I walked Irene out to her car without contradicting her, but I knew, if she did not, that I was barely upright, that my heart was broken and my imagination might never be equal to another man, or another man equal to my imagination.

I came back inside and sat with my arms around the Royal for a while, till I heard a fluttering sound and looked up to see a moth bashing itself against the window. I moved swiftly to shoo it away and accidentally knocked the music box to the floor. I was sad to see that the bottom had popped off, and the workings lay scattered on the floor. Amid the tiny wheels there was a gold wedding band and a little envelope, the sort that might have been a baby announcement, with the words Aaron Leon Greene, 1917–1921 in Julia’s handwriting. Inside there was a lock of light brown curly hair tied with a thin, faded blue ribbon. The ring, I recognized, was the plain gold band Julia always wore, the one Leon had given her in 1911 before there ever was an Empire Pictures. I started to cry. For all her jewels, her antiques, the cars, the clothes, the furs, the Paris apartment, the Matisse on the wall, clearly these two things were her dearest possessions, and she kept them, secret, in the music box that had been a gift from me. I wept the harder, loving her, missing her, but as I dried my eyes, I could not help but wonder how she would have absorbed the news of another Aaron Leon Greene. Denise’s son to have that name? Julia’s heart would have split into tiny fragments. I put the ring, the lock of hair, and the scattered workings back in the music box that would never again play another tune.

•   •   •

A couple of days later, taking a break from pasting Green Stamps in the little book, I went out to the battered mailbox on PCH. Along with the usual bills and bad news, I found a typewritten French aerogramme with no return address. I tore it open, and my heart leapt with joy. Terrence hadn’t gone back to Alabama! He was in Paris.