Then came the bills. And the children. Emma, then Daniel. A house with a yard on Briar Lane. A mortgage. Car payments. Doctor bills.
Richard got a job with a company that sold industrial machine parts. Halvorsen Industrial. He was good at it. He could talk to anybody. Within a few years, they made him their sales manager for Europe.
That meant trips. A lot of trips. Germany, Belgium, Holland.
And Paris. Mostly Paris.
He’d come home with little gifts. A box of chocolates from a shop with gold paper. A silk scarf for me. A tiny Eiffel Tower keychain for Daniel that Daniel carried around for years.
I’d be standing at the stove, and he’d come in with his suitcase and kiss the back of my neck, and I’d say, “Paris again?”
“The company’s expanding, Maggie,” he’d say. “These trips help pay the mortgage.”
“I know,” I’d say. “I just miss you.”
“I miss you too, Sparrow. Every minute.”
I’d believed him.
Of course I’d believed him. Why wouldn’t I?
He’d be gone a week. Sometimes two. Sometimes three or four times a year. I’d take care of the kids and the house and my classroom, and when he came back, I’d be so happy to see him that I never asked many questions.
Sitting on that plane, with his letter in my lap, I started to wonder.
Maybe he’d been saving. Secretly. A little bit from every trip. Maybe he’d been planning this huge surprise for years, and then his heart had stopped in the driveway before he could give it to me.
That would be just like Richard. Wanting to make a big grand gesture.
That was the version I wanted to believe.
But there was still the question I couldn’t get past.
If he’d bought that apartment for me, why hadn’t anyone mentioned it after his death?
By the time my plane landed in Paris, the sun was coming up, pink and gold over gray runways.
Priya woke up and stretched.
“Welcome to France,” she said. “Do you know where you’re going?”
I looked down at the address on the letter.
“I think I do,” I said.
I’d made a decision somewhere over the ocean.
I wasn’t going to my hotel first. I wasn’t going to take a nap or unpack or eat breakfast.
I was going to that address.
The taxi driver looked at the address on the letter, nodded, and said something in French that I didn’t understand. Then he drove like he was being chased.
I held on to the door handle and watched Paris go by through the window.
I’d seen it in pictures my whole life. I wasn’t ready for it anyway. The old buildings the color of butter. The little cafés with their tiny round tables out on the sidewalk. The bridges over the river. People on bicycles with long loaves of bread sticking out of their baskets, exactly like in the movies. I almost laughed out loud.
Richard, I thought. You’d love this.
Then I remembered that he’d seen it. Many times. Without me.
The taxi stopped on a narrow street lined with trees.
I got out and stood on the sidewalk with my suitcase.
The building was right there in front of me. The same as the photograph. Pale stone walls and iron balconies with curly black railings. There were red geraniums in a window box on the second floor. A little bakery on the corner, the smell of bread drifting down the street.
It was exactly Richard’s taste. He always loved old things. Old houses. Old cars. Old jazz records.
I looked up at the third floor.
There was a balcony. Two small chairs on it. A little round table between them. A pot of something green.
Someone lived there.
The front door of the building was open. A man was carrying a bicycle out. He held the door for me without even looking at me.
I climbed the stairs. They were old wooden stairs, worn down in the middle from a hundred years of feet. My legs were heavy. I had to stop on the second landing and hold on to the railing and breathe.
On the third floor, there was only one door. Dark blue, with a brass number 3.
I stood in front of it for a long time.
Then I knocked.
Footsteps. A lock turning.
The door opened, and an elegant woman about my age was standing there.
She was tall and slim, with silver hair cut short and neat. She was wearing a cream sweater and gray trousers and small pearl earrings. She had reading glasses pushed up on her head. She looked like the kind of woman who’d never once owned a sweatshirt.
“Bonjour?” she said.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m sorry. Do you speak English?”
“A little.”
“My name is Mrs. Wilson. Margaret Wilson. I’ve come from America.” I took a breath. “I believe my husband owned this apartment.”
She frowned.
I held out the letter.
She took it politely and glanced at it. Her eyes moved down the page.
Then they stopped at the bottom.
At his name.
I watched her face change. It happened in one second. The polite curiosity disappeared. Her mouth went tight. All the color left her cheeks.
She looked up at me.
She started talking very fast in French. I didn’t understand a single word. But I didn’t need to. I knew the tone. I’d heard it from mothers at parent-teacher night when I told them their child was struggling. It was the sound of someone getting scared and angry at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
She stopped. She pushed the letter back into my hands.
“You must leave,” she said in English.
“Please, I only want to ask…”
“This is my home.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t. I just…”
She turned and went inside, leaving the door open. I heard a drawer open. She came back with a folder and pulled out some papers and held them up in front of my face. There was a stamp on them, like the one on the papers in my envelope.
“My name,” she said, tapping it. “My apartment.”
“I understand,” I said. “Perhaps you bought it from him? I’m only trying to find out what happened. He died a long time ago, and I never…”
Her face hardened.
“Leave, please.”
Then I saw it.
Over her shoulder. Inside the apartment. On a wooden shelf by the window, between a stack of books and a little blue vase.
A framed photograph.
Richard.
He was young in it. Younger than I’d seen him in years. He was standing on a bridge with the river behind him, in a tan jacket I didn’t recognize. His hair was blowing in the wind.
He was smiling.
And he had his arm around the woman standing in front of me.
I just stood there.
For a second, my brain went looking for a reasonable explanation, the way it does. Had she worked with him? He’d traveled to Paris on business for years. Maybe she was a colleague. A secretary. A client. People take pictures at company events. People put their arms around each other in pictures.
“Wait,” I said. “Did you know my husband? Through his company? Halvorsen Industrial?”
Her face went completely white.
Then she slammed the door.
I stared at that dark blue door with the brass number 3.
I could hear her on the other side. She wasn’t walking away. She was standing right there, just like me. I could hear her breathing.
“Who are you?” I whispered to the door. “And what was Richard doing here with you?”
She didn’t answer.
I picked up my suitcase and started down the stairs.
Halfway down, the dizziness hit me again. Worse this time. The stairs tilted. The walls went gray. I dropped my suitcase, and it banged down three steps, and I grabbed the railing with both hands and sat down hard on the step.
I stayed there. I put my head between my knees. I breathed.
In for four. Out for four.
For the first time since Dr. Patel’s office, I felt truly afraid. Not of dying. I’d made a kind of peace with that in the hospital parking lot, or started to.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the strength to find out the truth.
That I’d come all this way, and my body would give out before I knew who that woman was.
After a while, the man with the bicycle came back. He saw me sitting on the stairs. He said something kind in French and picked up my suitcase and carried it down for me and then held my elbow the rest of the way.
“Merci,” I said. It was the only French word I was sure of.
He smiled and patted my hand and went on his way.
My hotel was a twenty-minute taxi ride away. It was small and clean, with a tiny elevator that fit exactly one person and one suitcase. My room was on the fourth floor, and it did have a balcony, with red flowers in a box, just like the picture.
I didn’t go out on it.
I sat on the edge of the bed in my coat and called Emma. It was early morning back in Ohio. She answered anyway.
“Mom! You made it! How was your flight? Did you see the apartment?”
I froze.
“What apartment?” I said.
Silence.
“Emma?”
“Oh, Mom,” she said. Her voice had gone very small.
“How do you know about it?”
There was a long pause.
“Because I arranged the envelope,” she said.
“You did what?”
“Mom, let me explain…”
“Emma Louise.”
I hadn’t used her middle name since she was fifteen and snuck out to a concert.
“Remember when we cleaned out Dad’s old things?” she said quickly. “Back in the spring? Before your retirement? When you finally decided to clear out the attic?”
“Yes.”
I remembered. It had taken us two weekends. I’d finally given away his suits to the church clothing drive. I’d kept his watch and his reading glasses and his old jazz records. Emma had asked if she could take his wooden box. A little cedar box he used to keep his cufflinks and tie clips in. It had sat on his dresser our whole marriage. I’d said yes.
“I found his letter inside that wooden box,” Emma said. “There’s a little felt lining in the lid. It was coming loose. I went to glue it back down, and there was an envelope tucked behind it.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Emma, that letter is over thirty years old!”
“I know, Mom. I know. But when you said you were going to Paris, it was like… it was like a sign. Like Dad wanted you to have it. I thought maybe Dad had left you something nobody ever discovered. Something wonderful.”
“Did you check whether he still owned it?”
“I tried, Mom.” Her voice cracked. “I really tried. I spent weeks on it. But the French property records were so confusing, and everything was in French, and I couldn’t find a clear answer. I called a lawyer here, and he said he’d need months and a lot of money to find out. And you didn’t have months, and…”
She stopped.
“So you sent me there anyway,” I said.
“I thought Dad might have left you something wonderful,” she said. “That’s all. I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes.
I thought about Emma at twelve, standing in the doorway in her nightgown, holding her brother’s hand, watching the ambulance lights on the snow. I thought about her bringing me that sheet cake. Do something you’ve always wanted.
“I know you meant well, sweetheart,” I said. “But I wish you’d told me before I came here.”
“I wanted it to be special,” she said. “That’s why I called the airline. They were so nice about it. I asked them to give you the envelope at the gate and say that one line. There’s something you still don’t know about this trip. I thought it would be like a movie.” She sniffed. “But Mom. What’s wrong? You sound strange.”
I didn’t want to tell her.
But I needed to know why that woman had looked so frightened when she saw Richard’s name. And I couldn’t carry it by myself in that little hotel room.
So I told her. About the woman. About the slammed door.
And about the photograph on the shelf.
Emma went very quiet.
“Maybe she bought the apartment,” she said slowly. “After Dad. And maybe she just… kept some old pictures? Things that were left there?”
“Why would she keep your father’s photograph, Emma? On a shelf? In a frame? For thirty-two years?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But I’m going back.”
“Mom, please. Please don’t upset yourself. You’re not well. Just enjoy Paris. Forget the apartment. Forget I ever sent it. Please.”
I looked out the window of my hotel room at the rooftops of Paris. Gray and silver, with little chimney pots like toy soldiers.
“Emma,” I said. “I’ve spent thirty-two years talking to a photograph. I deserve a conversation with someone who can actually answer.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I lay on the narrow hotel bed and listened to motorbikes buzzing past on the street below. I kept seeing that picture. Richard on the bridge, his hair blowing, his arm around her.
I tried to remember if I’d ever seen that tan jacket. I hadn’t. I knew every piece of clothing that man owned. I’d ironed all his shirts for fourteen years. I’d sewn the buttons back on his coat. I’d never seen that jacket in my life.
Around three in the morning, I got up and opened my notebook to write to him.
Dear Richard,
I sat there with the pen over the page for a very long time.
Then I closed the notebook without writing another word.
