Cold wind sliced through this hospital enclave, a web of pavilions and old boiler buildings. Aimée felt anger well up.
“Throw away Leduc Detective? After everything Grand-père and Papa worked to build?” she said. “What right do you have?” Aimée trembled with deep, raw hurt. “You’re just a stranger who’s walked back in the door. Not part of my life. You’ll leave again.” She bit her lip. “But for once I’m doing the leaving. You don’t know me—how I feel, what I want, what drives me.”
Her mother receded in the shadows. Sighed. “Amy, you’re like me. Please don’t make my mistakes.”
She said her name the American way, “Amy.” Just as she had when Aimée was a child.
And then Aimée saw Dombasle in conversation with a nurse at the far end of the allée. The nurse pointed in the pavilion’s direction. Another man joined Dombasle.
Merde! It had been only twenty minutes since she’d left rue de Chatillon. Dombasle, in cahoots with the BRB, must have had her followed. Probably all along.
He wanted the Modigliani and the fixer.
“The flics? You turned me in?” Her mother’s conflicted expression, the look in her eyes seared Aimée. Turn her in, a wanted terrorist on the world security watch list who’d been expelled from France years ago—that’s what Aimée should do. This woman who abandoned her, now full of regret. Should she? Could she?
Footsteps pounded, echoing under the archway by the war memorial to the fallen hospital staff.
“Non, you’re my mother. Get the hell out of here. You’re good at that.”
Her mother hugged her. For a moment, that scent of muguet brought her whole childhood back to her. “I love you. Stay safe, little mouse.”
Aimée heard the creaking of a steel door and they both looked toward it. “Vite, Sydney!” The old drunk waved his arm to hurry her along.
Aimée choked back a sob and thrust the tube under her mother’s arm.
“Go.”
Saturday
EVERY PEW IN the Marais’s Armenian church was filled. White floral sprays covered the altar and Serge’s twin boys, for once, stood still in their short pants. Each held a lace pillow, transfixed by the wedding rings tied to them.
“Melac won’t show up, will he?” René asked, adjusting his silk cravat in the church vestibule. When Melac never returned her calls, René stepped in as an escort. “You’re sure he’s not coming?”
Staying at the hospital in Brittany, from what Paul at the Brigade Criminelle had told her last night: after twelve hours for the emergency crew to extricate Melac’s daughter from the bus, she remained in a coma. Critical. His ex-wife complicated events with a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.
“Melac’s on leave from the force,” Morbier said.
Aimée’s knuckles whitened on the bouquet. And his friend Paul hadn’t told her? “How do you know, Morbier?”
“Watch the télé,” he said. “He’s a little busy. No promotion.”
“The télé? You know I don’t have one,” she said, realizing Melac wouldn’t be coming back.
The other bridesmaids filed in with their escorts. The soft tones of a flute echoed under the Gothic struts. As maid of honor, she had the distinction of having two escorts, Morbier and René.
“Ruining his career,” Morbier muttered.
“So that he can be with his family?” Aimée whispered sharply. “Maybe he doesn’t see it like that, Morbier. That’s why he has a family.” Unlike you. But she kept that back. For the first time, she became aware that her family was standing right here.
“You didn’t fall for Dombasle, Leduc, did you?”
The rat who used her as bait for the Modigliani … for her mother? And to think she almost did. She shook her head.
“Bon, never trust an intello,” Morbier said.
“We need to talk about my mother, Morbier.”
His eyes shuttered. “Not now, Leduc. This is a happy occasion.”
Regula, the bride, resplendent in white lace and trailing whiffs of gardenia, winked at her from behind the rectory door.
“Aimée, love that Dior,” she said.
Determined to wear this Dior no matter what, she’d used safety pins to let out the seams as much as possible. Even more than the couturier had been able to that morning.
“Gained a little weight, non?” René said. “Color in your cheeks, healthy for once.”
“I’m anemic,” she said, tired of repeating this to the world. “Just awaiting the lab results so I can start iron supplements.”
“Could have fooled me.”
And then her cousin Sebastien appeared. He looked dashing in a black tuxedo, gardenia corsage, and trimmed beard. Aimée hugged him tight. “I’m so proud of you, little cousin. Bursting with pride.”
He’d turned his life around. Found a wonderful woman, a gourmet chef who loved him to bits.
“You said you’d be the maid of honor if you could wear chiffon,” he said, hugging her back. “But bursting the chiffon seams?”
Already? Merde. She looked down at the shredding fabric.
“No wedding cake for me,” she said. “Or just a sliver.”
Her cell phone rang in her matching beaded clutch.
“Turn the damn thing off, Leduc,” Morbier said.
“Won’t take a moment. I need the lab results so my doctor can fill my prescription today.” She answered in a whisper. “All??”
“We’ve got the test results, Mademoiselle Leduc,” said a lab technician, “Excusez-moi, is it Madame?”
“Mais non, Mademoiselle, but that’s not important right now,” she said, feeling the tug of Morbier’s arm. René’s darting looks. The opening organ strains of the bridal march sounded in the front of the church.
“Last minute?” the lab technician said. “Better late than never, eh?”
“What? Look, just send on the results to my doctor so I can fill the prescription.”
“Prescription? You mean prenatal vitamins?”
“Heads up, Leduc, we’re next,” Morbier growled.