Studying oncology this fall was the cornerstone of my plan to move forward. Treating cancer would be fulfillment enough, I was hoping, to ease the perpetual ache I still felt. I wanted to help revive trust and control in the lives of cancer patients and their families, wherever I could, to share with others this newfound sense of balance.

Sweet idea, thinking I could restore someone else’s family, if not my own. That was before I knew what lay ahead in Paris.

Warm, buttery flakes of croissant flutter to the ground like dragonfly wings as I inhale another bite. To think, this is the first time I’m eating one, and there’s a bakery right down the street.

It’s the first time, and my flight leaves in twelve hours.

A homeless man with pink-rimmed eyes mutters to himself beside Angela’s building’s doorway. It’s the same man as the first night when I went out for soda. In the light of day, he seems even more isolated against the midweek hustle of people hurrying by.

A woman in athletic gear pauses to watch me from across the street. We lock eyes. She doesn’t bother to check right or left for cars as she steps into the road and heads straight toward me. Valentin’s warning to be on guard—each stranger a potential serial killer—surges in my thoughts, and I drop my croissant in a panic. The woman runs at me—and then a man leaps past me straight into her arms. The couple embraces. A car honks for them to get out of the road, and they stroll away arm in arm. I draw a hand down my face, willing myself to laugh, knowing there’s nothing funny about it.

My phone buzzes, causing me to jump. I cringe, digging in my messenger bag, already certain it’s another of Seb’s calls. He phoned twice yesterday but didn’t leave a message. When I returned to Angela’s apartment after wandering the city in a daze, a note with an apology was wedged under her door. The scent of his musky cologne lingered in my hair, on my tank top where he rubbed his face against my neck, until I took the hottest shower Angela’s pipes would permit.

Roaming along, unchaperoned, I came to a few conclusions. The first was that Inspector Valentin was probably not my best source of help. If he’d known the body in the morgue might not be Angela’s—and how could he not?—he’d purposely concealed it from me. The second: Seb is too emotional, and too available. Remembering his suggestion that we go down inside the catacombs, then spend an hour and a half at one of his and Angela’s favorite lunch spots, only proves that he’s treating this like a nostalgia tour—a trip down memory lane with the world’s best substitute for his girlfriend.