Eight hours later and with Lara’s prodding, the doctors released her from the hospital, still perplexed about the cause of her fever, yet with her vital signs all healthy, and her insisting she wanted to leave, there was no real reason to keep her.

She was agitated, still wanting to go home to Kerrigan Falls. Gaston had arranged for the four of them to be on the first flight out in the morning.

Ben could see Barrow’s face fall at this news. He’d hoped to talk to her about what she’d seen at the circus. At the coffee machine in the lobby of the hotel, he cornered Ben. “Has she said anything?”

“No,” said Ben, as concerned about Lara’s behavior as Barrow was. “She’s extremely cagey right now, but she’s been through a lot, so I guess that is to be expected.”

While Lara rested in her room, the others gathered on the sofas around the lobby like ladies-in-waiting.

“She wants an earlier flight,” said Audrey.

“We can’t get an earlier flight.” Gaston seemed frustrated.

After a few hours, Ben checked in on her in her room. He found her sitting on the edge of the bed like she was unsure what to do next. “Can we go to Montparnasse?”

“Yeah,” he said, moving toward the hotel phone. “I’ll just call Audrey.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Just the two of us.”

“It’s almost ten o’clock. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” She’d just come back from near death and here she was proposing some new scheme for them in Montparnasse.

“I’ll go by myself then.” She reached into her closet for a jacket.

“No, I’ll go with you, but you need to make up your mind,” said Ben, irritation in his voice. “You keep telling us you’re not safe here, and now you want to run to Montparnasse—alone—to get into more trouble.”

“I missed you, too.” She smiled.

As they crossed the Seine in a taxi and cut over by Les Invalides to Montparnasse, Lara seemed distracted. Her fingers lightly touched the glass, as if the scene in front of her was fragile and impermanent. Drugstores, vendors selling televisions, restaurants with pictures of food displayed in unappetizing, plastic-looking poses—she gazed out at all of them with wonder.

“You can let us off here,” she said to the taxi driver when they got to a circle. She was out the door while Ben settled with the driver and then scrambled to follow her. He found her standing in front of Le Dôme Café, looking up. “It hasn’t changed.”