead with her hand. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel. We’ve got to pack. There is only one person in the world—in the entire world—who can settle this mystery for us, and we’re going to go see her first thing tomorrow! As soon as we land!”

“Whoa, Nellie! To pack? We don’t leave until tomorrow morning. Slow down, baby. Let’s explore Marseille for a little while, huh? As long as we’re here?”

“Right. Of course. Sorry. Marseille it is.”

“But as long as we’re on the subject,” he said. “
Who
exactly are we going to go see tomorrow?”

She turned to him and grinned. “My bubbe.”

J.C. put his arm around Libitz in the cab from Newark Airport to her grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn, but he could feel the tension radiating from her body.

Yesterday, they’d had a lovely walk around Marseille, drinking in the gorgeous port city as best they could with so little time and eating a seaside dinner of fresh fish, escargot, crusty bread, and an excellent Provençal wine. He was sorry to have to leave the country of his birth the following morning, but with the promise of returning in December and with the final part of their mystery almost solved, he was as anxious as Libitz to get to her grandmother.

They were 90 percent sure that Camille Trigére was her great-grandmother—what were the chances that another young Jewish girl from Marseille named Camille Trigére had married a man with the surname Lévy and escaped France shortly after the start of World War II? It had to be her. But only Libitz’s grandmother could help them be sure.

The taxi stopped before a quiet doorman building across from a Catholic Church, and J.C. paid the driver, taking Libitz’s hand as they entered the building and the concierge announced them.

“I’m nervous,” said Libitz in the elevator, her brown eyes even wider than usual. “I want it to be her so badly.”

“It is her,” said J.C., running his fingers through her hair gently. “You look exactly like her, and your grandmother’s name was Camille Lévy.”

“Put ‘Camille Lévy’ into Google and there are almost five hundred thousand results. There could have been hundreds of women with that name in 1939.”

“Who look exactly like you?”

Libitz exhaled deeply. “What if it’s not her? What if the model in the portrait died a terrible death in France or, worse, in Germany? What if my bubbe can’t come up with anything that connects her mother to what we know about Camille the model?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” said J.C., holding the elevator door for her.

Her grandmother, a small, gray-haired woman in a simple flowered apron and slippers, stood in the doorway of her apartment with her arms outstretched. “Libby! What a surprise, dahling!”

“Bubbe!”

Libitz ran down the hallway and threw herself into her grandmother’s arms. J.C. followed behind, grinning at their reunion.

“Who’s this?” asked her grandmother, looking at him over Libitz’s shoulder. “He’s very tall. Good looking.”

Libitz released her bubbe and stood beside J.C. “Bubbe, this is Jean-Christian.”

The older woman looked back and forth between them.

“What happened to Neil?”

Libitz shrugged, braiding her fingers through Jean-Christian’s. “He didn’t work out.”

Her grandmother looked up at him. “Jean-
Christian.
Hm. You’re not Jewish.”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Catholic.”

“Oy, vey,” she muttered under her breath before lowering her chin and locking eyes with her granddaughter. “Your mother won’t like it.”

“I know,” said Libitz, shrugging again.

“You know that Judaism is passed down through the mother?”

J.C. nodded at her. “So I’ve heard.”

She still stood in her doorway, looking him up and down. Finally, she shifted her glance to Libitz. “As long as he knows what’s what.”

“He’s learning, Bubbe,” said Libitz, humor thick in her voice as they followed her grandmother through a hallway and into a sitting room.

J.C. and Libitz sat on a couch across from the older lady, who sat in a large, comfortable-looking chair, her tiny feet barely touching the floor.

“So? Are you getting married?”

They both gasped, looking at each other in unison.

“That’s why you’re here?” asked Bubbe.

“No!” said Libitz. “No. We haven’t…that is…”

“We’re not engaged, ma’am,” said J.C.
Yet.

Mrs. Metz looked surprised. “Well, Libby, dahling, I’m happy to see you, but…”

“Bubbe,” said Libitz, leaning forward, one elbow resting on her knee, “what do you remember about your mother? About her childhood? About how she came over to the United States?”

“Well…” said her grandmother, sitting back in the chair, then looking suddenly like she’d remembered something. She turned her attention to J.C. “You want some coffee?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Metz.”

“Bubbe,” she said. “You’re the first man Libby’s ever brought over to my apartment, dahling. You call me Bubbe.”

He grinned at her. “No thank you, Bubbe.”

She nodded once in satisfaction, then looked at her granddaughter. “Maman didn’t talk about France. She didn’t tell me stories about her childhood. She didn’t share memories of her parents or brother, so everything I know about her I learned by mistake.”

“By…mistake?”

“By watching her. I learned that she must have had madeleines at Chanukah because she made them every year. I learned that she spoke French fluently because she talked in her sleep. I learned that she loved art because any afternoon that she wasn’t balancing the books for my father’s butcher shop, we would visit the Brooklyn Museum or take the subway into Manhattan and check out the new exhibits at the Met. She took me to the Guggenheim in 1959, the year it opened.”

“She loved art…,” murmured Libitz, grabbing J.C.’s hand.

“She did.” Mrs. Metz nodded. “She had no family here. Her brother was killed in the War, I think. Her parents…” Her voice drifted off, and her face grew cool. “They died.”

“Cousins? Aunts? Uncles?”

She shook her head. “No one, dahling. Just her and my father.”

Libitz’s fingers slackened. “Anything else, Bubbe? Anything—any little thing—about France?”

“Hmm,” she sighed. “Yes. One other thing. Wait here.”

Slipping from her chair, she walked through the room and padded down a back hallway. J.C. turned to Libitz. “She loved art. It’s the same Camille.”

Libitz face was uncertain. “I just want to be sure.”

“Your grandmother told me to call her ‘Bubbe,’” he said, grinning. “She likes me.”

Libitz smiled back, leaning forward to kiss his lips quickly. “Then don’t let her down.”

I don’t intend to
, he thought, looking up when Mrs. Metz shuffled back into the room, holding a framed needlepoint that she handed to Libitz before returning to her chair.

“That was my mother’s.”

Looking down at the old piece of handiwork, J.C. realized that the words sewn into the cloth were French, and his breath caught and held as he quickly translated their meaning.

“It was so strange,” said Bubbe, “for her to have that because she never, ever spoke French. Even when the sommelier at the wine store tried to speak French to her, she answered in English. But that? She kept. I guess she brought it over from Europe with her, but I’m not sure.”

Libitz shifted slightly to look up at J.C. “Do you know what it says? Can you read it?”

He nodded, swallowing over the lump in his throat. “It says…
Promettez-moi que vous aurez une bonne vie.
Promise me that you’ll have a good life.”

Libitz gasped, her lips parting in shock as her eyes widened. “Oh, my God!”

He nodded again. “A good life.”

“
L’chaim tovim
,” whispered Libitz.

“Yes!” said Bubbe, somewhat oblivious to their massive revelation. “
L’chaim tovim
. She said it all the time when we complained. She promised someone that she’d have a good life and told us that we must do the same.”

He knew what Libitz was thinking about because he was thinking of it too: life.

Life.
The Hebrew letter in the signature.
Have a good life
. The French inscription on the back of the portrait. Pierre had wanted Camille to choose life…and somehow, she did.

“Now dahlings,” said Mrs. Metz. “Tell me what all this is about.”

They explained all about
Les Bijoux Jolis
, and Libitz promised to bring the portrait to her bubbe as soon as possible.

“My maman,” said Bubbe, with tears in her eyes. “You’ll give her back to me.”

Libitz looked at J.C. with pleading eyes, and he nodded at her.

“Of course, Mrs. M—Bubbe,” he said. “It’s all yours.”

Because after all
, thought J.C., watching Libitz hug her grandmother good-bye,
the real thing is already mine. Or…
almost
mine.

They held hands in the elevator, staring at each other with silly grins, each processing the magnitude of fate and forever, of magic and miracles, and the ways in which their families were entwined.

Outside, it had grown dark, and the September evening was chilly.

Libitz fastened her coat, then stopped to look up at him.

“You know…I was just thinking…if your great-uncle hadn’t given my great-grandmother that advice…” She took a breath and held it as she stared up at him. “I mean, I might not be here today. Maybe she wouldn’t have left France.”

“I thought of that,” said Jean-Christian, fingering the object burning a hole in his pocket. “It almost feels like—and I know this is crazy, Lib, believe me—but it almost feels like my great-uncle saved your great-grandmother’s life so…well, so that you could save mine.”

She giggled, shaking her head back and forth. “No. It’s perfect.”

“Is it?”

“That two cynics find out that they were meant to be before they were even born?” She shook her head and laughed. “The universe has some sense of humor.”

He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against his chest, his voice husky. “Did you know…I was drawn to you before I ever knew you? At Ten and Kate’s wedding, I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”

“I remember,” she said, smiling up at him. “I wanted so badly not to fall for you.”

“Baby, I had sworn off commitment for life.”

“I honestly thought I was going to end up with Neil.”

“Never,” he said, the words almost blasphemous to his ears.

“Never,” she agreed, standing on tip-toe to kiss the frown off his lips.

Grinning at her, he reached up to caress her cheek tenderly, smiling into her eyes. “You were chosen for me before I was ever born. I think—in the simplest of terms but with the most
profound
gratitude—you were meant for me.”

As he said these words, his hand slipped from her cheek, and he lowered himself to a knee on the sidewalk, reaching for her hand, gazing up into her wide brown eyes.

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

“From Camille Trigére to Libitz Feingold…from Pierre Montferrat to Jean-Christian Rousseau. It took seventy years for us to find each other, and I don’t want to wait another minute to be together.” He grinned as her eyes brightened with tears and she took a step closer to him, her hand shaking in his.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the emerald he’d had set in Marseille on Saturday morning while she rested at the hotel. The emerald owned by his great-uncle. The emerald in a necklace worn by her great-grandmother. The emerald that symbolized their journey to find each other, and the emerald that would symbolize their love and union forever.

There was no panic in his head or his heart as he held the ring between his fingers, looking up at the woman who had changed the entire course of his life. All he felt was the soul-deep rightness of the question he was about to ask her and the fervent hope that she would give him the answer he so desperately wanted.

“You’re my person,” he said. “You’ve always been my person. Long before I was breathing, you belonged to me.” He paused for just a moment, searching her eyes, and then nodded. “Marry me, my darling Elsa? Please?”

Laughing and crying, Libitz nodded as Jean-Christian slipped the emerald rock onto her hand. “Yes. Y-yes. God, I’m not a crier, but oh, God…this is so…so…”

“Perfect,” he said, standing up to gather her into his arms.

He kissed her tenderly—this tiny, dark-haired, brown-eyed woman who he’d never seen coming but who now held the key to his happiness, and his heart, in her hands.

Both were safe there.

They were—finally, at long last—exactly where they were supposed to be.