The story poured into her mind like water off a rocky ledge, unending, consistent, sparkling in the sunlight. The raining rose petals became torrents of blood and the triumphant scene turned dark, the sky melting into blackness, fires shooting into the sky, the screams of those behind the castle walls growing insistent in her ears; her Queen, her lovely Queen, lying deathly still, shrouded in a gauzy wrap.

She needed to get home right away—home, after only two days she already thought of the flat as home, how very strange—and write it all down. Her mind was sharp; the scenes would linger long enough for her to off-load them. But she never wanted to take chances. The first rule of creativity: never squander a gift from the muses.

She turned, started back. More ideas now, scenes crashing into her brain, sharp and vivid. She decided she couldn’t wait the thirty minutes it would take to get back to her laptop. She stopped at the nearest café, the entrance a garden wonderland, took a table in the sunlight, signaled imperiously for a coffee, like she’d seen the other women in her neighborhood do, pulled out her Clairefontaine notebook, and began to write.

It couldn’t have been five minutes before the clouds opened and rain began to fall. She scrambled inside with her coffee, laughing, shaking the raindrops from her hair.

The rest of the diners fled to the covered patio with greenhouse windows. Sutton headed into the bar.

It was then, the café garden giving way to the dim wooden interior of the restaurant, that she realized where she was. La Closerie des Lilas. One of Hemingway’s haunts. She’d wandered into Montparnasse. How very apropos.

Excited now, she took a seat in the bar. She glanced around, trying not to look too much like a tourist. There was the stool with the plaque commemorating Hemingway’s favorite spot, yes, but she was also surrounded by the ghosts of Montparnasse. All the great creatives of the time had come here.

The energy in the space was palpable. She’d always been sensitive to energies; usually overwhelmed in crowds, but this place, this empty, dark bar with the picture of Papa hidden on the wall above the lights that looked like antlers with red tips to the left of the bar, this place filled her with its emptiness, with its history-steeped walls. They must have left behind so much of themselves, so much of their spirits disgorged here, for her to feel their presence in an empty room. The conversations they must have had. The loving and hating and creating that took place, it had left a mark.

It was just her, and a black-haired barkeep she hadn’t noticed until now, who’d stayed silent while she experienced the magic, and the sweating silver ice bucket full of open magnums of champagne.

She stayed there for hours.