Paris by the Book(94)

“Mais Zeus!” Annabelle said, overhearing the story. “Zeus” was Daphne’s name for the perpetually stricken man paired with a lightning bolt whose image appears alongside all electrified tracks. NE PAS DESCENDRE SUR LA VOIE, DANGER DE MORT, the yellow signs say. Straightforward enough, and yet, for me, very French: the signs are subtle, the sans serif typeface amiable and quiet, there’s no point d’exclamation! You either pay attention or, like Daphne, you briefly don’t.

“Ecoutez!” Peter said. “Qui est le nouveau monsieur à la librairie? Il est très gentil.”

There had been a new man in the store, very nice. But who was he?

“Nouveau monsieur?” I said. “Qui est-ce? What are you talking about?”

When Daphne and I had reached the store, it was empty—or it looked empty. The sign had been turned to FERMé, and the door was locked. I had unlocked it, and as soon as the bell above the door sounded, Peter and Annabelle had come racing down the spiral stairs.

“Oh, he’s gone now,” Annabelle said. “He said that you would be home soon. And you were!”

“Did you hire someone new? Est-il le nouveau Declan?” Annabelle asked.

Daphne looked at me with her wide, wise, and, I now saw, forever-sad eyes. I wondered if she knew. Who had taken in the twins, asked them for a tour of the store, asked them about their favorite books, produced a pair of Lion candy bars that they ate readily. But Daphne said nothing. And so, instead of studying the twins’ faces, fresh from recounting this amazing story, I studied Daphne’s. If Ellie or Eleanor had been there, it would have all been different. But Eleanor was still lost and Ellie was off retrieving her, and it was just Daphne and me and the twins. And Daphne said nothing, so I said nothing.

I didn’t tell the twins that was the girls’ father! I didn’t ask them why he thought he could leave them in the store—alone!—after they’d just been found. I didn’t ask them for details about what the man looked like or what he said or what he’d touched, where he’d sat, where his fingerprints might now linger. The twins said that he’d read some books to them, and then went downstairs while they read to themselves.

“Where’s Ellie and Tante Eleanor?” Peter asked.

“Is the man coming back?” Annabelle said.

Before I could answer, Daphne jumped in.

“No,” she said.

This stopped me—because it was true, because to hear someone other than me say it aloud made it more true—but it merited hardly a shrug from the twins, who asked to go back upstairs to the children’s area. I nodded. Daphne and I watched them disappear.

“It wasn’t him, Mom,” Daphne said. “That man, the one who stayed with the twins.”

I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, if this was a dialogue she was having with herself—and if so, that it would be better if I didn’t interfere. I lowered my eyes.

But when I looked up, she was looking at me, waiting.

“I know,” I said.

“If it was him,” she said, “he wouldn’t have left.”

I just shook my head.

“Not without leaving a note,” she said, but she didn’t quite say it like that; she added a question mark, and it hung in the air between us like a tiny bent pin, useless, dangerous. Had he left a note? What would it have said this time? What would I want such a note to say?

I couldn’t say, only that it would have to be many, many pages longer than the little scraps of paper he once left.

What would Daphne want it to say? That I knew specifically. Not six letters, but three words.

Be back soon!

She was still looking at me. I’d been distractedly answering my own questions without answering hers: would my father leave without leaving a note?

“No,” I said, and caught myself as my voice rose, as another question mark wavered between us. “Absolutely not.”



* * *



—

I called the police to let them know all was well. The police called the embassy. Carl called and asked me to confirm all was well. “That was a close one,” he said, and for a second, I thought he was referring to Robert. Yes, I said.

Ellie wanted to go out to “celebrate” and of course she did; she had ventured out on her own and rescued Eleanor, she had managed to not fall onto the train tracks, she had achieved some sort of rapprochement with Daphne, she had set out in search of the two twins, and though she hadn’t found them, here they were, safe and sound and smiling.

And, the most difficult achievement of all (though she did not realize this), she’d not set eyes on her father. She listened to the twins’ story of the courteous man and immediately determined that it was Carl. Peter and Annabelle disagreed, but without fuss. Ellie was la grande s?ur, and they’d long ago learned that she was always right, even when she was very wrong.

I had no interest in dining out, and neither did Eleanor. I wanted to burrow. I wanted to lock the door to the store and then the door to our living quarters and drag a box or two of books over to barricade ourselves in. I wanted a frozen fête de Picard and I wanted a lot of wine to go with it. As we started our way upstairs, Eleanor hung back and whispered a suggestion: perhaps Ellie could babysit while Eleanor and I ducked out for a tête à tête? I was a step above her on the staircase, and so when I turned to tell her no—eventually, yes, but not right now—I kissed Eleanor on the forehead.