The bodyguard had set her suitcase down in her bedroom before he left, and the next one on duty was in the kitchen, in case she needed him. Some of them were more pleasant than others, and she chatted with them occasionally in the car, but she was tired of never being alone anywhere anymore, not even in her own home. There was a coffee station in the pantry for the staff, and a refrigerator for their use, with a small sitting area and table, so she didn’t have to run into them in the kitchen, and there was a small living room for them, used by the bodyguards and the two housekeeping women, with a TV. The bodyguards were always there now. Matthieu would have hated it. He had liked his privacy, and so did she, which was why they had dispensed with employees at the château on the weekends, and why Axel and Matthieu were so easily kidnapped. But with six armed, hooded men, their house staff at the château wouldn’t have been able to stop them, and Matthieu had never felt the need for security.

Theo glanced out the windows at the familiar streetlamps and the trees. She liked the view from her windows. From the living room, they could see the Eiffel Tower when it sparkled on the hour. It looked like a lovely toy when it did. Axel had loved seeing it and so did she on nights when she couldn’t sleep. She had been nocturnal for most of the past year and was getting back to normal hours now.

She unpacked her suitcase in the small guest room she had taken over for racks of the plain black clothes she wore all the time now. She had worn black for all of the past year, and had only recently added some color. It was a relief to wear white again, and pastels. She had done what Matthieu would have expected of her and she felt herself. But the year anniversary had come almost a month ago, and she had taken a few colored clothes on her trip. They felt foreign to her now, as though they had belonged to someone else.

She looked into the refrigerator, didn’t see anything she wanted to eat, poured herself a glass of juice, and went back to her office to set up the laptop she’d taken with her. It made her think of Mike again. There was no message from him, and she didn’t expect there to be. He was just a nice person she had met on her trip. She had almost convinced herself of it by the time she had gone through all her mail, which was mostly invitations she wouldn’t accept. She was surprised that people still invited her after a year. It was too painful to see their old friends and the pity in their eyes. It made her feel even worse. Solitude was easier.