Read Chapter 11: Gaston's Gift

The knock came at ten in the morning, three sharp raps that cut through the sound of rain against the courtyard window. Evie set down her coffee cup and opened the door to find Gaston, dripping beneath the brim of a weathered hat, holding a small velvet pouch in his gnarled hands.

“Mademoiselle Hart,” he said, with a formality that made her laugh. “I heard about the show. The whole quarter has heard about the show.”

She stepped aside to let him in. “It was one night. A small room. I’m not sure how that traveled.”

Gaston shook the rain from his coat and settled into the chair by her tiny table, uninvited but familiar. Since her first week at Le Chat Bleu, he’d taken a liking to her—not the grasping kind, the way some men did, but the way an old craftsman appreciated a new tool that worked well. He’d shown her how to read a crowd’s mood before the first note, how to hold a room’s attention with a lowered voice rather than a raised one, how to spot the plainclothes policemen who drifted through Montmartre looking for trouble.

“It wasn’t a small room to the people who were in it,” Gaston said. He placed the pouch on the table between them. “Open it.”

Evie hesitated. Gifts from men in Paris had a way of coming with expectations attached. But Gaston had never looked at her the way the others did—his eyes held the calm disinterest of a man who’d buried a wife twenty years ago and had no intention of digging up anything new.

She loosened the drawstring and tipped the contents into her palm.

A locket. Silver, oval, with a delicate vine pattern etched around the edge. It caught the grey morning light and threw it back in a soft gleam.

Her breath caught. The shape, the size—it was almost identical to the one she’d worn for years, the one that had vanished in the chaos of her flight from New York. The one with Lily’s photograph inside.

“Gaston,” she managed. “This is too much.”

“It’s not from me, not really,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Found it in a pawnshop in the Marais. Man was selling a box of old jewelry, and this one caught my eye. Reminded me of one you mentioned, the one you lost. I thought maybe it could hold something new for you, instead of what was taken.”

Evie turned the locket over. The clasp was smooth, well-oiled, functional. It opened with a soft click. Empty, waiting.

She thought of the original—had she told Gaston about it? She must have, one late night at Le Chat Bleu, over a glass of wine he’d poured to mark her first full week. She’d talked more than she should have, the way loneliness makes you do, and mentioned the locket and its lost photograph, and the sister it belonged to.

“I can’t accept this,” she said, though her fingers curled around it anyway.

“You can,” Gaston said. “You’ll pay me back by becoming so famous I can say I knew you when you slept in a room with a leaky ceiling. That’s payment enough.”

Evie laughed, and something in her chest loosened. The locket felt cool and solid in her palm, a weight she hadn’t realized she’d been craving. It wasn’t the same. It would never be the same. But it was something—a place to keep a new story, if she had one to tell.

“Thank you,” she said, and meant it with her whole heart.

Gaston nodded, stood, and pulled his hat back on. “Break a leg Saturday,” he said. “Or don’t. Just be good.”

When Julien arrived an hour later, her door was open to let in the fresh air. He shook out his umbrella on the landing and saw her sitting cross-legged on her bed, papers spread around her, the locket hanging from her neck.

He stopped. “That’s new.”

Evie touched it self-consciously. “Gaston gave it to me. A good luck charm, of sorts.”

Julien crossed the room and sat on the edge of her chair, leaning in to look closer. His proximity sent a familiar thrill through her—one she’d gotten used to over the past week, and one she’d stopped pretending wasn’t there. His eyes moved from the locket to her face, and something passed between them that didn’t need saying.

“It suits you,” he said quietly.

She cleared her throat and gestured at the papers. “I’ve been working.”

“I can see that.” He picked up a page covered in her rushed handwriting. “You’ve been working on new words?”

“Trying,” she admitted. “The piece we have is good, but Lucien expects a full set in four weeks, not one song. We need more material.”

Julien scanned her lyrics. “This one,” he said, tapping a verse about a river that runs through the city, always moving, always staying. “This is strong.”

“It’s about the forgetting. How you can leave a place but it never leaves you.” She looked up at him. “I was thinking about my sister. About what it means to carry someone with you even when you don’t know where they are.”

Julien’s expression softened. He set the page down. “My mother was like that. Always present, even after she was gone. His music is full of her.”

Evie nodded. She’d learned not to press him on his mother too hard—some wounds were tender, and she understood the value of letting them heal at their own pace.

“I have an idea,” she said, shifting the papers. “The song we’ve been working on is slow, mournful. What if we wrote something with more swing? Something bright, to show Lucien we’re not a one-note act?”

Julien’s eyebrow rose. “You want me to write a bright, swinging song.”

“Can you?”

He laughed. The sound was rare enough that she treasured it when it came. “I can try,” he said. “Though I should warn you—my idea of bright is a bit different from yours. My training taught me that joy has structure. Discipline. Yours has—” he gestured vaguely.

“Soul,” Evie said. “You can say it. You won’t break anything.”

He laughed again, and this time it was warmer. They made a game of it, that afternoon—he sat at the piano in the parlor of her boarding house, which the owner tolerated in exchange for Evie’s promise to sing for her guests at the Christmas party, and she stood over his shoulder, humming lines, tossing out lyrics, rejecting his more formal melodies with a teasing shake of her head.

“Too stiff,” she said. “That’s a march.”

“It’s a minute-and-a-half. It’s a waltz—refined, elegant.”

“It’s boring,” she said. “Try this.” She sang a phrase, bending the note in a way, sliding into it from somewhere unexpected. Julien’s fingers followed, and for a moment they were off, sliding together.

Then they found it. A melody that moved with the energy she wanted, built on the structure he knew how to give it. His classical discipline gave the song bones; her freedom gave it breath. The music filled the room, and Evie felt something unlock between them—a rhythm beyond the notes. Every time their eyes met over the piano, she felt the beat between them quicken.

By midafternoon, they had bones of two new songs. Evie’s voice was tired but she didn’t care. Julien’s collar was loosened, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, and he looked more alive than she’d ever seen him outside their performances.

“We’re good together,” he said, and then, as if realizing how it sounded, added, “—musically. I mean, we have a good partnership.”

Evie smiled, a slow thing she couldn’t keep back. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s not just the music.”

The words hung in the air between them. Julien’s gaze caught hers and held. He reached for her hand, his fingers brushing the back of her knuckles—

The door rattled. A voice called down the hall for Mademoiselle Hart. There was a letter, the concierge said, brought by a messenger.

Evie pulled back, pulse racing. The moment broke like a thread snapping.

She took the envelope from the concierge’s hand. Heavy cream paper, no return address, her name written in an elegant script she didn’t recognize.

Inside, a single line:

> The first note of your debt falls due in one month. I will come to collect.

No signature.

Evie stared at the words until Julien appeared at her shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked.

She folded the letter quickly, hiding it from view. “Nothing,” she said, but the locket felt suddenly heavy against her collarbone, and the melody that had been so alive moments ago was already slipping away. “Just old business. From home.”

Julien’s eyes lingered on her face, and she knew he didn’t believe her. But he didn’t push—not now, not yet.

Which meant she was alone with the question of who her benefactor was, and what kind of debt came due exactly one month from a girl with no money and nowhere left to run.