“Do you love Jestine?” I had asked one day. He was a handsome man, yet still a child in many ways.

“Of course I do,” he said. “But Madame can never hear of it.”

“You’re going let Madame Pomié ruin your life?”

Aaron had pushed me off the bed. “There are rules,” he told me. I was shocked to hear him say so. I thought of us as rebels, wandering the island, going where we pleased, even if it was something my mother had forbidden.

“You’re the one who will ruin your life if you don’t understand there are differences among us,” he told me.

After that I didn’t trust Aaron. I told Jestine a thousand times, Don’t choose him, but she said in love there were no choices and swore one day I’d find that to be true. I could not concentrate on my books or on the stories I wrote anymore. I listened to the moth that always tried to get into my room, and I wished I could fly with it across the ocean. Perhaps in the cold my heart would freeze and I would care nothing for those I was forced to abandon.

MY FATHER ESCORTED ME to the Petit house on a Sunday afternoon when the church bells were ringing. There are mountains all around town, and many of the streets are steep. One had to climb up staircases made of ballast stones from ships that had docked at the island, for thousands of such stones were unloaded when the shipmasters picked up their cargo. The Petit home was up a winding twist of a road. The house was pretty, painted yellow with a large veranda. There were green shutters at every window that could be fastened shut when there was the threat of a hurricane. Egrets were fishing in a small pond nearby, a sign of good luck despite Jestine’s warnings. Egrets meant joy and happiness. I knew that much. I asked my father to fetch Monsieur Petit while I waited at the gate. I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. “Go on,” I said to my father. “It’s fine for me to wait on my own.”

“If you’re this bossy with him, he’ll likely cancel the wedding,” my father warned.

“If he doesn’t try to please me now, what will he do when he’s my husband?”

My father laughed, but he did as I asked. Standing there, I noticed egrets worked into the design of the iron fence. I wondered if Madame Petit had asked the ironworker for this pattern after watching the very birds I now spied in the pond.

I didn’t go forward until my father and Monsieur Petit came out. They were so much older I felt silly being young and inexperienced, but then I saw how tentative Monsieur Petit was and I felt my strength. I nodded a greeting, then asked if they would leave.

In the bright light Monsieur Petit looked worried and even older than he had on the evening we met. “But you don’t know the house.”

“You plan on marrying me, yet you have discomfort about me being in your house? Do you think I’m a thief?”

He laughed. “Not at all. It’s only that I wished to introduce you. For your comfort.”

I assured him that women spoke to children in ways men did not understand, or so Adelle had always told me. I said I was comfortable on my own and he could return in one hour. That was time enough. In one hour I would discover all I needed to know.

“And you don’t have to watch over me,” I teased my father. “If anyone was to do that, it would be Monsieur Petit.”

Isaac Petit looked startled. I think he was still in a dream, imagining that his wife might return to him. I saw that his posture was somewhat stooped, as if he carried sorrow on his back. All of this might have made another girl turn and run, but I had always been the sort of person to do my best no matter the situation. I went to the porch, where there was wicker furniture set out facing a long view of the harbor. The water was pale green in the shallows, turquoise in the deep. The sea changed color depending on the tides and the wind. I pried open the heavy mahogany door and slipped inside the house, where it was cooler, darkened against the summer heat with closed shutters and drawn curtains. Being inside was like drinking a glass of chilled water. I stood in the hallway and shivered, thankful to be cold.

The boys were clearly expecting a guest, for they found me in the hall fast enough. They had dressed formally for the occasion in white shirts and black trousers, their hair combed back with lavender water. They raced in and looked disappointed when they spied me lingering there.

“We thought our new mother was coming,” they burst out.

I could tell they thought I was a day woman, hired to help with the laundry. My clothes were plain and I was young. Not what they had expected.

“You can have but one mother in this world and no one can take her place,” I assured them.