Mat’s Adam’s apple lifted and sank with tension. His eyes reflected a glint of challenge. “You haven’t . . . You’re exactly the same and you still drive me crazy.”
I remembered that feeling—that dance between us our first two years in college. Mat and I had fought, laughed, argued, eaten more Red Vines than humans should, and always tiptoed around the fact that there was something between us—electric, exciting, terrifying. I cycled through freshman year, sophomore year . . . senior year.
I had ghosted him. He’d been right about that. After Caden called, I had retreated—from friends and from him, just like I’d been taught to do growing up. “Lived experience,” as he called it.
I finally got it. “Mat?” I waited until his eyes met mine. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You were in love with him and he hurt you . . . And I was in love with you.” His eyes widened at his sudden admission—as did mine. He quirked a shaky, almost sad, smile. “That can’t surprise you. You had to have known.”
At that moment the train emerged from the Chunnel into a blaze of yellow sun, blue sky, and green fields. We were instantly thrust from our world of two back into our larger story.
I opened my mouth to reply, but he cut me short with a raised hand. “Don’t say anything. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“We can’t just leave it there.”
“Why not? That’s what you did. You talk about feeling free and leaving everything bad across the Atlantic, but I was across the Atlantic, Caroline. And unlike Caden, I knew the real you, not some pretend version you tried to create. And when you came back and I asked you out, tried to reach out, then accepted that we’d only be friends, you still ignored me. You wouldn’t return texts, calls; you dropped a class we planned together. Then you blew up at me one night and told me to leave you alone . . . so, yes, I get to ‘just leave it there’ no matter what you might want to do with it.” He flicked his fingers in air quotes, but he needn’t have. The disdain in his voice made the quote marks audibly clear.
“I . . . I didn’t know.”
Mat closed his eyes. When he opened them, all the fire was gone. “What didn’t you know?”
“That I was enough. For anyone.”
Mat, watching me, blew out a long slow breath. “I’d say none of us are, in any relationship, until we accept the other person may simply believe we are.” He then cleared his throat and changed the subject. “You’d better start packing up. We’ll be there soon.”
I started gathering our papers. Tucking the letters away into my bag, checking and rechecking references, and seeing nothing on the pages in front of me.
Our charade of nonchalance lasted until the train pulled into Paris’s Gare du Nord. Mat jumped up to grab our bags from the rack above us when I reached out and grasped his hand. He dropped back into his seat.
“Before we go and start this hunt, I want to say I’m sorry, again, and thank you.”
He tilted his head in question.
“I hurt a lot of people that year. I ghosted everyone. My roommates yelled at me after a couple months and we worked it out, but . . . you are right. We had something special and I abused it. I didn’t mean to, but . . .” I thought of my mom and her comment about getting lost. “I did. I got down on myself and I never looked up. I’m sorry and I thank you for telling me.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything . . . It’s in the past.” He jumped up, seeming eager to put space between us.
I let him go. After all, I knew he didn’t believe his own line.
To Mat, the past meant everything.
Thirty-Four
Paris took my breath away.
When people say such things, they usually refer to the city’s beauty, soft light, and air saturated with flowers; heat off the cobblestones, and patisseries redolent with rich chocolate. Not me. I was reminded in an instant of the freedom I’d felt, the strength and joy I’d tried to grasp, and the disparity between trying to manufacture those feelings versus allowing myself to simply trust they could be mine. I saw Paris through new eyes, or more accurately, a new heart.
Mat stretched out his hand. “We doing this thing?”
I clasped it tight, accepting it for the olive branch it was. “We are.”
We hopped in a cab right in front of the station’s iconic red Angel Bear and Mat rattled off, “25-27 rue Baudin, 93310 Le Pré-Saint-Gervais.”
While the car sped through traffic, down small streets and around monuments, I tried to absorb Paris at the car’s breakneck speed.
Mat chuckled. The first notes felt forced, but not the last. “You look like a kid.”
“I feel like one. I let that ending with Caden cloud my memories. I let a lot of things dictate how I felt and what I saw.” I willed him to understand, and in one long look, a second of silent communication, I felt he did. It was enough.
The Arc de Triomphe flew by. I twisted to catch it through the rear window. We next crossed over the Canal Saint-Martin. We zipped past the orchestra hall and the philharmonic as well as the National Music Conservatory. Mat toppled into me as the cab cornered a fast right turn and stopped at the archives for the Police Prefecture.
He jumped off as if I’d scorched him. “Your shoulder. Did I hurt you? Are you okay?”
I assured him I wasn’t hurt, but that didn’t stop him from opening my taxi door, carrying my bag, and basically clearing the way for me into the building.
After gaining our security passes, Mat and I found our assigned desks and the files Mat ordered for us stacked high upon them. I counted thirty.
I groaned. He sighed.
“I ordered everything from October 15 to 22.” He pulled our two chairs close together and laid the first file before me. “You ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I opened the first folder. It was structured very similarly to the British files with a trifold cover binding and a varied number of copy sheets bound by thin strings within.
We again found ourselves slogging through hundreds of papers, with only three hours in which to do it. Each file was a mishmash of arrest reports, officer notes, and official dictums. When we reached the seventeenth, the day of Operation Clementine, it alone filled six folders worth of papers.
“They were certainly busy arresting people.” I turned another page.
“This is unbelievable.” Matt moaned, grabbing a new file from his stack. “I’ve read about people rounded up, shot, thrown in jail, handed over to different German agencies, Germans taking prisoners, standoffs between the French and the Germans. It’s like the Wild West. At least I think that’s what I’m reading. My French sucks.”
Mat was starting his third file. I was well into my eighth. “Just skim for the names we need.”
We refocused on our individual piles and, now only looking for names, Mat moved through them much faster.
“Wait . . .” I reached out to Mat. “Paul Arnim. I found him.” Mat’s chair screeched across the stone floor as he drew it even closer to mine. “It says here . . . wait . . .” I turned the page. “This isn’t an official report. Look, there’s no stamp at the top. It’s an officer’s private notes.”