“Maman?” She must still be in bed. Perhaps the cold had kept her up half the night, and then she’d overslept once she finally found slumber.

But . . . no. A faint light shone from under her mother’s bedroom door. She could have fallen asleep with the gaslight on, she supposed, but it wasn’t likely. Margot hastened to the door, rapped lightly. “Maman?” No answer came. Was she in the toilet? No light shone from under that door though.

She cracked the door open, frowning when she realized it wasn’t the low gas lamp at all, but the brighter electric one. Maman never turned that on until morning. She’d obviously gotten up to get ready, as usual, this morning.

The door stuck at half-open, bumping into something and going no farther.

That was when panic sank its fangs into her throat. This tiny little cupboard of a room fit only a narrow bed and a minuscule chest of drawers. There was no space for anything else, anything that could fall over and impede the swing of the creaking door. No furniture. And Maman was meticulous about picking up her few possessions.

Which meant it wasn’t furniture. Wasn’t a possession.

Margot edged through the opening as quickly as she could, braced herself, and yet still felt punched in the stomach at the sight of the white nightgown draping the legs on the floor. “Maman!”

She lay on her side on the rug, her hair a mass of silver-threaded midnight over her arm—unbraided, wavy. Proving she’d risen as she always had, already reaching to undo her hair so she could brush it and pin it up. “Maman.”

Margot fell to her knees beside her mother, easing her gently onto her back. It was just a cold. Flu, maybe. Dehydration. She’d fainted. Passed out. Perhaps even bumped her head, but it was nothing that serious.

Her hands shaking, Margot pressed her fingers to Maman’s wrist. Where was her pulse, where? “No. No, Maman. Come on. Wake up. Wake up!”

Her hands—her hands were shaking too badly, that was all. Shaking too much to detect the pulse in her wrist. She reached for her throat instead, where it ought to be more easily found, even if it were weak. Thready, wasn’t that what they called it? She could handle weak and thready. Weak and thready left room for hope. For intervention.

But her fingers couldn’t find any thumping in her mother’s throat either. “God! Sixty-two!” That was Maman’s usual resting heart rate. “Fifty-one.” Her mother’s age. “Nine thousand four.” The times she could remember Maman saying she loved her—the times she’d said it back. Je t’aime, Maman.

“Mon Dieu, s’il vous plaît. S’il vous plaît, pas ma maman.”

She shook her a bit, but Maman didn’t stir. Margot screamed out her prayer, but Maman didn’t budge.