Chapter 2: Camille’s Name
“Are you going to send us away?”
Adrien stopped in the hall.
Mila’s fingers were curled around the clay token, her small shoulders drawn up as if she were bracing for a door to close. Nora had gone quiet beside her. The question seemed to fill the whole house.
He returned to the kitchen and lowered himself to one knee, leaving enough space that neither girl would have to move away from him.
“Not tonight,” he said. “You’re staying here while I make sure you’re safe and get the right people involved.”
Mila stared at him.
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet what the adults will decide. I won’t pretend I do.” He kept his voice gentle. “But I won’t send you off without knowing where you’re going and who will take care of you.”
Nora glanced at her sister. Mila’s hand remained tight around the clay.
“Does that help?” he asked.
“A little,” Nora said.
Mila didn’t answer, but her shoulders lowered by the smallest degree.
Adrien accepted that as much as he could. He had made one promise already: to keep them safe that night. He could not promise that every decision ahead would be his to make, or that the truth would be painless. The girls deserved honesty, even when honesty frightened him.
“I’ll stay where you can see me,” he said. “I need to make another call and tell them more about you.”
Nora’s gaze sharpened.
“Will they come take us?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask what they recommend.” He paused. “You can hear me make the call if you want.”
She nodded.
Adrien picked up his phone. The kitchen clock ticked above the stove while he found the weekend contact number he had called earlier. He put the call on speaker and set the phone on the table, careful not to place it near the girls’ tokens.
After a short wait, a tired voice answered.
Adrien gave his name and the address, then explained that two six-year-old girls had arrived at his house alone. He told the contact their names, that they had been barefoot and hungry, that they were now indoors, fed, and warm. He described their condition as best he could without guessing at anything he didn’t know.
“Are they injured?” the voice asked.
“I haven’t seen any obvious injuries. They’re frightened, but they’re talking.”
The girls listened from their chairs. Nora’s knee pressed against Mila’s beneath the table.
Adrien answered questions about when they had arrived and whether anyone had come with them. He did not have much to offer: no car on the road, no adult, no explanation for how the girls had found the villa. When the contact confirmed that an in-person response still would not be available until Monday, Adrien asked what he should do in the meantime.
The advice was practical: keep them in a safe place, call emergency services if there was an immediate medical concern or anyone came looking for them in a threatening way, and remain available for follow-up. The contact recorded the girls’ names and the details Adrien had provided.
“Can I talk to them?” he asked.
He lowered the phone’s volume slightly and turned it toward the girls, without pushing it closer.
“Would either of you like to say hello?”
Mila shook her head.
Nora hesitated, then leaned toward the phone.
“We’re okay,” she said.
The voice on the other end asked if they felt safe.
Nora looked at Adrien before answering.
“We’re inside.”
“That’s good,” the contact said. “Stay with the grown-up there, and we’ll check in again.”
Adrien thanked the person and ended the call. He made a note of the time, the number, and what they had discussed. The ordinary details mattered. Names. Questions. Instructions. A record that the girls had been there, and that he had asked for help.
When he looked up, Mila was watching him.
“You told them everything?” she asked.
“Everything I know.”
“But you don’t know us.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
Nora traced the rim of her glass with one finger.
“Mom said you knew the house,” she said.
Adrien went very still.
“What did she tell you about this place?”
Nora looked to Mila, as if checking whether she should speak. Mila kept her attention on the table.
“She said it was happy here,” Nora said at last. “Before.”
The word landed softly, but Adrien felt it all the same.
“Happy for who?”
“For you and her,” Nora said. “She said you used to laugh in the kitchen.”
His gaze moved to the old cupboards, the worn table, the window above the sink. He could remember laughing there. He could remember Camille stealing a piece of bread from the pan before dinner and claiming the cook had to taste her work. He could remember her standing in this room with flour on her cheek, laughing when he tried to wipe it away and only made it worse.
He had not known these girls existed. Whatever Camille had told them, it was not the whole story.
“Did she say why she wanted you to come here?” he asked.
“She said you’d know,” Nora replied.
“I don’t,” he admitted.
Mila opened her hand enough to show the clay token without giving it to him.
“Mom made these,” she said. “She said it was a promise.”
“What kind of promise?”
Mila’s thumb moved over a shallow groove in the clay.
“That she was coming back.”
Adrien’s throat tightened. He did not reach for the token. He remembered what he had promised the night before—or what, to the girls, was only a little while ago. He would not touch it again without permission.
“Did she make both of them at the same time?” he asked.
Mila nodded.
“She made mine first. Then Nora’s.”
“What do the marks mean?”
“I don’t know.” Mila looked down. “I just remember her hands.”
Nora held up her own piece, still close to her chest.
“She’d press it here,” she said, touching the clay with the pad of one finger. “Then she made the line.”
The symbols, Adrien thought, had never been a code. They were something Camille had made with her hands. Something the girls had seen her make. The pieces connected them to her, but they could not answer all the questions waiting in the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Mila looked up.
“For what?”
“For touching yours before I asked. I won’t do it again.”
“You already said that.”
“I did.”
“Then why say it again?”
“Because you get to decide what happens to your things,” he said. “And I want you to know I remember.”
Mila seemed to consider this. She closed her fingers around the clay again.
Adrien stood slowly and went to the counter. He could make tea or warm milk. He could find blankets. He could offer the girls clean pajamas if they wanted them. There were useful things to do, and doing them did not require pretending he understood how the two of them had arrived at his door.
“Would you like something warm to drink?” he asked.
“Milk,” Nora said.
“Warm?”
She nodded. Mila watched him reach for a saucepan, then glanced toward Nora.
“What?” Nora asked.
“Nothing.”
“You can say it.”
Mila looked back at Adrien. “Mom said you had something.”
“Something?”
Nora frowned, searching for the right words.
“She said if we found you, we should show you what we brought.”
Adrien turned off the burner before pouring the milk. “What did you bring?”
Nora slid from her chair. She kept one hand around her clay token and used the other to reach into the pocket of her dusty skirt. For a moment, she fumbled with the fabric. Then she drew out a small square of paper, folded twice and worn soft at the edges.
Mila rose too, moving close enough that their sleeves touched.
“She said keep it dry,” Nora said. “And don’t lose it.”
Adrien did not reach for it.
“Would you like me to look?”
Nora held the folded picture between her fingertips. She glanced at Mila.
Mila gave a small nod.
Nora stepped forward and placed it on the table between them.
Adrien unfolded the paper carefully.
The photograph was old, its colors faded to warm browns and soft gray. Camille sat on a low chair near a window, her hair falling loose around her shoulders. She looked younger than the woman in the last picture Adrien had seen of her, but unmistakably herself. A bundled infant rested in each of her arms.
The girls leaned over the edge of the table.
“That’s us,” Nora said.
Adrien could not answer.
He recognized the blanket around the babies. A knitted one, cream-colored, with a small dark patch near the hem. He had owned it years ago, before Camille left and the life they had imagined together collapsed into silence. He remembered carrying it into their house after a cold night, promising he would find a better use for it than hiding it at the bottom of a box.
He had believed Camille was gone from his life by then.
His fingers hovered over the photograph. He did not touch it until Nora nudged it closer.
“Can I?” he asked.
She nodded.
Adrien lifted the picture by its corners. Camille’s eyes in the photograph were bright and tired; her smile looked private, meant for the two babies against her chest. He knew that expression. He had seen it when she was proud of something she did not want to boast about, or when she was trying not to laugh at him.
The photograph proved that Camille had held the girls. It did not prove who their father was. It did not explain why he had never known. It offered no account of the years between the picture and the night two barefoot children had come to his door.
Still, the sight of that blanket had pulled a memory out of hiding.
Adrien turned the photograph over.
A date was written on the back in Camille’s handwriting.
He read it once.
May you like
Then again.
It was from the year he had believed she had left his life.
