Paris by the Book(53)

No matter. On the appointed evening, the store was more full than it had ever been. Even Madame came down to take a look (once she heard the topic, she grimaced and withdrew). I wondered how Ellie had come to know so many people so much older than she was—and then realized that they weren’t any older; the twenty or thirty attendees she and Asif had mustered were classmates, teens, but teens who wore heels, blazers, scarfs, beards, soccer shirts, abayas, jeans, eye-catching eyeglasses, and everywhere, smiles. Also smiling, if a bit more warily, were Daphne and the twins, who perched at the one corner of the counter that wasn’t covered with food. I’d been worried Ellie would ask to serve wine, but she hadn’t and, in any case, gripped a mug of tea as she worked the crowd; she (and Daphne, too, it seemed) had the start of a cold. And then the bell over the door rang as the “special surprise guest”—the event’s speaker—arrived.

Declan.

What was not a surprise was that they loved him. He knew this demographic. As it turned out, he did not know that much about coding—but this was admitted with laughter and received with even more. Business school was teaching him a few things about marketing, however, that he was happy to share and everyone was happy to hear. When things later broke up, pictures were taken, addresses exchanged. Not a book was bought—or for that matter, mentioned—but Ellie thought it such a grand success I could only agree.

Declan stayed to help clean up. Daphne took the twins upstairs. Ellie walked Asif to the Métro. Declan explained that he’d not told me he was coming because Ellie had asked him to keep it a surprise. He said he’d hoped that was okay. He hoped I was okay. He hoped Ellie was okay. That everything was okay, because it had gotten weird a while back.

I said it wasn’t weird, nothing was, though everything was. There was still no verifiable sign of Robert in Wisconsin—no ATM withdrawal, no CCTV appearance, no word that our Milwaukee renters had reported him outside on the porch. But there was every other sign of him in Paris. And that reminded me that I was still married, to a missing person. I felt like I was getting second-guessed all the time, because I could hear Robert’s voice all the time: you’re letting Ellie wear that? You’re letting Daphne read that? You’re serving frozen food for dinner again?

Yes, yes, and definitely yes (French frozen food may be this country’s greatest gift to civilization since Balzac).

And now I heard my voice ask an entirely different sort of question.

Declan, do you want to go dancing? Some expat friends of mine were meeting up, I said, and his French could be handy. In fact, I said, it would be handy if he could recommend a place, because—

And then I heard Robert say nooo! But faintly, because it was hard to hear him over Declan, who’d just said yes! And that he would run home, change, text me with some ideas, couldn’t wait, see you soon. Then he was gone.

The truth was, I had no expat friends going dancing, but I’d had a fun night in the store, I’d enjoyed seeing him, I wanted to blow off steam—more accurately, I felt like I might explode. I quickly texted Molly to see if I could make my lie true: dancing? Now?

I sometimes thought in Paris about texting Robert’s phone, though I knew it was sitting in an evidence locker somewhere, its battery long dead.

Molly texted back: Leah, it’s almost midnight!

Behind me, at the rear of the store, a cough.

Ellie. How long had she been standing there?

Ellie coughed again. “Don’t say it,” she said.

I knew other dads who’d prayed that they would have sons, shook their heads at the thought of girls. Robert loved his girls. Told gatherings that his should be the last generation with men. Told me that he was proud to have “overcome” his orphan DNA. He made Ellie and Daphne “miXXtapes” (CDs, actually) that featured only female artists. He wanted his girls to take on the world. I wished that he could see they were ready to.

And I wanted him to see that they seemed to regard me as a test run, Ellie especially.

I needed his help. I needed his appreciation for what I’d done in his absence.

I needed to go dancing. “Don’t say what?” I said.

“It’s not from kissing Asif,” she said.

“Okay . . . ?”

“The cough. We were getting teased by our friends. He had a cold. Now I have a cold. So people think—but I don’t want you to think—not that I care—”

“Asif’s a lovely young man,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” Ellie said.

“Your cough’s from the river,” I said. She shrugged. A small provocation, but enough to spur me on. “What made you fall from the railing?” I asked.

Another cough. This one fake.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“It was Daphne,” she said.

I nodded. “She shouted . . . ,” I said, trying to lead Ellie to fill in the blank.

“She shouted what she always shouts,” Ellie said.

“She never shouts.” Like father, like daughter.

“When you cross the street without her or run up the sidewalk ahead of her or the twins color on one of her favorite books,” Ellie said, “she’ll yell aaaah or ‘stop’ or ‘look at me!’”

“She didn’t shout, ‘look at me!’”