“But what? You can make your own decisions, can’t you? Live wherever you want to, be whoever you want to be.”

Emily spied a well-loved copy of L’Oiseau Bleu tucked away at the bottom of a pile of magazines and wondered when was the last time it had been read, if he had given it to her grandmother or the other way around. It made her see how much there was she still didn’t know, or understand, about her grandmother’s life, her past, what shaped her, what pushed her into becoming a single mother, a famous author. So many personas, each worn at a different point in time.

“It’s not that simple,” she said, watching as Antoine opened up a large trunk with brass hinges, took out a paper package, and handed it over to her.

“No, I don’t suppose it is. I guess we’re both rather too good at pretending to be someone else.”

“I don’t pretend.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, on a Persian rug with a cigarette burn in one corner, she pulled apart the paper to reveal an enormous full moon in a starlit sky. Two friends sat on a swing, legs out straight, bodies leaning back as they circled above the earth. The story was about a girl who lived in the mountains with her father. Together she and Ophelia caught stars that were made into two identical necklaces, one of which Ophelia wore and never took off.

Emily’s fingers sought out the chain around her neck as she opened the front cover to read the new dedication.

For G—because you never know what’s around the corner.

“Gigi’s dead.” Emily frowned at the dedication.

“And?”

“How am I supposed to find a dead woman?”

Antoine popped two more cubes of Turkish delight into his mouth. “Perhaps that’s not what this is about.”

“I don’t follow.” Emily pulled out a plain white envelope, turned it over in her hand, then shut the book.

“Perhaps you’re not supposed to find a person.”

“This makes no sense.” Why would she be pointed in the direction of someone who was no longer alive? It felt as if she was being deliberately set up to fail.

“Where is it you think she is asking you to go?”

Emily wore a necklace that Gigi once gifted her grandmother, inside of which was a photograph from when they were young, along with one of her parents—which was why she never opened it or went anywhere without it.

They had bought matching lockets in a small shop in the back streets of the last city they both spent any time in together; where they said their goodbyes, promised to see one another again soon. But Gigi died only a few years later from a brain hemorrhage, and Emily had always hated the idea of her grandmother not knowing that she had so little time left.

“Rome,” she said with conviction, as there was a faint knock on the door and the housemaid entered, telling Monsieur that there was a young couple at the front gate, asking for Emily.