Chapter 9

When the plane landed in Paris, sunrise was three hours away.

I hadn't told anyone.

The apartment is on the top floor of a nineteenth-century building on the right bank of the Seine. Seventy years ago the street was quiet. Now there is a restaurant and a gallery downstairs, and people are still drinking at the curb late at night.

I stood across the street and looked up at the lit windows on the top floor.

That was the bedroom.

Adrian had said he was in London handling work.

Claire was in our room.

The answer was already clear enough.

But I still needed to go inside.

My mother's jewelry was in that apartment, along with several family documents and three paintings that had never been exhibited.

I wasn't going to leave them beside the bed Adrian shared with his mistress.

The building manager had been replaced by a young man.

He didn't know me, and only after he checked my identification and the property papers did his face change.

"Mrs. Hartwell?"

"That's me."

"I'm sorry, I had no idea you were coming tonight. Mr. Blackwood didn't notify us."

"This is my home. I don't need him to notify anyone when I come back."

The young manager went pale.

"Of course. That isn't what I meant."

I didn't make it hard for him. I only asked him to pull the visitor records for the past year.

He hesitated for a moment.

"You're a joint owner. You have the right to see them."

The records printed out quickly.

Claire had entered the apartment for the first time eleven months ago.

After that she came almost every month.

Sometimes for one night, sometimes for a week.

Most of the time Adrian checked in with her.

On several of those dates, I had been at Blackwood Manor in London, waiting for him to come home.

He had told me he was in a meeting in Edinburgh, in Germany working on a foundation project, or with Victor tracing a batch of stolen artwork.

Every lie had someone assigned to confirm it.

I turned to the last page.

Claire had arrived at eleven the previous night and hadn't left.

Adrian arrived ten minutes after her.

"They're still upstairs?" I asked.

The manager lowered his head.

"Yes."

"Do you know who she is?"

"Mr. Blackwood said Ms. Moreau is an important guest of the foundation."

"Did he also tell you there was no need to report it to me?"

The young man's face got worse.

His silence was already the answer.

I took the records and went up in the elevator alone.

My face looked back at me from the mirrored wall.

I had thought I would be furious, or a wreck, or that I would at least be crying.

The woman in the mirror was strangely calm.

So this is what it actually means to give up on someone. It isn't hysteria.

It's watching one piece of evidence after another and finally stopping the hope that any of it is false.

The elevator stopped at the top floor.

I took out my own key.

The lock hadn't been changed. The key still turned.

A single floor lamp was on in the living room.

There were two glasses on the table and Adrian's coat thrown across the sofa. Claire's heels lay outside the bedroom door, next to a black dress I had never seen.

My painting of the Seine, made when I was young, hung on the wall.

Under it stood a bouquet of fresh roses.

White ones.

From the same florist as the tulips Adrian had brought me a few days earlier.

The bedroom door wasn't fully closed.

A woman's laughter came through it.

"After the documentary goes live, everyone is going to envy the two of you even more."

It was Claire.

"Adrian, sometimes I really want to know what I am to you."

The room went quiet for a few seconds.

Then I heard my husband's voice.

Lower than it was with me, and more careless.

"Don't ask depressing questions at a time like this, darling."

Darling.

For seventy years that was what he called me.

Now, through a door, I heard the word belong to another woman for the first time.

I put my hand on the handle and pushed the bedroom door slowly open.