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In better circumstances, Renoir might have laughed. He is a fully grown man, patriarch of a noble family, father, husband, painter, and he has been laid low by something as simple as preparing a meal.
“Renoir, poisoning maman and Alicia will do us no good. Come out of there.”
After everything that has happened, Renoir supposes he deserves the coldness in his eldest daughter's voice. Clea lingers in the kitchen’s doorway, arms crossed securely over her chest. She’s thinner too, he notes with some distress, and there are heavy bags beneath her lovely eyes.
“The staff are still away—” he holds up a hand before she can protest, seeing the defensiveness already seeping into her posture. Her expression so clearly says, What else would you have had me do? Let all of Paris witness our shame? Renoir nods his understanding. “—and so we make do. If you are concerned, you are welcome to help me search for something for them to eat.”
His daughter glances to the side, lips pursed. They both know the alternative is a trip to the market; even with the Canvas destroyed, he will not risk leaving Alicia and Aline alone. From the way she sighs, Clea recognizes the same truth.
She steps over the threshold, skirt thrashing around her legs as she moves. Clea scans the room. “Odd. I'd always assumed a Dessendre would burst into flames if they stepped in here.” The joke is in admittedly poor taste. She shrugs as if in admission of this fact.
“As a boy, I often visited. I assure you, there were no flames.”
“If you must reminisce, do it as we search.”
She moves past him without another word, strong and somehow diminished.
Renoir lingers, watching his eldest work. There is a clinical efficiency to her movements, a surety and conservation of energy that has served her well, both as a Paintress and sculptor. He has had the whole of her life to learn the particulars of her moods, her motions. This expression is faux calm. It is a shoddy, rent garment she’s haphazardly tugged over her fury.
“Renoir, this was your idea. Are you going to help? Or should I expect your absence again?”
He does not shirk back in the face of her anger. The Dessendre Patriarch steps in beside her, searching the shelves for staples which have yet to spoil. There are jars of goods in one cupboard and a passable wheel of cheese. It is a strange, he thinks, to feel so much radiating off of her—exhaustion, hurt, disappointment. She will let these things fester. These past months—decades in his case—have worn them too raw to have so serious a conversation. He cannot leave it lie. Even the notion of his daughter's pain stabs at him.
“Clea,” he says softly. “You never hesitated to speak your mind with me before.”
“Broken trust changes things.” It stings more than he cares to admit. Clea snatches fruit preserves from the shelf and some hardtack biscuits that he has no memory of purchasing. He follows as she moves through to the larder. Without looking at him, she says, “Tell me, did you consider your living children before you tore off after Aline? I’d hope we merited a second thought.”
He steps towards her. The young woman's posture squares, but she does not move away. Of their children, he sees the most of himself in Clea—the same unflagging dedication to family and duty, regardless of the personal cost. Clea's eyes—the same blue as his—narrow.
Renoir places his hands on her shoulders, horrified to feel the prominence of bone beneath his touch, a far cry from the vital young woman she’s always been. He worries his thumb over her clavicle. “What would you have had me do?”
"See to your family. You had duties here.”
“Is your mother not family?”
Her lips curl back, caught somewhere between pain and a sneer. “Aline made her choice.”
For all her strength, Renoir sees a weeping wound, too infected to scab over, let alone heal. He sees the little girl who was never afraid of the dark, only fascinated by its secrets, who had snuck from her bed night after night to sit with him in the library.
He sighs, dropping his eyes. Clea ducks her head to hold his gaze. “She didn’t want you, Renoir. And we…” The sentence does not drift off so much as it jolts to a stop. Clea's throat bobs as if she’s made the conscious choice to swallow the admission. Her free hand clenches at her side. “Verso dead, Alicia maimed, Aline fled—you were the fixed point.”
Renoir nods. Sixty-seven years in the Canvas, and he remembers every aspect of their conversation. Clea, so righteous in her fury, an island, staring at him with naked hurt sketched across her face. He’d refused to let himself look at her. The look in her eyes, always so proud, now begging him to stay, would have shattered him.
“In an ideal world,” he murmurs, “It would have been different.”
“In this world, it should have been different.” His eldest frowns, tossing her head. Renoir nearly smiles, a joyless expression. There are moments where he wonders if Clea truly knows herself as well as she espouses—knows that she only tips her head like that when she is shrugging off hurts. Most likely not. They are, perhaps, the minute details only a father catalogues. “Hypotheticals hardly matter. You made your choice. Maybe it was even the correct one. Your family is present again.”
The faintly sweet scent of rotting fruits colors the air. The staff had never had an opportunity to set the larder to rights after the fire. Now, it stands in testament to the night’s chaos. He takes the preserves from her and sets them aside. Renoir takes her hands, turning her palms face up over his.
There are difficulties in dealing with one so similar to yourself. Renoir sees the elements of Aline stitched into their daughter’s character—her severity and sharpness, that unflinching realism—marrying unevenly to his stubbornness, perfectionism, and romanticism. If she were her mother or sister, he would take her in his arms. Clea would not welcome his touch. Not now, not yet, not until they’d cauterized the wound.
“I will not apologize for saving them,” Renoir says. She scoffs. He squeezes her shoulder to call her attention back. “But, my dear…if it meant losing you, if it has cost me you…that I would mourn.”
For the first time since his return, Clea gives ground. Her brow furrows, mouth curling as if she cannot settle on the appropriate emotional response. The simple honesty of her statement cuts him as effectively as any blade. “I needed you, Papa.”
It is the brutalistic truth of their nature: they are strong; they are reliable. It is a draw to others in their life and a curse of isolation all at once. Aline and Alicia had lashed out more violently, had broadcast their hurts, and Clea fell to the wayside. The one who should have seen it, who should have understood? He never broke stride.
Renoir touches her cheek. Time and life have refined her into something beautiful and austere. He still sees his little one, paint in her hair and smeared across the bridge of her nose, Verso toddling along behind her like a shadow.
“It should never have fallen to you to carry our family’s burdens. Forgive me.” He stares into eyes so like his own, exhaustion and anger radiating off her like a fever. “I will make this right.”
Clea swallows. She turns her hands over, hesitating before threading their fingers together. There is too much life in her to say her tone is gentle; perhaps it’s only that some of the ice has melted.
“The Council has hounded me for an audience. I’ve played for time but…”
“...I will speak to them. Consider it done.”
She exhales. In that one breath, Renoir watches a fraction of the stress and weight sluff off her shoulders. “The Writers…”
“Clea.” Renoir’s tone is not unkind. “Child, there will be time for this and more, come morning. If you have any love at all for your father, you will take tonight to breathe.”
She has not come up for air since the fire. “One night?”
“I will not ask you for more.”
Clea chews the inside of her cheek, nodding. There is a teasing undercurrent, faint but there, to her tone that makes his heart ache. “Very well, old man.”
His daughter hesitates, visibly torn, before she steps into his chest. Renoir manages to bring his arms around her before she can pull away, trapping her in the embrace. She is taller than her sister or mother, but he is still able to rest his chin on the crown of her head. Clea’s fingers curl in the material of his waistcoat, her nails pinching through the fabric before she relaxes.
He smoothes a hand over her hair. “You are not alone, child.”
He does not expect her to respond, and she doesn’t. Clea turns her face into his chest, and that is answer enough.
They remain like that for a time. Eventually, Clea says, “One of us will have to send for the staff. As is, we’re liable to starve.”
Renoir snorts. “You look as if you’re well on your way to that already.”
“Ah, the hypocrite speaks.” She pinches at the now loose fabric of his shirt. Clea exhales, stepping away from him. “We may still have some smoked fish left.”
It is a meal only by the loosest approximation of the word, but it is food. The pair brings the tray of fish, biscuits, and preserves back to the informal living room that Alicia and Aline have claimed as their refuge. It is one of the manor’s smaller rooms, set well away from the atelier. He imagines that is part of the appeal. Renoir pauses to regard the two women. Time and circumstance have worn away at their bodies.
He cannot imagine they are comfortable. The couch is too narrow. Aline has fitted herself behind their youngest, face turned into her hair, effectively trapping Alicia between the back of the sofa and her mother. It is the first time they’ve slept without nightmares since returning from the Canvas.
He glances over at Clea to find her smiling absently. Renoir pulls her to him without thinking, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Clea makes a surprised noise, staring up at him. Affectionate and suspicious, so very like her. The man shakes his head, chucking her under the chin as he might have when she was a girl, before crossing to the rest of their little family.
They are all here. They are all whole.
In time, their wounds will heal.