She pressed her hand to her chest, staring up at Jean-Christian with wide eyes.
“Breathe, baby,” he urged her.
She took a halting, gasping breath, her hands clawing at his arms. “Her name. Her married name was…Lévy?”
He nodded, his eyes as wide and shocked as hers felt. “Camille Trigére Lévy.”
“My grandmother was—Jean-Christian, my great-grandmother was Camille Lévy.”
“I know, baby.”
“She was…Do you think she was my great-grandmother?”
He looked away from her, started to say something, then shut his mouth and shrugged. “I don’t know, but you look like her. You look exactly like her, Lib.”
“Do you know what this means?” she asked, vaguely aware of tears falling down her cheeks. “She survived!”
He nodded. “It also means your great-grandmother modeled for my great-uncle.”
“My God!” she cried, rubbing her forehead with her hand. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel. We’ve got to pack. There is only one person in the world—in the entire world—who can settle this mystery for us, and we’re going to go see her first thing tomorrow! As soon as we land!”
“Whoa, Nellie! To pack? We don’t leave until tomorrow morning. Slow down, baby. Let’s explore Marseille for a little while, huh? As long as we’re here?”
“Right. Of course. Sorry. Marseille it is.”
“But as long as we’re on the subject,” he said. “Who exactly are we going to go see tomorrow?”
She turned to him and grinned. “My bubbe.”
Chapter 15
J.C. put his arm around Libitz in the cab from Newark Airport to her grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn, but he could feel the tension radiating from her body.
Yesterday, they’d had a lovely walk around Marseille, drinking in the gorgeous port city as best they could with so little time and eating a seaside dinner of fresh fish, escargot, crusty bread, and an excellent Proven?al wine. He was sorry to have to leave the country of his birth the following morning, but with the promise of returning in December and with the final part of their mystery almost solved, he was as anxious as Libitz to get to her grandmother.
They were 90 percent sure that Camille Trigére was her great-grandmother—what were the chances that another young Jewish girl from Marseille named Camille Trigére had married a man with the surname Lévy and escaped France shortly after the start of World War II? It had to be her. But only Libitz’s grandmother could help them be sure.
The taxi stopped before a quiet doorman building across from a Catholic Church, and J.C. paid the driver, taking Libitz’s hand as they entered the building and the concierge announced them.
“I’m nervous,” said Libitz in the elevator, her brown eyes even wider than usual. “I want it to be her so badly.”
“It is her,” said J.C., running his fingers through her hair gently. “You look exactly like her, and your grandmother’s name was Camille Lévy.”
“Put ‘Camille Lévy’ into Google and there are almost five hundred thousand results. There could have been hundreds of women with that name in 1939.”
“Who look exactly like you?”
Libitz exhaled deeply. “What if it’s not her? What if the model in the portrait died a terrible death in France or, worse, in Germany? What if my bubbe can’t come up with anything that connects her mother to what we know about Camille the model?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said J.C., holding the elevator door for her.
Her grandmother, a small, gray-haired woman in a simple flowered apron and slippers, stood in the doorway of her apartment with her arms outstretched. “Libby! What a surprise, dahling!”
“Bubbe!”
Libitz ran down the hallway and threw herself into her grandmother’s arms. J.C. followed behind, grinning at their reunion.
“Who’s this?” asked her grandmother, looking at him over Libitz’s shoulder. “He’s very tall. Good looking.”
Libitz released her bubbe and stood beside J.C. “Bubbe, this is Jean-Christian.”
The older woman looked back and forth between them.
“What happened to Neil?”
Libitz shrugged, braiding her fingers through Jean-Christian’s. “He didn’t work out.”
Her grandmother looked up at him. “Jean-Christian. Hm. You’re not Jewish.”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Catholic.”
“Oy, vey,” she muttered under her breath before lowering her chin and locking eyes with her granddaughter. “Your mother won’t like it.”
“I know,” said Libitz, shrugging again.
“You know that Judaism is passed down through the mother?”
J.C. nodded at her. “So I’ve heard.”
She still stood in her doorway, looking him up and down. Finally, she shifted her glance to Libitz. “As long as he knows what’s what.”
“He’s learning, Bubbe,” said Libitz, humor thick in her voice as they followed her grandmother through a hallway and into a sitting room.