She could get used to this scooter’s power. She gunned it down rue Beaubourg, weaving between a bus and a taxi in the street, wove around the H?tel de Ville, then turned left along the quai, past the budding green branches of the plane trees. But a roadblock stopped traffic before she could cross Pont Marie to the ?le Saint-Louis. What now? A strike, an accident, police checking for drunk drivers? Her scooter stalled.
Tension knotted her shoulders. She couldn’t make Chloé late for her own christening. She dreaded the look on the priest’s face after he’d done a favor fitting them in; she’d never live it down. As the traffic cleared, she kick-started the Vespa. Finally she pulled into her courtyard on ?le Saint-Louis, jumped off the scooter, and ran up her apartment building’s worn marble staircase.
Aimée could handle it. Vraiment, she could: telecommuting part-time from her home office, she could still manage computer security virus scans and lucrative industrial surveillance. If only she could buy eight hours of sleep over the counter.
“She’s got an appetite, your Chloé,” said Madame Cachou as she handed Aimée a teaspoon. The sixty-something concierge had a stylish new blunt-cut grey bob. “I changed her diaper two minutes ago, then laid out the gown.”
“Ma puce,” Aimée said, leaning down to kiss those cheeks, and thinking again how painfully like Melac’s eyes Chloé’s grey-blue ones were. Those eyes reminded Aimée of her baby’s father every day. As for his total lack of interest in paternity—Aimée hadn’t seen that coming.
That wasn’t the only thing she didn’t see coming. Chloé coughed and puréed carrot hit Aimée in the eye. Just one more of the daily surprises of motherhood, like the overwhelming protectiveness she felt toward her baby. Or how sleep deprived she could be. Aimée wiped off the carrot and hoped to God they wouldn’t be too late.
By the time she’d cleaned her daughter’s smiling, rose-shaped mouth and her perfect chubby fists, Miles Davis, her bichon frisé, had licked up every trace of orange from the kitchen tiles under the high chair. He’d gained weight from all the cleaning up since Chloé was born.
Her life had changed. Instead of working long hours at the office before heading out for nights on the town, now she spent her afternoons taking Chloé to the park in the stroller. There she joined the other children’s mothers, who were laughing, commiserating and sharing apple juice and tips. She couldn’t imagine not being a maman, simplement. She found herself trying to remember her own mother more and more often, the mother who’d disappeared so long ago, now nothing but a footprint on the wave-washed shore of Aimée’s childhood. She missed her more than ever now that she was a mother herself.
Today, Chloé would wear the gown Aimée’s mother had baptized Aimée in.
Her phone trilled somewhere on the counter behind the baby bottles. By the time she found it, Chloé had spit up all over her shoulder. Thankfully the burp cloth had caught it all. She hoped.
“We’re waiting at the church, Aimée.”
“Five minutes, René.”
“You know the priest did us a special favor,” said René, his voice rising. “Wedging us in this late on Sunday with the Easter rush.”
“Five minutes,” she said again, clicking off.
Aimée deftly laid Chloé on the changing table and pulled off the soiled onesie. She nuzzled her pink tummy with kisses, and Chloé cooed with delight. Chloé’s sweet baby smell engulfed her as she slipped her into the lace christening gown.
She scooped up her secondhand Birkin bag, loaded it with some diapers and wipes, slipped into her cheetah-print heels and headed down the wide, worn marble stairs with Chloé on her hip.
In the early evening, the quai-side lamps’ yellow-gold glow filtered through the plane trees. Below her flowed the khaki-colored Seine. With any luck, Chloé wouldn’t need a diaper change before the priest started.
Around the corner, Martine, her best friend since the lycée, was pacing on the church steps. Martine wore a chic navy blue suit with a matching straw hat, both Italian. She pulled Aimée’s arm.
“Mon Dieu, Aimée, everyone’s waiting,” said Martine. “Love your dress.”
“My surveillance uniform.” She hoped she hadn’t missed any of Chloé’s spit up.
“Only you would call a vintage Courrèges a uniform.”
“Got an upscale gig,” she said under her breath. “I’ll need to borrow your Versace.”
They entered the church and found flickering votive candles, incense and a waiting crowd near the baptismal font in a side chapel.
“You’ll be late to your own funeral, Leduc.” Morbier, Aimée’s godfather, bent down to kiss Chloé.
“Bonsoir to you, too, mon parrain,” she said, using the term for godfather. A term she hadn’t used since she wore knee socks.
Morbier, a commissaire and an old colleague of Aimée’s late father, looked rested for once, despite the drooping bags under his basset-hound eyes. He was wearing a three-piece suit—a first. He stood arm in arm with a beaming Jeanne, his companion, all in yellow flounces. “I can’t believe I held you like that once,” said Morbier. He reached out and touched her hair. Her throat caught.
She was surprised to see her father’s old police comrades since he’d left the force under a cloud of allegations—allegations that had taken her years to disprove. Lefèvre, an old Friday-night card-playing crony of her father’s from the commissariat, along with Thomas Dussollier, another card player who’d attended the police academy with her father and was about to retire. Both wore police uniforms. Lefèvre leaned on a cane; Thomas’s dark hair was speckled grey. Dussollier held a photo out to her: her own christening, here at this same font, Dussollier, Morbier and her papa all young men. “Jean-Claude would be so proud, Aimée.” His eyes brimmed. Hers, too.
René Friant, godfather-to-be and her partner at Leduc Detective, looked relieved to see her. He wore a dark blue suit, matching cravat and cuff links. A dwarf at four feet tall, he stood on a stool by the baptismal font.