Imogen didn’t understand it. Why this woman, who had talked about her books and her book club and every one of the scarves her husband had bought and which trip he was on when he bought them, why she would suddenly clam up. But maybe those were easy things to talk about. Maybe real questions scared Madame Auntie just as much as they scared Imogen. As much as they scared everyone. Maybe telling a story was one thing but answering a question was another. “Thank you.”

Madame Auntie cracked half a smile. “What’s in this notebook, the one that you dropped?”

Imogen shrugged. “I got mad at Daniella, so I took what I thought was the evidence from last night. That Eli had stolen, I mean. When I found out the store was closing, I was so mad. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that mad in my life. I was going to give it to Jo, but she figured it out anyway, about Eli and the money he had stolen and everything. I didn’t even have a chance to open it. I was so scared, I think. I was mad, too, but also scared. I’m not sure if that makes any sense.”

Madame Auntie laughed. “You would have had trouble with that, azzizati.”

“What do you mean?” asked Imogen.

Auntie smiled with a wry twist of her lips. “I might have looked through the book. It is very good, if it is yours. No numbers. Just poetry and sketches. I had never seen poetry like that.”

Imogen blinked. “What?”

“Just poetry and some drawings. I don’t think you took the right books, if you were looking for money. Or maybe the right books didn’t even exist. But I thought you were sad. Those poems, they’re very sad. And mad. So much anger in them. I thought you might need someone to talk to. But, if they’re not yours…” Auntie’s shoulders lilted, almost like a shrug, but also almost like a little piece of understanding. Like she accepted what the universe would give and she would rather shrug than surrender.

Imogen’s hands shook as she looked down at the notebook. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. But somehow, deep inside of herself, she knew—or, at least, suspected—what she’d find when she opened the notebook. She delayed what seemed like the inevitable and said, “I am sad.”

Madame Auntie nodded, like she’d known all along. “It’s okay. I was sad for a long time, too.”

“You were?”