Read Chapter 10: First Gig at Chez Nous

The dressing room at Chez Nous was a closet with a cracked mirror and a smell of spilled wine that would never quite fade. Evie pressed her palms flat against her thighs, breathing through the rising tide of nausea that had been building all afternoon.

Julien stood by the door, his sheet music clutched in both hands like a shield. He wore his usual dark jacket, but there was a new tension in his shoulders, a stiffness that reminded her of a man preparing for a duel.

"You look like you're about to bolt," she said.

"I'm considering it." He managed a thin smile. "But then I remembered my father would be insufferably pleased if I did."

That startled a laugh out of her. It cut through the worst of her nerves.

Outside, she could hear the murmur of the small crowd—maybe thirty people scattered across the tables, nursing drinks and low conversation. Chez Nous was intimate in the way that poverty was intimate: everything close together, no room for pretense. The stage was barely raised, a simple platform at the back of the room, and Lucien had positioned the piano so close to the edge that a careless performer could nearly touch the first row of tables.

Lucien himself appeared in the doorway, a cigar clamped between his teeth. "Five minutes. The crowd is thin, but they're drinking. Give them something to talk about and they'll bring their friends tomorrow."

Evie nodded, unable to find her voice.

Lucien's eyes moved between her and Julien, a speculative glint in them that she didn't trust. "Remember what I told you. This is a test. Pass it, and bigger rooms open up. Fail it..." He shrugged and disappeared.

"Charming," Julien muttered.

"It's a business. He's a businessman." Evie straightened her dress—a simple navy number she'd borrowed from Margot at Le Chat Bleu, cut in a modern line that made her feel almost Parisian. "At least he's honest about it."

"Are all Americans so charitable toward those who would exploit them?"

"Only when they have no better options." She met his eyes. "Are you ready?"

He looked at her for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted—the tension easing into something warmer. "When I played my last recital, there were three hundred people in the audience. Critics in the front row. My father in the balcony." He set his sheet music aside. "I've never been more terrified than I am right now. But it's a different kind of afraid."

"What kind is that?"

"The kind that feels like falling." He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "You know what I realized this afternoon? I've been composing this piece for years. And I always imagined it as something meant to be judged. Approved of. Lifted onto a platform and examined by experts." He shook his head. "But when I played it with you in the courtyard, it was the first time it felt like something alive. Something meant to be felt, not examined."

Evie's throat tightened. "That's quite a speech for a man about to play for thirty strangers."

"It's easier to say things to you than to an audience." He offered his arm. "Shall we go make fools of ourselves?"

She took it. "I've done it before."

---

The piano's first notes were tentative, but only for a measure. Then Julien found his stride, and the melody opened up like the first breath after a long dive. Evie had learned the song so thoroughly in the past week that she could feel where each phrase would land before it came, the contours of the music as familiar as her own heartbeat.

She waited for her entrance, counting the beats, and then she sang.

The room shifted. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. Somewhere in the back, a fork clattered onto a plate and no one picked it up.

Evie closed her eyes for the second verse, letting the sound carry her. Julien's playing was incredible—not just technically exact, but responsive. He listened to her the way she imagined a dancer listened to a partner, adjusting his tempo by a hair's breadth to match the color of her voice. Together, they wove something that felt bigger than either of them alone.

When the final note faded, there was a moment of absolute silence.

Then the applause came—not thunderous, but genuine. A woman near the front shouted something in French that Evie didn't catch, but the tone was unmistakably enthusiastic. Julien stood from the piano bench, and they faced the room together, and for the first time since New York, Evie felt like she was where she belonged.

---

They played two more numbers, adapting one of the jazz standards Evie knew from her New York days into a slower arrangement that Julien had sketched on coffee-stained paper. By the end, the crowd had grown—Lucien's earlier patrons had clearly sent word, because a few more people drifted in from the street.

Afterward, Lucien caught her arm as she was heading for the dressing room. "Better than I expected," he said, which from him was practically a standing ovation. "Come back tomorrow. Same time. I'll have flyers printed by afternoon."

"Is that approval I hear?"

"Business approval." He released her arm. "You're still a risk. But you're an interesting risk now."

Evie found Julien waiting by the bar, nursing a glass of water. "We did it," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"We did something." He raised his glass. "I'm not sure what to call it yet. But it worked."

A shadow fell across them, and Evie turned to find a young man standing there—mid-twenties, with sandy hair that fell across his forehead and paint-stained fingers wrapped around a half-empty glass of wine. He was grinning at her with unchecked enthusiasm.

"That was remarkable," he said, in English with a flat American accent. "I mean, I've heard jazz singers before, but that—" He shook his head. "You put something raw in there. Something that made the whole thing feel like it could fall apart at any second, but it didn't."

Evie blinked. "Thank you."

"I'm Scott. Scott Aldridge." He extended his hand, and she shook it. "I'm a painter. Mostly portraits, when I can get commissions. Mostly starving, when I can't."

"An honest artist." Julien's tone was dry but not unfriendly.

"Only about my bank account." Scott's grin widened. "But listen, I wasn't just being friendly. I mean, I was, but—" He leaned in closer, lowering his voice. "You sound like a singer I heard in New York a couple years back. A girl named Lily Hart. She used to perform at a small club in Harlem."

Evie felt the blood drain from her face. The name hit her like a physical blow, knocking the breath from her lungs. "You knew Lily?"

"Knew her? She sat for me once, actually. A portrait—I never finished it. She had this way of looking past you when she thought you weren't paying attention, like she was seeing something off in the distance. I kept trying to capture that, but"—he shrugged—"I was young and bad. Still am, maybe."

"Is she—" Evie couldn't finish the question. "Do you know where she went?"

Scott's expression shifted, the easy grin fading into something more cautious. "She left New York in a hurry, from what I heard. There was some trouble with a man—I never got the full story." He hesitated. "But I ran into her again. Two months ago. Right here in Paris. At the Grands Boulevards market, of all places."

Evie's heart was pounding so hard she could hear it. "She's here? Lily is in Paris?"

"I didn't get a chance to talk to her—she disappeared into the crowd before I could even call out. But I'd have recognized her anywhere. She had that same look about her, like she was being chased or searching for something. Maybe both." He studied Evie's face. "You must be her sister. You've got the same eyes. The same way of belonging and not belonging at the same time."

Evie opened her mouth, but no words came.

Julien stepped closer, his hand finding her elbow like an anchor. "Thank you for telling her," he said to Scott. "This means more than you know."

"Sure." Scott finished his wine. "If you're looking for her, I'd try the market again. She was buying fabric—silk, magenta. Hand-painted. The kind of thing a singer would wear on stage." He nodded to Evie and drifted away into the crowd.

Evie stood frozen, the noise of the club washing over her like water over stone. Lily. In Paris. Two months ago. A whole ocean crossing behind her, and she'd been so close Evie could have walked right past her without knowing.

"Evie." Julien's voice was gentle. "Are you all right?"

"She's here." The words came out cracked and thin. "All this time, I thought she was—I didn't know if she was alive, or where she'd gone, or why she left without telling me. And she's here."

"Then we'll find her." He said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We have Gigi and Pierre at the club, half of Montmartre's gossip circuit, and a full month of performances ahead of us. Someone knows a singer named Lily Hart."