It was quiet for a long moment. When Heloise finally spoke, the first thing she said was, “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” He smiled meekly and nodded.

“Don’t they feed you in here?”

“Well, I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”

It grew quiet again between them. Heloise looked down at her nails as she struggled to hold back her tears.

Her father cautiously leaned in over the table. He looked like he was considering reaching for her hand but didn’t dare. Instead he said, “I’ve missed you, honey.”

Heloise looked into his eyes. Her chin began to tremble, and tears flowed silently down her cheeks to land on the cold, metal table, where they formed a salty little puddle.

“You haven’t answered my letters,” he said. “Eventually they started being returned to me unopened, and when I called, you hung up. I’ve needed so badly to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” Heloise said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “That’s not why I’m here.”

She straightened up in the chair, composing herself.

Her father started coughing, and a lengthy, dry rattle could be heard from his throat. He pulled a tissue out of his pocket and wiped his mouth with it.

“I know,” he said.

“Anna Kiel.”

“Yes.”

“You know her?”

He nodded.

Heloise pulled a voice recorder out of her purse. She hit the record button and set the recorder on the table in front of her father.

“What is that?” he asked.

“I’m recording our conversation, and that’s a condition for my being willing to talk to you. It’s not negotiable.”

“Is this an interview?” He smiled briefly, almost bravely.

“Yes.” The word fell like the crack of a whip, hard, stinging.

The pain of missing him that had so recently overwhelmed her tear ducts was now replaced with unprocessed bitterness, with indignation and blame. This was about the story now, about work, not about him.

“How do you know Anna Kiel?” she asked.

“She came to me four months ago.”

Heloise shook her head, not understanding. “Came to you? What does that mean?”

“I found out that I had a visitor, and as I’m sure you can imagine, I was thrilled. I hadn’t talked to anyone from outside the prison aside from my lawyer for several years. One day there was just a guard standing there. I was being summoned. At first I thought it was you …”

“And she just waltzed in here? Anna Kiel, who’s wanted for murder in Denmark, who’s wanted by Interpol, she just voluntarily strolled in here, behind these walls, into one of the biggest prisons in France?”

“Yes. But the police didn’t know that.”

“How is that possible? I had to show ID, and they did a full-body search before they even let me through security.”

“Margaux, they said.”