By the time she made it to the bus stop, fire engines and unmarked cars were whizzing toward the stables. She took the first bus that stopped. Concentrated on breathing deep, the window beside her open to the pollen of the chestnut trees. The rest faded in and out, passing in a blur. Nerves, the residual effects of the drugs, and the revelation of her mother warred in her system.
She changed buses and boarded one in the direction Denfert-Rochereau. Why couldn’t the driver go faster? She had to get back to the office. Somewhere ahead there had to be the Métro station.
From the window, she saw a van pull abreast of the bus, honking at straggling schoolchildren on the zebra-striped crosswalk. A white Renault van with temporary license plates, sporting a chrome muffler held to the bumper with wire.
And then it all came back to her—the dark lane, Saj honking at the white van with its bumper trailing on the cobbles. That’s what she couldn’t remember, what Goran heard but couldn’t see. The driver had stopped to reattach the dragging muffler so he wouldn’t be noticed or given a ticket.
Aimée had to get off the bus. She rushed toward the back doors, which were closing. She wedged herself through and got a mouthful of exhaust as the bus took off.
Worried, she looked around for the van. Traffic surged ahead at the green light. Where had it gone so fast?
The pavement shifted like sand under her feet. Passersby scurried around her. Didn’t they feel this shifting, this rumbling from the Métro trains below? Or were the underground quarry tunnels fissuring, cracking open, the streets opening to sinkholes?
Blood rushed to her head. She put one foot in front of her, yet she stood stuck in the same place, under the globed street lamp glinting in the sun. Why hadn’t anyone noticed? Why was she sinking to the pavement? Slipping into darkness.…
AIMéE OPENED HER eyes. Sunlight streamed through shutter slats, warming her toes. She lay curled on soft pigskin leather—a toffee-colored divan—luscious. She stretched.
Then it hit her—the white van.
“You’re pale, breathing shallow.” A young woman with short red hair à la gamine and tortoise-shell glasses felt her pulse. “Eaten today, Mademoiselle?”
“But I have to catch.…” She tried to sit up. Her elbows slipped and her legs didn’t cooperate. The tang of old leather-bound books and paper hovered in the warm air.
Where in the world …? A ticking wooden ormolu clock on the wall read 1:20 P.M. Twenty or thirty minutes had gone by. The van was long gone by now. Hopeless.
“Desolée, but I don’t know where I am.” She shook her head. Felt a wave of dizziness. “Or how I got here.”
“You fainted in front of the Observatoire’s side entrance,” the woman said. “A teacher on a school field trip brought you into my office.”
Embarrassed, Aimée looked at the woman’s name tag. Doctor Sylvie Taitbout.
“Desolée, doctor,” she said.
“I’m just the PhD kind. Call me Sylvie,” she said, smiling. “I study black holes between the stars.”
Aimée became aware of the posters of planets and galaxies lining the walls. The notebooks piled on the desk beside framed family photos. “You’re an astronomer.”
“Guilty,” she smiled. “I research planetary nebulae in the optical regions of external galaxies—finding tools to understand the late stellar evolution in varying galactic environments. That kind of stuff.” Her mouth turned serious. “Ecoutes, you are exhibiting the symptoms my sister had—anemia compounded by stress. Unpleasant combo. Serious, too. Let me ring your doctor.”
Children’s voices drifted in from the window, along with jasmine scents and humid air.
“Thanks for your concern, but I feel better already,” Aimée said. She had to get going. “My blood sugar gets low. Just need some air.”
“Up to you,” Sylvie said, but she handed Aimée a grapefruit juice from her bag. And a banana. “I insist.”
“Merci.”
“Have your doctor run tests,” Sylvie said. “Does anemia run in your family? Any history with your mother?”
A pang hit her. This woman probably took for granted that all Parisian mothers take Sunday afternoon walks in the Luxembourg Gardens arm in arm with their husbands after the midday roast chicken—a classic déjeuner de famille. Well, not Aimée’s. “No history to speak of.”
Sylvie took off her glasses to clean them, revealing small birdlike eyes. “Mothers don’t tell you everything.”
So true. In her case, nothing. No road map. During the lycée, she’d observed Martine’s mother and secretly recorded her observations in a notebook. Like they did in biology class, cultivating nuclei in a petri dish and recording reactions and behaviors. She made an effort to decipher this species down to each detail—from Martine’s mother’s tweed beige jackets to her effortless soufflés, from her warm living room cluttered with bright pillows and books to the way she wiped her toddler’s runny nose while reminding the girls with a smile to say “merci” at the boulangerie.
“Is everything all right?” Sylvie asked. “Anything on your mind?”
Sylvie seemed like the type of counselor the flics should have assigned to her the other night after the accident. Aimée knew she should take better care of herself. Why had she quit yoga? But without René to insist.…
“Been under more stress lately?”
Apart from her best friend’s defection to America, Saj’s injury, the murder of an old man who’d known her long-gone mother, a stolen Modigliani, death threats from Serbs, being attacked in her office and almost drowned in a bucket.…
“A little more than usual,” Aimée admitted.
And just when she’d stumbled on the van, she’d lost it again. Her chance to find the painting. Her mother, ever elusive, a vague shadow who loomed in the background.
“Try to relax.”
With people out to torture her and only a few hours left? Aimée sat up with mounting dread and scrambled for her boots.
“You’ve been so kind,” she said, standing with a wobble and pulling down her Sonia Rykiel tunic. “But I must go.…”