Outside, the streets are full of hungry white-collar workers shuffling by in a hurry to grab a bite. We navigate the crowds without words or looking at each other. Against our brick apartment building, the same homeless man rises with the help of a cane I hadn’t noticed before. He stretches, joints audibly cracking. His tuft of graying black hair seems freshly showered. Pale skin appears ruddy in the shadows.

We climb the stairwell to Angela’s apartment. Thick beige carpet muffles our steps on her landing. There are wooden beams, sound and heating insulation in between Angela’s apartment and Jean-Luc’s, but I remember how I heard the chime of his cell phone yesterday. I wonder whether he’s heard me crying at some point.

Jean-Luc follows me to the door. “So did you find what you were looking for at the restaurant?”

I pat the sheaf of papers he gave me, tears well behind me now. I’m not sure how I allowed them to make it as far as my eyelashes. “Not really. But this is a great alternative.”

He steps closer. “I’m around for whatever you need this week. I hope you know that, Shayna. Even if it’s just to talk.”

I nod, feeling more like my normal self with each noncommittal shrug. Embarrassment at being so emotional in public, with a virtual stranger, is peeking around the corner and tiptoeing closer to my flushed cheeks. “I know, thanks. I’ll be sure to—”

His arms draw me in, tightening around my frame, the action so unexpected I stop midsentence and don’t struggle. He hesitates, then presses his cheek against my head. The urge to shove him away rises—to scoff and insist I’m not so needy that after only hours together I would open wide all my wounds and stand them on a crate for him to ogle. Instead, I close my eyes. The anxious fluttering of my stomach moves upward to my chest.

He pulls back, eyebrows linked in one bushy strip. “I’ll see you later.”

I step into the apartment, a mass of contradictions: energy, fatigue; relief, despair; clarity, confusion. When his door clicks shut one floor above, I collapse onto the bed and curl into an exhausted ball.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Ambassade (embassy)

Comment dit-on? (How do you say?)

Combien? (How much?)

A nasal buzz rips through the air, jarring my barely legible scrawl. The list I’ve been making—vocabulary, names, notes, and descriptions of people I’ve met so far and their relationships to Angela—extends a page long. Pain shoots across my sleeping foot as I stand and stumble to the square box next to the door.

“Hello?” I call, pressing first one button then another. It buzzes again beneath my finger. “Hello?”

“Miss Darby, it’s Inspector Valentin. May I come up?”