The Light of Paris. Элеонора Браун

      

      

       Copyright

      The Borough Press

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

      First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

      Copyright © Eleanor Brown 2016

      Cover design: Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016. Cover images © Vo Y Phong Mickael/EyeEm/Getty (Paris); Shutterstock.com (frame)

      Eleanor Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Sourse ISBN: 9780007393688

      Ebook Edition © February 2016 ISBN: 9780007393695

      Version: 2016-06-06

       Dedication

       For my parents and my grandparents, especially my grandmothers:

       Madeline Mercier Brown and Catherine McReynolds Barnes

       Epigraph

      Paris in the rain is still Paris.

      —Catherine Rémine McReynolds,

       November 18, 1923

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      One: Madeleine – 1999

      Two: Margie – 1919

      Three: Madeleine – 1999

Four: Margie – 1924

Five: Madeleine – 1999

       Six: Margie – 1924

       Seven: Madeleine – 1999

       Eight: Margie – 1924

       Nine: Madeleine – 1999

       Ten: Margie – 1924

       Eleven: Madeleine – 1999

       Twelve: Margie – 1924

       Thirteen: Madeleine – 1999

       Fourteen: Margie – 1924

       Fifteen: Madeleine – 1999

       Sixteen: Margie – 1924

       Seventeen: Madeleine – 1999

       Eighteen: Margie – 1924

       Nineteen: Madeleine – 1999

       Twenty: Margie – 1924

       Twenty-One: Madeleine – 1999

       Twenty-Two: Margie – 1924

       Twenty-Three: Madeleine – 1999

       Twenty-Four: Margie – 1924

       Twenty-Five: Madeleine – 1999

       Twenty-Six: Margie – 1924

       Twenty-Seven: Madeleine – 1999

       Twenty-Eight: Margie – 1924

       Twenty-Nine: Madeleine – 1999

       Acknowledgments

       Author’s Note

       About the Author

       Also by Eleanor Brown

       About the Publisher

       one

       MADELEINE

       1999

      I didn’t set out to lose myself. No one does, really. No one purposely swims away from the solid, forgiving anchor of their heart. We simply make the tiniest of compromises, the smallest of decisions, not realizing the way those small changes add up to something larger until we are forced, for better or worse, to face the people we have become.

      I had the best of intentions, always: to make my mother happy, to keep the peace, to smooth my rough edges and ease my own way. But in the end, the life I had crafted was like the porcelain figurines that resided in my mother’s china cabinets: smooth, ornate, but delicate and hollow. For display only. Do not touch.

      Long ago, I might have called myself an artist. As a child, I drew on every blank surface I encountered—including, to my mother’s dismay, the walls, deliciously empty front pages of library books, and more than a few freshly ironed tablecloths. In high school, I spent hours in the art room after school, painting until the sun coming through the skylights grew thin and the art teacher would gently put her hand on my shoulder and tell me it was time to go home. Lingering under my Anaïs Anaïs perfume was the smell of paint, and the edges of every textbook I owned were covered with doodles and drawings. On the weekends, I hid from my mother’s bottomless disapproval in the basement of our house, where I had set up an easel, painting until my fingers were stiff and the light had disappeared, rendering the colors I blended on the palette an indiscriminate black.

      But I hadn’t painted since I had gotten married. Now, I spent hours leading tour groups through the Stabler Art Museum’s galleries, pointing out the beautiful blur of the Impressionists, the lush