Not alone, I almost said, but I really didn’t think Maman would be reassured to hear that I’d traveled with an ex-convict and a pistol-toting drunkard. I had a moment’s fervent gratitude that Eve and Finn had already gone upstairs. “I’m sorry I worried you. I never meant—”
“Your hair,” she clucked, and smoothed a flyaway strand back behind my ear. How did I suddenly feel so small and helpless when I’d spent my last few days breaking Eve’s door down, getting a Luger pointed at my face, crossing the Channel . . . ?
I straightened in my chair, marshaling arguments. Maman wasn’t going to hear me unless I sounded like a grown woman with a plan, not a sulky child with a temper tantrum. “This wasn’t about me being ungrateful about the Appointment. It was—”
“I know.” My mother lifted her teacup. “We rushed you, your father and I—”
“No, it’s not that. It was about Rose.”
“—with this thing in Switzerland. The Appointment.” That capital letter again. “You panicked when we got off the ship in Southampton.”
I shrugged. True enough, but—
“We only want what’s best for you, your father and I.” Reaching out to pat my hand. “All parents do. So we pushed you onto the boat before you knew what was happening.”
“Did I ruin everything?” I managed to ask, meeting her eyes. “Is it too late now for . . .” I didn’t know how late was too late for the procedure to be safe. I didn’t know anything.
“We can get another appointment, ma chère. It’s not too late for that.”
A pang went through my chest, part disappointment and part relief. I felt the Little Problem inside me as though it were vibrating, though my stomach was perfectly still.
My mother’s hand reached out to cover mine, warm and soft. “It’s frightening, I know. But in these cases, earlier is safer. Once it’s done, we’ll go home and give you time to rest, reflect—”
“I don’t want to rest.” I looked up, a familiar thread of anger rising through all my confusion. “I don’t want to go home. I want to try to find Rose, if she’s still alive. Listen to me.”
My mother sighed. “Surely you aren’t still hanging on to hope for Rose.”
“Yes,” I stated. “Until I know she’s dead. Because after James, I can’t just write her off. Not without trying everything.”
She rolled the edge of her napkin with the taut expression she always had at my brother’s name.
“There’s hope, Maman,” I said, trying to reach her. “It’s too late for James, but maybe we can still save Rose. She left home, and Tante Jeanne told me why.”
A flicker. Yes, my mother had known. A tendril of anger uncoiled at the thought that she hadn’t seen fit to tell me, but I pressed past it.
“Rose wouldn’t have wanted to come back to her family after something like that. She might still be in Limoges. If she’s there, then we have to find her.”
“And you?” My mother looked at me. “You can’t put your future on hold for her. Charlotte St. Clair is just as important as Rose Fournier. Rose herself would be the first to say so.”
I looked across the hotel court, wondering if I’d see Rose’s blond head, her outline. Nothing.
“The Appointment.” Maman’s voice was gentle. “Let me take you to the clinic, ma chère.”
“What if I don’t want an Appointment?” The words came from nowhere. They surprised me as much as my mother.
She looked at me a moment, then sighed. “If you had a ring on your finger, that would be another matter. We’d put the wedding forward, you’d be a beautiful bride and six months later a beautiful mother. These things happen.”
They did. That was a bit of math all women understood: how a wedding ring plus a premature baby still magically equaled respectability.
“But your situation is different, Charlotte. Without a fiancé . . .”
She trailed off, and I winced. I knew what happened to unmarried girls who had babies. No one talked about them, but you knew. Nobody wanted to marry bad girls or give them jobs, their families were ashamed of them, and their friends didn’t speak to them. Their lives were ruined.
“There isn’t any other option,” Maman pressed. “One little procedure, and you’ll have your life back.”
I couldn’t say I didn’t yearn for normality again. I drew a finger around the rim of my teacup.
“Please, chérie.” Maman abandoned her cooling tea, stretching both hands across the little table to clasp mine. “We’ll take up the hunt for Rose again, if that’s truly what you want. But won’t you do what’s right for your future first?”
“I’ll go to the clinic,” I said around the lump in my throat. “After that, we look for Rose. Promise me that, Maman. Please.”
Her hands squeezed mine. “I promise.”
I couldn’t sleep.
The Little Problem had flattened me with another wave of exhaustion, so I should have slept like a rock. My mother had upgraded the room I’d reserved for a nicer one beside her own, and I’d eaten a good dinner brought up on a silver tray rather than the usual packet of dry sandwiches. I was able to trade my much-rinsed-out nylon slip for a nightgown borrowed from my mother. I no longer had to worry about screams in the night from crazy Englishwomen or what would happen when my money ran out, because Maman was here to take care of everything.
But even after she retired to her own room with a kiss to my forehead, I tossed and turned in my cool hotel sheets. Finally I got up, shrugged into a borrowed bathrobe and slippers, grabbed my cigarettes, and headed for fresh air.
All I wanted was a balcony, but the French doors at the end of the hotel hall were locked. I ended up trailing down to the darkened main floor, too irritated to care about the startled look the night clerk gave me as I passed to the street outside.
A quarter moon and a few streetlights did little to break the darkness. Past two in the morning, according to the clock I’d passed in the hotel court—sleepy little Roubaix was dead to the world. I pulled out a Gauloise, patting my robe for matches, and caught sight of something a dozen feet down on the curb. A gleam of dark blue metal.
“Hello there,” I told the Lagonda, strolling to pat her sleek fender. “I must admit, I’m going to miss you.”
“She’s flattered.” A low Scots burr came from inside the backseat, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“What are you doing out here?” I hoped Finn couldn’t see my disheveled self too well in the dark. Why, why hadn’t I asked my mother to take us to a different hotel? It was embarrassing, hanging about the same hotel as Eve and Finn like I was still hoping for something from them. We were like actors who had missed the cue that their scene was over. Life ought to be more like a play; the entrances and exits would be a lot cleaner.
Finn’s tousled dark head leaned out the window, and I saw the ember glow of his cigarette. “Couldn’t sleep.”
I thrust my hands into my pockets, unlit cigarette and all, so I wouldn’t start patting my hair. Is there any ensemble less glamorous and appealing in the entire world than a bathrobe and slippers? “Do you always climb into your car when you can’t sleep?” I managed to say tartly.
Finn rested his bare elbow on the Lagonda’s rolled-down window. “She’s calming. Good cure for bad dreams.”
“I thought Eve was the one who had bad dreams.”