Leave police work to me. Wood is missing and not a suspect. I learned you signed the corpse identification form. Many thanks. If anything new arises, I shall contact you.

“What’s wrong?” Jean-Luc asks. He leans in to look at my screen, but I shift it away.

“Nothing. My web access stinks, is all.”

Jean-Luc opens his phone to his news app and frowns. “Well, you’re not missing anything heartwarming. There was another shooting, in Toulon. South of France.”

“That’s terrible. Was anyone hurt?”

“Not sure yet. Information is hazy.”

“It seems like shootings are becoming more common here, too,” I observe. “Any reason why?”

Jean-Luc drops his hand to look at me. “Hard to say. France’s long history of colonialism doesn’t help when ex-subjects immigrate here for better lives. It’s not an easy transition, generally—there is pressure on them to assimilate and little tolerance for those who don’t. The system has to do better by them, and not everyone agrees how.” We’re each silent in our own thoughts as the cab drives onto the Pont Alexandre.

The drunkard’s assault on me in the police station might have been more than an old Frenchman hating American politics—he could have been riled by me simply speaking English and not French. There’s a vast difference between the experiences of a mixed-race, upper-middle-class American like Angela and those of refugees seeking safety in France, but how much of a role might this socially, historically complex opinion of transients—of anyone who’s other—have played in Angela’s disappearance?

We arrive at Angela’s apartment building, and Jean-Luc pulls out his wallet.

“No, I got it,” I say and pay with a card.

Jean-Luc puckers his lips—a mannerism I’m learning is incredibly French. “Suit yourself, but I rode in the cab, too. Dinner, my treat?”

I laugh, a nervous tic I can’t help, as we exit to stand on the sidewalk. “I’ve got a date with Angela’s stocked cabinets. But thanks.”

Jean-Luc smiles, then waves me forward. We climb the stairs of the building together, walking single file just like I did with Seb. Jean-Luc pauses at Angela’s landing. “Well, I hope I was of some help today. Let me know if you need anything tomorrow. I could search for the coordinates of another café if you feel like huffing coffee beans.”

No matter how good Delphine’s, Seb’s, or Nour’s English is, there are still linguistic hints that show they’re not native speakers. I have thirty. You are the sister of Angela. I smile at the first I’ve heard from Jean-Luc: coordinates, like some seafaring captain, instead of directions or location.