“Do you want me to come up?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” she said, gathering her things together. Just before opening her door, she turned back to him. “You know? I’ve heard the stories since I was a very little girl. Cousins and great-aunts who tried to get out and couldn’t. My great-uncle Milo who died in one of the camps. It’s just…it’s a part of my culture, my history…but it doesn’t get easier. And she—she was so young and beautiful. Hopeful and trusting. I can’t…”
J.C. winced at her pain, cupping her face and kissing her tenderly. “Will you be okay?”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “I will. I’ll be fine by tomorrow. It just knocked the wind out of me.”
He nodded as she scooted away from him and opened the door. “Lib! Text me if you need me, okay?”
She looked back at him, a very small, sad smile tilting her lips upward. “Jean-Christian,” she said, “I still intend to talk to Neil tomorrow.”
He hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t wanted to appear insensitive to her feelings about the model in the portrait. But he couldn’t deny the rush of relief he felt at her words.
“Good,” he said. “Call me after?”
She stood up, then turned around to nod at him. “See you tomorrow.”
She slammed the door, and he watched as she entered her building, watched as she turned once to wave at him before heading for the elevator at the back of the lobby.
“Where to?” asked the cabbie.
“The Mandarin Oriental,” said J.C. distractedly, taking out his phone.
If it turned out that C.T.’s end was brutal, he wouldn’t tell Libitz, but what if she’d survived? What if she’d somehow made it out of Marseille?
He had an idea.
They hadn’t asked Galerie des Fleurs about the other Montferrat models, but maybe if they could figure out who the Gemini models were, they could find out more information about the Bijoux Jolis model too.
Opening a fresh e-mail message, he started writing.
Chapter 12
Home early from her nondate with Jean-Christian, Libitz changed into pajamas and poured herself a glass of wine, thinking about C.T. and wondering what had happened to her.
“The War,” as her parents and grandparents referred to World War II, was not just shorthand for the war itself but a catchall name for the catastrophic period of time that included the Holocaust, the genocide of millions of European Jews. The unfathomable notion that six million people of Jewish descent had been murdered for the sole crime of their religion was as painful and mind-boggling today as it had been seventy years ago. “The War” had always existed in her family’s narrative and in the observation of days like Yom Hashoah, when she and her parents would attend services at their synagogue, light yellow candles, and recite the Mourner’s Kaddish together in remembrance of the lost. As Libitz had been reminded hundreds of times, the most important mission of future generations was to ensure that the world never, ever forgot what had happened to their people.
Perhaps because of this lifelong conditioning, Libitz felt a profoundly personal connection to the model in the painting in a way that resonated more deeply than old stories of relatives she’d never met. C.T. felt so alive to Libitz. The idea that this vibrant, beautiful girl had been led to the gas chambers, like so many other frightened, innocent European Jews, made her heart ache with sorrow in a way she couldn’t explain to Jean-Christian.
Sipping her wine, she dialed her mother’s number, needing to hear the familiar and beloved New York accent of her Brooklyn-born mother, who’d married up and now lived in a duplex not far from Libitz on Central Park West.
Ring, ring. Ring—
“Libitz? Sweetheart?”
“Hey, Mom,” she said, reaching for a blanket on the back of her plush couch and covering herself as she snuggled against a throw pillow. “How are you?”
“I have a bad cold…but more important, how are you?”
“Aw, I’m…I’m okay.”
“What’s wrong, Libby? What happened? I can hear it in your voice. Myron,” she called to Libitz’s dad. “Libitz is upset!”
“I didn’t do anything to upset her,” said her father in the background. “Ask her what’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?” her mother asked into the phone.
“Nothing, really,” said Libitz. “This painting I found…it just has me turned around.”
“Go back to your program,” said her mother to her father. “It’s just about a painting.” Her mother blew her nose before speaking again. “Oy, this cold.”
“Have some chicken soup sent over from Artie’s,” said Libitz, referring to her mother’s favorite delicatessen.
“Good idea,” said her mother. “Tell me about the painting.”
“It was painted in France in 1939, and the model was Jewish, and…I don’t know. You know she probably didn’t make it out, and it just…it’s sad. I feel sad about it.”