As the years passed, I began to doubt its authenticity. But now, the incident acquired new meaning. I thought about what Claude Angevin had said: Everyone—the cops, the press, the families—missed something in the investigation. Actually, to be honest, I think the whole investigation was flawed. From the start, we missed out on something crucial.

Angevin was right. But things were changing now. Truth was on the march. Maybe there was a killer tracking me, but I was not afraid, because through him, I would be able to find Vinca. The killer was my only chance.

But I could not beat him alone. To uncover the secret of Vinca’s disappearance, I needed to go back to the past, to revisit the boy who was not like other boys, the boy I had been in my last years at Saint-Ex. The young man who had been positive, courageous, pure of heart, touched by a sort of grace. I knew that I could not bring him back to life, but he had never completely disappeared. Even in my darkest moments, I carried him within me. Sometimes a smile, a word, a flash of wisdom reminded me of who I used to be.

In my search for Vinca, I was also—perhaps especially—investigating myself.

11

Behind Her Smile

1.

Yves Dalanegra lived in a huge house in the hills above Biot. Rather than show up unannounced, I called the number Claude Angevin had given me. First stroke of luck: although Dalanegra spent half the year living in Los Angeles, he was currently on the Côte d’Azur. Second stroke of luck: he knew who I was—Florence and Olivia, the lanky daughters I had known at school and only vaguely remembered, liked me and read my novels. He immediately suggested I pop by and see him at his villa cum studio on the chemin des Vignasses.

Prepare yourself for a surprise, Angevin had said. From Dalanegra’s website, his Wikipedia page, and a number of online articles, I quickly realized that, these days, the man was considered one of the great living photographers, having taken a career path as surprising as it was unusual. Until his forties, Dalanegra had been a respectable family man, an auditor with a small accounting firm in Nice; he had been married to his wife, Catherine, for more than twenty years, and they had two daughters. Then, in 1995, his mother died, and this triggered a sudden and complete change. Dalanegra got divorced, quit his job, and moved to New York to follow his dream: photography.