Free Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly Page B

that happen?” I ask him. “He was only a kid. Why didn’t anyone stage a protest? Or lobby to have the place closed down? Like Gitmo.”
    “Stage a protest? Lobby?” G says, chuckling. “Under Robespierre? Ah, my little American, you must remember that France at this time called itself a republic but it was in fact a dictatorship, and dictators don’t take criticism well. Shrewd Robespierre made sure that very few people knew what was happening to Louis-Charles. However, in 1795 … Wait a minute, I have a picture of him here … a photograph of a portrait. Where the devil did it go?” He reaches for the stack of black-and-whites and starts looking through them. “Where was I again?” he says.
    “You were saying very few people knew what was happening to Louis-Charles,” I say.
    “Yes. So the deprivation and the lack of food finally took their toll. In June of 1795, at the age of ten, Louis-Charles died. Which was exactly what Robespierre had wanted. He couldn’t have the child killed because that would have looked very bad—even for him. But he couldn’t let him live, either. The official cause of death was declared to be tuberculosis of the bones. An autopsy was performed and while the body was open, one of the doctors, Pelletan, stole the child’s heart. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and smuggled it out of the prison and … Ah! Here we are.”
    G pulls a photo from the stack and hands it to me. “This is him—Louis-Charles. The portrait was painted while he and his family were prisoners in the Temple. You can tell, can’t you? You can see the uncertainty in his face, the wariness.”
    I don’t answer him. I don’t say anything. I can’t. Because the boy in the photograph looks exactly like Truman. He had the same expression on his face that day. The last time I said goodbye to him. “Go on, Tru,” I said. “Just go. You’ll be fine.”
    I push the photo away, but it’s too late. The pain hits me so hard, I feel like I’ve fallen into a pit filled with broken glass.
    “So as I was saying, Dr. Pelletan took the heart and—”
    “Good God, are we still talking about the heart?” Lili says, banging down a platter of chicken.
    “—smuggled it out of the Temple.”
    “Guillaume, serve the chicken, please,” she says tersely.
    “It was thought that he wanted to—”
    “Guillaume!” Lili snaps. She says more. I don’t catch every word because I’m focusing hard on keeping it together, but I do get that Guillaume should not have brought out these photographs. Not in front of me. Couldn’t he have waited? A dead boy! The same age as Truman, no less. What was he thinking? Why must he always be talking about the dead? Hasn’t this poor girl had enough of death? Look at her! She looks like a corpse herself! Can he not see that?
    Dad looks at me as Lili’s chewing G out. There’s no anger in his eyes, or disappointment, as there usually is when he’s looking at me, just sadness.
    “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t want to tell you about the testing. Or for you to see the pictures. I didn’t want to upset you.”
    “Then why did you make me come here?” I ask him.
    I feel a hand on mine. It’s G’s. “I am so sorry, Andi. I did not even think. I should not have told you this story. I’m so easily carried away by my passions,” he says.
    “It’s okay, G,” I say, because what else am I going to say? But it’s not okay. I look at that photo again, quickly, before Lili sweeps it off the table, and all I can think of is a small boy, alone in the dark over two hundred years ago, hungry and cold and terrified. Because of a madman named Robespierre. And it makes me think of another small boy, staring up at the gray winter sky as he bled to death on a street in Brooklyn. Because of another madman.
    G’s still talking. “It’s only because I want to find answers that I pursue the story so doggedly,” he says. “I want to find reasons why. I want to understand the