"Papa!" Elodie threw her arms about my knees and pressed her face against my trouser leg, mumbling against the weave, "Don't want to go."
I crouched down and scooped her up into my arms, made a show of stumbling beneath her weight. "Goodness! Did you grow in your sleep again?" She giggled, pleased, and then squealed with laughter when I pressed kisses against her throat. "What did Papa tell you? No fair growing up while my eyes are closed."
She laughed, then put her hands against my cheeks and held me back. "Papa," she said reproachfully.
I relented, and held her against my hip while I gathered up our things. "You're going to go play with Yvas and Aunt Corine. You love playing with Yvas."
She shook her head, her face set in a stubborn scowl. "He bit me."
"He what? The devil! I'll bite him back."
She relented, smiling, and leaned in against me, arms hooked around my neck and face smashed against my shoulder, like if she held on to me hard enough I wouldn't leave. "You wouldn't."
"No? Watch me. I'll bite him right on his behind, and tell him that's what he gets for not playing nice with my daughter."
We needed the business. I had to work, or I'd never manage to scrape together enough to pay for the new things she needed. But at three years old, all Elodie understood was that she wanted her papa to stay, and I wouldn't.
The walk to Corine's was short, but it was early yet, and Elodie was still sleepy, so I carried her. She'd grown big enough that it strained the muscles in my arms a little, and I had to shift her from one hip to the other halfway there. But so long as she wanted to be in my arms, I was loathe to deny her. The ache in my muscles would fade soon enough, and the sweetness of her cheek pressing against my shoulder was worth it a hundred times over.
Corine already had tea prepared when we let ourselves in. Despite her protests at home, Elodie immediately began wiggling and struggling to get down as soon as she caught sight of Yvas. I set her down, then gratefully accepted the tea from Corine and we sat down together to enjoy it for the few minutes I had.
"Thanks for doing this," I said to her as I sipped at the scalding brew. "I really appreciate it."
"It's no trouble at all. El's a dear, and she and Yvas keep each other entertained so I can actually get some work done around here."
"I meant the dresses," I said with a wink and a grin. "Of course you don't mind watching Elodie. She's the sweetest girl in the city."
Just as I spoke, Elodie let out a furious shriek. We both looked toward her to see what the matter was. She was holding one end of her rag doll while Yvas pulled at the other. She swatted at his arm with one hand and shouted, "You be nice or my papa will bite your arm off!"
Corine slapped a hand over her mouth and buried her face in her arms to hide her laughter, while I fought to keep a straight face. "Elodie," I said. "You need to play nice, too."
She turned to me, her expression falling with dismay. "But Papa--"
"No. Just because he's unkind doesn't mean you get to be unkind back." I gestured her over. "Come here. Give me a kiss before I have to leave."
She scampered over and climbed up into my lap, gave me a big kiss on my cheek. Against my skin, she whispered, "But you would bite his arm off for me, wouldn't you, Papa?"
I laughed, kissed her in return, and set her back down on the ground. "Go on. Behave for Corine for me, won't you?"
"Yes, Papa," she murmured obediently, then turned and ran off after Yvas, who still had her doll.
I finished my tea in two gulps, then thanked Corine again and took my leave. It was a longer walk from her home to the shop, and not half so pleasant without Elodie for company. Though the weather seemed to have broken, it was still early enough to be frightfully cold. I huddled into my coat and walked quickly, trying to think of the business today would bring and the things I could do for Elodie with their coin, rather than how much I'd have preferred to stay in the warmth of Corine's house and play with them until supper time.
My predictions proved correct, and it wasn't long after opening that my little shop was a hubbub of activity. The benefit of all the work, aside from being able to go home with a full purse, was that it scarcely left me with a chance to breathe, and no time at all to dwell on missing Elodie. By the time I closed the doors for my midday break, I felt winded and exhausted, but pleased.
I had done well enough, and with the day only just half over, that I decided there was no harm in treating myself. I pocketed a handful of coins and ventured out into the city in search of something to eat.
` There were shops nearby selling stews and bowls of roasted vegetables over hearty potatoes, but I had those often, and I was feeling indulgent. I kept walking until I had nearly left my own quarter of the city behind me. The shops here were more upscale, with leaded glass windows and well-kept facades. I didn't dare venture into the demesne of the truly wealthy, where my plain garb and work-roughened fingers would draw immediate scorn from anyone who encountered me. But here, we trod the line between my world and theirs, and I was not wholly an outsider.
And here, there was a shop that sold savory griddle cakes, still hot from the pan and fragrant with fresh herbs. I took my place in the queue and fingered the coins in my pocket, already dreaming of bringing Elodie here and introducing her to them. I made them at home for her sometimes, when we had enough milk to spare, but I lacked whatever technique the vendors here had mastered. We enjoyed mine well enough, but these were in a class of their own.
I reached the front of the queue and made my order, and in a few minutes I had my parcel in hand and was heading back to my shop. I was scarcely a block and a half from the shop, though, when a sharp cry that might have been my name and the rapid slap of boots on paving stones made me stop and turn.
A man was hurrying toward me, tall and dark-skinned and black-haired, and at first I thought it was Bansi's brother, come to curl his lip at me and shoo me away from even this area of the city. But in the space of a single, heavy heartbeat he was nearer, and I knew I was wrong. He didn't have the right features, or the right build.
It wasn't his brother. It was Bansi himself.
I turned on my heel and started away with long strides that I hoped would put distance between us. He shouted after me, calling my name. But his footsteps were drawing closer, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of running from him.
"Go away!" I spun back around to face him, hands balled at my sides. "Leave me alone. I've nothing to say to you."
He stopped with only one good stride's length between us. He'd been smiling, his eyes bright with pleased surprise. But as his gaze swept over my face, his pleasure made a rapid shift to wounded consternation. "But what if I've something to say to you?"
"Spare me. You said quite enough last time we spoke, don't you think? I'm busy."
"I'll walk with you."
His arrogance stole my breath. "No. You will not."
His wounded-animal look deepened. "Renad," he said, half plea, half reproof. Like I was some close friend acting silly and childish, and not the lover he had scorned nearly four years past.
"Go home, Bansi. That's where you belong, isn't it?" I was snide. I couldn't help it, and I didn't want to. He deserved no better. I turned my back to him and continued on, my head full of fantasies about how if he still followed, I'd knock his teeth in and leave him a broken, mewling wreck in the middle of the street.
"Renad-- Gods and devils! Just listen to me." Fingers closed on my arm and wrenched me about. I already had my fist closed and my arm drawn back to strike him when his mouth crashed down on mine, hard and hot and desperate.
Shock froze me in place. I couldn't move, couldn't even breathe. A strangled noise punched out of my throat and suddenly I could move again, could think again.
I shoved him back and while he was still blinking at me trying to get his bearings, I drew my fist back and punched him square in the jaw.
"Gods! Renad!" He staggered then straightened, one hand pressing to his jaw as he stared at me.
"The next time you touch me, I'll make that look friendly. You lost the right to have anything to do with me. You gave it up, and I want you to leave right now."
He grimaced at that, and finally it occurred to him to look chagrined. He dropped his gaze and rubbed his jaw with a little grimace. "Renad. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for how I left." His voice broke on the words. He even sounded like he meant it. "I want you to know that."
"Why?"
He hesitated. His gaze lifted to mine, brow wrinkled, confused. "What?"
"Why do you want me to know it? Do you want me to forgive you? I won't. Do you want me to tell you it's all right? I won't do that either. I'm glad you're sorry. You damned well ought to be. But saying it doesn't make it all right."
Bansi sighed. His shoulders slumped and he hung his head forward. "What do you want me to do, Ren?" he asked, very quietly.
"I want you to go away." For the third time, I turned away from him and strode away. This time, he stayed where he was and let me leave, but I was certain I could feel the weight of his gaze following me all the way back to the shop.
*
I didn't have the stomach to finish my lunch, after that encounter. I left it wrapped in paper while I tended to the shop, and brought it with me to Corine's to split between the children. Yvas ate his eagerly, and muttered a grudging, "Thank you very much," at his mother's stern look. Elodie, however, took her time with it, and looked thoughtful as she sucked the sauce off of her fingers.
"Yours are better, Papa," she said at last, with the decisive nod of someone who had come to a lengthy decision.
I laughed and kissed her upon her cheek. "You are a flatterer. But thank you."
She finished her portion of the cake, then climbed up into my lap and leaned the whole of her weight against me. "Why are you sad, Papa?"
"What?" I drew back and frowned down at her in consternation. "Why would I be sad?"
She gave a heavy sigh and rolled her eyes. "I don't know. That's why I asked."
I scooped her in close and kissed her on the crown of her head. "I'm not sad at all. I've been looking forward to picking you up all day."
She smiled at that and tucked herself happily in against me. But her words had worked their way into me and reminded me that I was upset, or had been earlier, after encountering Bansi. She wasn't picking up on that, was she? I was sure I had set it behind me. Three years before, perhaps, I might have stewed all day over him and his arrogance, but that was long past. He didn't have that power over me, over us, anymore. We owed him nothing.
I thanked Corine again, and accepted the return of the dresses she'd altered for Elodie, and I carried her home with her head bobbing against my shoulder as she fought against drifting off to sleep, and determined to be relentlessly cheerful for the rest of the day, if that was what it took to reassure Elodie that I was in good humor.
Two days days later, the weather had held fair enough that the rush on the shop had died down to a manageable level. I was pleased for the opportunity to breathe more than once or twice a day, but the slowing trickle of coin coming in was less of a boon, so I left the shop open for lunch. We weren't likely to get much in the way of patronage, not when most people were off eating their own lunches or standing in line at food stalls, but even one or two would help. And in the meantime, it was quiet enough that I could get a little work done while I waited.
I had my head bent over a tin box with a patch of stubborn rust when I heard the shop door creak open, and then swing shut again. I didn't lift my head -- they'd let me know if they'd found something they wanted, we didn't feel the need to hover at the elbows of our customers down here, as they sometimes did in higher end shops. Anyone who lived or worked or shopped down here understood the need to fit work into whatever spare moments of the day we could.
When the customer stopped before me and cleared their throat, I was already frowning, even before I looked up. The sight of Bansi standing before me, looking hopeful, only made my scowl deepen and the fires of anger stir to life beneath my breast.
"Get out." I slapped the box down on my worktop, hard enough to damage it, and that only made me more furious. "Get out. I don't want you here. Go home."
Bansi flinched and looked down at the floor beneath his boots. "I know you don't like interruptions at work," he said. "I remember that. I tried to stop by your place yesterday, but..." He faltered, then, as though uncertain.
A jolt of alarm went through me. Bad enough he was here, I didn't want him coming by my home. Gods above, I didn't want him meeting Elodie. He'd either be this sad, remorseful thing, looking all doe-eyed as he told me again how sorry he was, or he'd perk right up and take the fact that I got the child I wanted as proof that his abandonment hadn't been as wretched a thing to do as it was. Either way, I was liable to end up breaking my fist on his face.
But we'd been home all evening, and hadn't had any visitors. We'd have known, if there'd been someone lurking about. One of the neighbors would have seen, and the rumor mill would have spread word of it through the building fast as lightning. Wherever Bansi had been, it wasn't home.
Realization struck me, and I nearly laughed. The only home of mine Bansi had known was the flat on Copper Street. "I moved," I said, voice hard to hide the relief washing through me.
The corner of Bansi's mouth turned up, a wry smile that invited me to share his humor. I kept my expression as it was, unyielding. "I had gathered that." His smile slipped, turned into something wistful. "I liked your place."
It was too small. I bit back the words, because I didn't want to answer the questions it would raise. We'd had enough lighthearted arguments about the amount of space one man needed, and I'd defended the size of my home until I was breathless, insisting that it was plenty of space for me. He'd wonder why it wasn't now, or he'd tease me and take it as proof that he'd been right all the while. I wouldn't tell him about Elodie, and I'd be damned if I'd let him patronize me.
"Go away, Bansi."
"I have something for you."
I shut my eyes and drew breath through my nose, struggling for calm, or at least control. "Take it away. I don't want it."
"You haven't even seen it yet."
There was a noise, the thud of something on my worktop. I opened my eyes and looked.
Bansi had set a large basket between us, full to the brim with oranges, a dozen different varieties, some I'd never even seen before. He looked proud and pleased. I knew that look. It made me sick now.
"Do you think I can be bought?" I threw a hand out and knocked the basket over, sending oranges tumbling all across my shop. "I'm not going to bend over just because you brought me a bit of fruit. Gods! Why are you here? Don't you have a wife waiting for you back home? You might at least try to be faithful."
He rocked back on his heels, looking as shocked as if I'd struck him again. "A wife? Where the devil did you hear that?"
Cold anger gripped my heart. Gods, I had been a fool before. I'd thought Bansi marvelous. I'd thought I loved him. "Do you deny it?"
"I don't know where you got such notions, but I have no wife."
I wanted to strangle him. I sat on my stool, instead, and took up the tin box I'd dented in my anger, and a tiny hammer, and tried to set it to rights. "You are a liar, then." I didn't look at him, just set about my work. Maybe if I ignored him, he'd go. "You, or your brother, for I heard word of your marriage from his own lips."
A lengthy silence stretched between us, punctuated only by the faint ringing of my hammer against the tin. When Bansi said, "Naven?", he sounded shocked and hurt, as though I'd just told him his brother had betrayed his very darkest secrets.
"Do you have another?"
"No, of course not-- Devils, he must have meant Riksa. When did he tell you this?"
I set my tools down and gave Bansi a flat look. "Does it matter?"
"It does if you're going to accuse me of lying!"
"Oh, that's right," I said mildly. "I'd forgotten. You've never once in your life told me a thing that wasn't true, have you?"
Bansi stared at me like my words were nonsense. A moment passed, and I let him have it. Then his expression crumpled, and I knew he'd caught my meaning. I allowed myself a small smile at the victory, petty though it was, and bent my head over the box once more.
"If he told you Riksa was my wife," Bansi said, "then it must have been three years back, the season I didn't come."
I continued working and said nothing, hoping it would discourage him, but he only seemed to take it as tacit agreement.
"That was years ago, Renad."
"He told me wrong, then? You didn't wed?"
"I--" He broke off, swearing. "I did, yes. I married her, for my parents' sake, to satisfy them. And six months later, I couldn't bear it a day longer. It was a disaster. A mistake. She was just as miserable as I was in the arrangement. We agreed it was best to call an end to the marriage, and we separated. She is not my wife, and I am not unfaithful. Last I heard, she was wed to a silk merchant, heavy with child, and far happier than I ever made her."
"Oh, I see," I said quietly. The box was fragile enough I didn't trust myself not to break it, not with Bansi here talking to me, fanning the flames of my anger and turning every gesture I made heavy-handed and careless. I set it aside and snatched up the broom, set to sweeping out the dust and dirt tracked in by dozens of feet throughout the day. "So I'm not the only lover you made promises to, and then abandoned. How gratifying to know. Thank you terribly much for making the effort to come by and tell me that." I swept the dust up vigorously, sending it swirling about in eddies before the broom. I jabbed the broom's bristles into the cracks and crevices of my floorboards, sweeping them out more thoroughly than they had been in years, because it was almost as satisfying as taking the broom to Bansi's head. "You may leave now."
"Renad," Bansi said on a sigh. He sidled out of the way of my sweeping. "It was a mistake."
"Which part? Marrying her? Or running from me?"
"Both."
The oranges he'd brought me were still scattered about the corners of my floor. I grabbed the basket and made a circuit around the shop, snatching them up and dumping them unceremoniously back inside. Then, because I knew he was watching, I took the whole thing and chucked it into the alley behind my shop.
They were already bruised and soft from the tumble, anyway. They'd probably have tasted bitter. I didn't want them.
Bansi looked briefly hurt when I came back inside from tossing his oranges out. But then resolve settled over his features, hardening them. "I'm not giving up on us, Ren," he said quietly. "I was miserable at home, in so many ways. It took me a long time to realize that."
I snorted to myself and went back to my sweeping. What sort of a fool was taken by surprise by his own unhappiness?
"It took me an even longer time to realize that what I wanted, I'd already had, and I'd let it slip away."
There was no abiding that comment. It was more than I had the willpower to endure. I threw the broom down and spun on him. "You didn't let me do anything, you devil-cursed bastard. I didn't leave. You cast me aside. You threw out what we had like it was trash. You've just now realized that there was a value to it? Well, too bad. It's too late. Gods, you fool. You think you're apologizing, but even now, you can't take the blame onto your own shoulders. This is your fault, so stop looking at me like if only I'd relent a little, I could put it all to rights. I didn't break it. If you're unhappy, that's your own mess, and you can figure out how to clean it up yourself."
A strange expression overtook him, something like a slow epiphany combined with determination. "You're right," he said. He stood up taller and squared his shoulders. "I'll make it right again, Ren. You'll see."
Oh no. I stared at him in dismay, only just realizing that instead of discouraging him, my words had only given him hope. Before I could correct him, he came forward and clasped my hands in his. "I am sorry, Renad." He looked me straight in the eye, like he truly meant it. It was spectacularly unfair for someone so unthinkably callous to be able to ape sincerity so well that I even I couldn't point out the difference. I, who knew better than anyone how quickly Bansi would change his tune if the way got rough. "You can't know how much I regret what I said to you. What I did... Gods. I'm going to make it up to you."
I sighed and pulled against his hold on my hands. "Please don't."
"I will," he said, even firmer than before. "You'll see."
*
I lay on the floor of our main room, stretched on my side with my head pillowed on my arm while Elodie sat with her back against my middle, hunched over and drawing. She was humming to herself, a nonsense tune I didn't recognize, and had been since halfway through the walk home from Corine's. She did it often, and it never failed to make my heart swell with love and affection.
I ran my fingers idly through her hair as she decorated the paper, trying to cling to that sense of joy. Every time I let my concentration lapse, I found my mind slipping back to unwelcome thoughts.
Bansi had planted the seed inside me, and now I found myself lying here and wondering what it might have been like, if he had stayed. If we had raised her together. Would she have been happier, with two fathers instead of one? With a family who didn't have to leave her in someone else's charge just so they could make enough money to keep her fed?
She'd have loved Bansi the way I'd known him, I thought. The way he was when things had been good between us, before the end. He'd been lighthearted and carefree, and now, I thought him childish in that regard. But it would have been well-suited to a child. He'd have made her laugh.
"Papa," Elodie said abruptly, interrupting my thoughts. She waved her sheet of paper in my face. "Look. For you."
I took the paper and held it up so I could see it. She'd drawn a butterfly in half a dozen bright shades with an unlikely pattern of stars and checkerboards across it wings. Above it was the arc of a rainbow composed mostly of greens and blues. "It's beautiful," I told her, beaming, and rolled over onto my stomach so I could hold it out before us and we could look at it together. "Corine said you went on a walk through the city today. Did you see a butterfly like this?"
"No, Papa!" She pealed with laughter. "Butterflies don't look like that."
"Are you sure?" I made a show of squinting at the paper, turning it from side to side. "I think maybe they ought to. It's awful pretty."
"Yes!" She giggled so hard it bent her double. "There aren't any other butterflies like this one. This one's just for you, so you'll be happy." She turned over and leaned most of her upper body against my shoulder, one arm draped around my neck in a messy hug.
I had to swallow back the knot of emotion that twisted into my throat at her words. "Sweetheart, of course I'm happy."
Her lower lip jutted out into a fearsome sulk. "No, you're not. You're sad, Papa." She said it so plainly, so emphatically, that there was no denying it. I reached up to hug her to me, and turned my head so I could kiss her on the side of her face. "But now you have a butterfly and you'll be happy."
"Of course." I smiled at her, smiled wide, so she wouldn't doubt I meant it. "How could I be anything else?" I reached past her to grab the stack of paper she'd been coloring on, grinned at her and jostled her with my shoulder so she'd clamber off of me. "Go on. Don't look." I curved my arm around the paper and gave her a mischievous look. "I'm going to draw you one. It'll be a surprise."
Her face lit up, and she hurried off to the other side of the room so she wouldn't ruin the surprise. Her easy joy twisted something hard and almost painful within my chest. How could Bansi have given her up, before he'd even had a chance to know her? She amazed me, every day. How could he not want her?
And if he'd stayed... If he'd stayed, I might not have had her either. Would he have been willing to raise another man's child, when he'd been so ill-at-ease with the idea of even having his own? He'd have denied himself the joy of having her in his life out of his own fear and cowardice. And worse, if he'd stayed here, if he'd stayed with me, he'd have denied it to me, too. And I'd never have known what I was missing.
The paper crumpled in my hand as it clenched into a fist. Elodie jumped and gave me a startled look across the room. "Papa?"
I drew a breath in, released it slowly and my anger with it. Elodie was here. She was mine. There was no point getting worked up about futures that would never be. I smiled at Elodie in apology, smoothed the paper back out, and devoted myself to the task of drawing her the prettiest butterfly I could imagine.
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