She looks up from her sketch when she hears the impatient rap on the door. "Come in," she calls out absently before turning her attention back to her project.
Her husband's secretary enters the room. "Madame? Your supplies," Nathalie says.
"Excellent! Just put my scrapbag next to the bed so I can reach over and grab them."
"Do you require anything else, Madame?"
"Non. Merci, Nathalie."
Nathalie inclines her head slightly before closing the door. Nathalie's aloof demeanor and brusque tone make it hard to get along with the woman, and she suspects that Gabriel himself prefers to associate with his secretary as little as possible. Still, Nathalie's far from Gabriel's worst hire. She likes Nathalie for her honest, direct gaze that is devoid of the pity that fills others' eyes when they see her current state.
She finishes outlining the pattern for Adrien's rag doll and caps her pen. After setting both pen and paper aside, she grabs the cloth bag Nathalie has left behind and lays out the contents on her lap. There are needles of varying sizes, bobbins of colored thread, rolls of black velvet and silk ribbon. She reaches into the bag for the last time and retrieves a small packet of green buttons. She frowns. The color isn't quite to her liking—they're more lime-green than the emerald shade of her son's eyes—but Nathalie has already left and there's nothing she can do but use what she has at her disposal.
She gets to work.
She finishes sewing on the second green eye and laughs in delight. "Tu es un chat adorable!" she tells the doll. It's been so long since she last held a needle; she has pricked her fumbling fingers for more times than she can count but for the first time since her illness has confined her to her room, she's radiantly happy.
"The best dolls have some sort of charm sewn into them," Master Fu's voice echoes in her mind, and she reaches over and picks the silver ring from its place on the bedside table. She threads through the ring and attaches it deep inside the little pouch on the doll's body, patting it flat when she's done.
Of all of the dolls she has made, this cat is her masterpiece. It has green button eyes and a body fashioned out of scraps of black velvet and she's even sewn a little pouch on its stomach that could fit one of Adrien's toy cars. She finds a little bell in her scrap bag and attaches the bell to its neck. It's perfect for her little son.
The only thing she wishes is that it were real.
She clutches the little doll to her chest. "Please take care of Adrien when I'm gone," she whispers to the cat, and if she wasn't trembling so hard, she would have felt it move.