I glanced through the book, distractedly at first and then with increasing attention. Published by Mercure de France, Letter to an Amazon was not, as I had thought, a collection of poems but an essay, and someone—either Vinca or the person who had given it to her—had annotated it extensively. I lingered over one of the sentences that had been underlined. This is…the only tear in this perfect entity which is two women who love each other. The impossible thing is not resisting the temptation of a man but resisting the need for a child.

Two women who love one another…Exquisitely written, the essay—penned in the early 1930s—was a poetic paean to lesbian love. Not a manifesto but a thoughtful reflection on the impossibility of two women having a child that was biologically both of theirs.

It was at this point that I finally understood what I had been missing all along. And it changed everything.

Vinca loved women. Or at least, Vinca had been in love with a woman. Alexis. The name was unisex. Although in France, it was almost exclusively a man’s name, in English-speaking countries, it was more usually a woman’s. I was blown away by what I had discovered, though I could not help but wonder whether I was on the wrong track again.

The buzzer for the front gate sounded. Assuming that it was my father, I pressed the button and went out to meet him. But rather than seeing Richard, I found myself face-to-face with a thin young man with delicate features and piercing eyes.

“I’m Corentin Meirieu, Monsieur Pianelli’s assistant,” he said as he took off his bicycle helmet and shook out his flame-red hair.

He leaned his contraption—a curious bamboo bicycle with a spring-mounted leather saddle—against the wall.

“Please accept my condolences,” he said with a compassionate expression that was half hidden by a bushy red beard at odds with his youthful face.

I invited him in for a coffee.

“Thanks, as long as it’s not Nespresso.”

We went into the kitchen, and while he was studying a pack of arabica near the coffeemaker, he patted the messenger bag slung across his chest.

“I’ve got some info for you.”

While I made the coffee, Corentin Meirieu sat on a stool and pulled out a sheaf of annotated documents. As I set down a cup in front of him, I caught a glimpse of the front page of the Nice-Matin late edition sticking out of his bag. There was a photograph of the coastal path with the headline “Fear Stalks the City.”

“It wasn’t exactly easy, but I managed to dig up some interesting information on who’s financing the building project at Saint-Ex.”

I took a seat opposite him and nodded for him to continue.

“You were right—funding for the project is completely dependent on a substantial donation recently made to the school.”

“How recently?”