Well after the three of us have gone to sleep, in the floaty part of the night between midnight and dawn, I wake with a gasp.

There’s a searing pain in the middle of my chest, as if I’m being stabbed in the heart. The feeling travels up, stinging and ripping through my throat, my tongue, my forehead.

I’m choking, unable to take a breath.

And then—as suddenly as it began, it stops. I fill my lungs and rest my head back on the pillow. My heart is hammering so loud, I’m surprised it hasn’t awoken Maxine and Lena. But they’re still asleep next to me, their chests rising in tandem slow and gentle.

I close my eyes. It’s easy to pretend it was a dream, but I know better.

I wake with Maxine’s hand in my face. I fling her off me just as Gabrielle, one of the lady’s maids, enters with a tea tray and a chipper “Bon matin!”

We make a plan to see my father immediately after breakfast. I don’t know his schedule, but I’ll sit outside his wretched office all day until I get the answers I need.

The polished mahogany dining table is covered with fingerprints by the end of breakfast. I’ve spent the whole meal drumming my fingers against it restlessly, lost in thought. They’ve served omelets today. I miss the food at Haxahaven desperately.

At the far end of the table, Maxine’s little sister, Nina, fiddles with the baby pink silk bow around the neckline of her dress. She’s chattering away with Maxine, flipping between French and English so quickly I can barely keep up.

She wants us all to go to a carousel somewhere, I think. I’d like that. It’s clear Maxine adores bright, little Nina but I’ve gotten to spend so little time with her.

Maxine’s mother takes tiny bites in silence. Her stepfather is hidden behind a newspaper at the head of the table.

From behind the paper he clears his throat, then noisily flips to the next page. “Awful…,” he mutters to himself.

When he gets no response he says it again. “Just awful.”

“What’s awful, dear?” Maxine’s mother asks, her delicate hands now wrapped around a bone china cup of coffee.

“There was a murder last night. Poor kid was only eighteen.”

Slick nausea rises in my throat. I can’t help but picture the family waking up in Paris today absent their son, their brother. I remember when the eighteen-year-old dead boy in the paper belonged to me.

“Can I read it?” I ask.

Walt, Maxine’s stepfather, pulls the section of the paper, folds it in half, and passes it across the table to me.

The newsprint stains my fingers gray as I unfurl the pages. The newspaper is in English, but the advertisements are a mix of both English and French.