Grace lightly touched a piece of the particleboard propped in the vise. It was dry. The jar of epoxy Hanna had left overnight was dry too. Grace picked up the jar and jiggled it. A hard crust had formed over the rest, which rolled in a thick goop. It was unusable. Hanna must not have come back today.
But Hanna was supposed to have come back today. She had said that she would. Not only had she said it; she had set up this glue. Hanna would have come back wrapped in coats if she had pneumonia, propped on crutches if she’d broken an ankle. At first Grace didn’t even recognize her worry for what it was. Something had happened to Hanna.
She picked up her cell phone and put it back down. She couldn’t call Hanna without telling her why she thought something was wrong—that Grace was in the studio at three in the morning. It wasn’t unheard of, but she wouldn’t arrive at three—that was crazy—and besides, Hanna had seen Alls. She would have to call from some other phone. Grace rushed into Jacqueline’s office. “I have to step out for a minute.”
Alls shot upright and grabbed her wrist. “The hell you do.”
“Hanna didn’t come in today,” she said. “I think something happened to her.”
“You’re not using this phone. She’s going to have to wait until Monday.”
“I could go to a pay phone,” she said. “But I can’t wait. It’s not like her.”
He looked hard at her, wondering, no doubt, what kind of scheme this was.
“I can even hang up if she answers. I just want to know she’s okay.”
He shook his head. “It’s almost four,” he said. “She’s not going to answer.”
“She’s my only friend.”
He pulled a flip phone from his front pocket. “I haven’t used it yet. Hang up as soon as she answers. If I hear you say even a word, the phone’s on the ground.”
Grace dialed Hanna’s number and it went to straight to voice mail. Dead.
“I would like to call the hospitals,” she said.
“Absolutely not.”
“I won’t identify myself,” she said. “If she’s there, I’ll hang up.”
Alls looked up at her as if she’d just entered the first stages of dementia, putting her shoes in the oven or trying to put the trash can inside the trash bag, but he didn’t try to stop her. She called the closest hospital, and then another. “Je téléphone pour une patiente, Hanna Dunaj? Est-elle là?” She spelled Hanna’s name. “Oui, je suis sa soeur.”
Alls gave her a warning look.
She turned to face the wall. They didn’t have a Hanna Dunaj, the man said. Grace hung up and called Hanna’s phone number again. Dead.
She began to riffle through the contents of her boss’s desk, looking for a list of employee phone numbers and emergency contacts, anything. She found it inside Jacqueline’s ledger, in the left-hand drawer, a small moleskin notebook. On the inside cover, Amaury’s name was scribbled first. The next four names were lined through and scratched out. Grace and Hanna were near the bottom, separated by a few more of the rejected or departed, but there were no other numbers for any of them, no emergency contacts. Jacqueline had never asked Grace for one, but maybe this was another thing they all had in common. Grace felt a knot of worry rising in her throat.
“Enough,” Alls said.
“She was upset when she saw you,” Grace said. “She thought I was making you up.”
“She knew who I was?”
“She knows everything,” she said without apology. “I told you, she’s my only friend.”
“Jesus, Grace, I hope something did happen to her. Are you insane?”
I didn’t believe you, Hanna had said. Grace couldn’t get it out of her head. Why hadn’t Hanna believed her? Because she’d lied before, of course. But Hanna had believed enough to be disgusted with Grace, instead of amused or annoyed at the ravings of a harmless lunatic. What she had not believed was that Alls—or anyone, probably—would show up.
How did you ever get anyone to love you like that? Hanna had asked her.
Nina, Grace realized.
I was helpless to her, Hanna had said. I could never get enough.
It had to be. Grace turned on the computer. She had read about Hanna’s past life in the Copenhagen Post only weeks ago. This time she searched not for Hanna, but for Antonia Houbraken.
Copenhagen police arrested a woman lurking outside the home of FC Copenhagen player Jakob Houbraken this morning. Antonia Houbraken reported that at around three thirty a.m., she heard someone knocking repeatedly on the door and then trying to get into the house. From her third-story window, Houbraken argued with the intruder, an unnamed woman in her thirties. Police took the intruder into custody. Houbraken was unharmed.
Hanna must have left right from work, right after she saw her with Alls. She wasn’t allowed back in Denmark, but at the sight of Alls, she had gone to Nina. Grace tried to understand.
How did you ever get anyone to love you like that?
A real liar never came clean, Grace knew. A real liar only scrubbed away a patch here and there, just enough to clear herself for a few minutes, days, or weeks at a time. Hanna, Grace saw now, was a real liar. She had divided Nina and Antonia into two women, one who had loved her and one who had only used her. One had hurt her; the other she had hurt. Grace’s heart ached for her friend and what she must have thought was love. But who was Grace to say? She hadn’t really known Hanna at all.
She stepped quietly into the office and sat down at Jacqueline’s desk, watching Alls turn the dial back and forth. He was most of the way down his second page for the night.
“Do you want anything? A glass of water?”
“No, I’m fine.”
If Alls hadn’t been held back by an ocean and the threat of more jail time, why should Hanna? The sudden, impossible appearance of Alls must have looked heroic to Hanna, must have helped her to believe that Nina, deep in her heart, wanted Hanna to come back.
Alls had come for what he was owed, or, barring that, a sense of vengeance, and perhaps Hanna had gone after Nina for the same reason. But now Grace looked down at Alls and hoped, with quiet desperation, that Hanna had seen something in his sudden, fearless appearance that Grace herself had not dared to.
She turned back to the wall and began to page through the ledger, trying not to watch him. Amaury and Hanna were paid the same, twenty-eight hundred euros per month. Jacqueline paid herself three thousand. Infuriating. Jacqueline had charged sixty euros for the cabbage teapot the last time Grace had repaired it. The birdcage job had been billed for six hundred. There was an entry for “Centerpiece Deposit” for two thousand. She turned the page, looking for Amaury’s jobs. He had been busy before he’d left: In the past month, he’d had more than four thousand euros in billings. Grace hadn’t realized his work was so much more lucrative than hers, and she felt momentarily defensive. But the jewelry that Grace had worked on was not in the ledger, not that she was surprised. There were several small payments to Hanna on this page that she didn’t recognize, thirty euros on five occasions, maybe reimbursements for supplies or something. But Hanna had only gone out for supplies once recently; she had everything she needed ordered in. Grace stared at the tiny amounts. All were from the past week. They hadn’t been doing anything except the centerpiece and jewelry.
The dates: thirty euros twice on August 17, thirty on the nineteenth, thirty on the twenty-third. Every time Grace completed a piece of jewelry.
Had Hanna been making a finder’s fee on her? Getting a cut while Grace scraped by on a thousand per month?
“You all right?” Alls asked her.
“Fine,” she said. She closed the ledger and slipped it back into the drawer.
She could almost hear Hanna’s voice, so generous she was nearly singing. I’ll talk to Jacqueline, she had said. I’ll make sure she knows how valuable you are.
Grace heard a soft click. Alls had opened the safe.
He began to pull on a pair of Grace’s cotton gloves, too small for him.
“Wait,” she said.
“Nothing you can do, Gracie.”