The Merels also lived close to the center, in a house set inside its own little oasis behind high, off-white walls. They rang the bell and were buzzed in, the door opening onto a beautiful lawned garden that stretched around the house. And the house itself looked like it belonged in the countryside rather than the middle of the city, a big place with wooden shutters on the windows.
The front door opened before they reached it and a man came out to meet them. For some reason, Dan had been expecting an old man, and he guessed Merel was sixty or thereabouts, but he looked young and fit. His clothes were casual enough, cords and a pale-blue sweater, but again, there was something more youthful and fashionable about the look of them, as if he were someone who worked for a glossy magazine or in the media.
He smiled uncertainly and said, “Mr. Hendricks?” Dan had dropped the idea of using an alias, and doubted Inger could even remember that he’d briefly been David Porter.
“That’s right, thanks for agreeing to meet us, Monsieur Merel. This is Inger Bengtsson—she works for the Swedish government.”
Merel had been about to say something else, but the mention of Inger’s name and her employment threw him briefly.
After a moment, he recovered, greeted Inger first, shook Dan’s hand and said, “Please, call me Sebastien. And do come in.”
He took them inside, the hallway and the rooms off it reinforcing what the outside had already suggested, that these people had money. He showed them into a large sitting room then, a baby grand filling one corner, the top adorned with family photos.
“Please, do sit down. A little drink; some wine, or cognac?”
“Thank you, whatever you’re having.”
Inger nodded, still looking a little nervous, and said, “Yes, anything.”
He smiled, and glanced over at the array of photos before saying, “I’ll be back in a moment. And my wife also—she’s just talking on the telephone.”
He left. Dan could hear his wife now, talking in another room, a low hum, conversational rather than conspiratorial. They were probably surprised by the visit, but he doubted they’d see it as suspicious or something to alert the police about, not after all this time.
Inger was sitting like a girl outside the principal’s office, but Dan stood and walked over to the piano. There were a lot of people there, suggesting that the Merels had maybe three or even four surviving children, and a whole clutch of grandchildren, a mixture of dark and fair but nothing in between, all of them remarkably attractive.
But there, right in the middle of the frames on display was the hole in the middle of their world. It was unmistakably her, Sabine, but a different picture to the slightly formal one they’d seen in Redford’s office. Here she was smiling, caught off guard at an al fresco dinner, maybe in the garden Dan could see beyond the windows. She was beautiful, but it was more that she was full of life in that picture, full of possibilities and futures—it had to break their hearts every time they looked at it.
Dan didn’t have any pictures of Luca in the Paris apartment. There were several in the house in Italy, and he wondered now if that was why he’d all but abandoned that house, because it was linked always in his mind with the unfinished loss of his child.
One picture in particular, of Luca looking over Dan’s shoulder, smiling at Emilia and therefore at the camera, had torn at his heart. Framed, it had hung in the hall, but on his last visit he’d taken it down and put it in the drawer, exhausted by the emotional pull of it every time he’d tried to walk past.
He heard a noise and turned to see Sebastien Merel coming back in, carrying a tray with a decanter and four glasses. Clearly, given what Dan and Inger had come to talk about, he’d decided cognac would be better.
He saw that Dan was looking at the photographs, and gave a slight acknowledging smile that seemed to speak of the sorrow still weighing him down, but said, “As you can see, we’re blessed, in spite of everything.”
He put the tray down on the table and started to pour four hefty measures. He was still doing it when his wife walked in, the same expensive and attentive informality, the same young looks for someone in her sixties, her hair dark. She apologized in French for keeping them, a rapid but welcoming monologue before her husband stopped her and turned to Inger.
“Inger, you don’t speak French?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Madame Merel. “Inger? I’m Catherine Merel, Sabine’s mother.”
She turned to Dan and he smiled and said, “I do speak French, so I understood. Delighted to meet you, Madame Merel, and thank you for agreeing to see us.”
They all sat down on two sofas that faced each other across a coffee table. Dan sat next to Inger now, and he noticed Sebastien Merel pat his wife on the leg as he sat down next to her, offering reassurance of some kind. It made Dan hope all the more that they’d be able to offer some closure for this couple, limited as it would be.