Read Chapter 23: The Trail Goes Cold

The convent’s archives were housed in a limestone building that smelled of candle wax and old paper, and for three hours Claire had been sitting across from a nun whose patience was wearing thin as fast as the afternoon light.

“I’ve told you,” Sister Marie-Ange said, folding her hands over a ledger. “The records from that period were moved to the diocesan archive in Orléans after the fire in 1979. If the child was placed here under a false name, there would be no paper trail even in the best of times.”

Claire leaned forward, her voice steady, practiced. “My mother’s name was Elise. She was brought here in late 1959 or early 1960, probably by a woman who came from Argentina. She would have been an infant, maybe a few months old.”

Sister Marie-Ange’s eyes flickered, just a fraction too long before she looked away. Claire caught it.

“The diocesan archive,” Marc said from the doorway, his coat still on. He’d been pacing the courtyard for most of the hour. “Can you give us access?”

“You’ll need a written request. Permission from the bishop’s office generally takes eight to ten weeks.”

“We don’t have eight weeks,” Claire said.

The nun’s face softened into something professional and distant. “I understand, Mademoiselle. But the Church does not move at the speed of your investigation. If you want certainty, you will have to be patient.”

Claire wanted to scream. Instead, she thanked the sister, gathered her bag, and walked out into the gray Paris afternoon. Marc fell into step beside her.

“She knows something.”

“She’s hiding something,” Claire corrected. “But probably not the records. These old convents, they don’t keep secrets willingly. They just lose them. The fire in ’79, the moves, the consolidation—Elise’s file is either ash or buried so deep no one has touched it in forty years.”

Marc rubbed the back of his neck. “So what do we do?”

“I go to Orléans myself. I’ve done restoration for the diocese before—a manuscript, years ago. I can ask for a favor. Fast track the request.”

“Should I come?”

Claire stopped walking, turned to face him. The question had felt light, casual, but his eyes were darker than usual, searching her face for something she didn’t know she was meant to provide.

“You have your own things to handle,” she said carefully. “Your father’s case, your work. I don’t want—you’ve already come to Argentina with me.”

Marc’s jaw tightened. “I wanted to.”

There was a silence between them, the kind that had been growing since the terrace at Sacré-Cœur, since he’d told her about his own vanished father, since she’d held his hand in the cemetery in Buenos Aires and felt the weight of their shared grief.

“Marc,” she started, “I should have asked about the ring. About Elodie’s ring. I’m sorry. I’ve been keeping that from you, and that’s not fair.”

He looked down at her hand, at the gold band she wore on her middle finger. “You don’t have to tell me everything.”

“I know. But I want to.”

She was about to explain when her phone buzzed. She glanced at it—a number she didn’t recognize. She let it go to voicemail, but the trill of urgency had broken the moment.

“Orléans then,” Marc said, stepping back, the warmth already cooling into something more careful. “Let me know what you find.”

---

She didn’t make it to Orléans that night.

Her father called as she was walking to the Métro, his voice thin and tight in a way she’d only heard once before, when he’d told her about Laurent’s commission.

“Claire. A man came by the house today. Asked questions about you. About your mother.”

Her blood chilled. “Who was he?”

“Didn’t give a name. Big man, plain suit, French but with something off in his accent. Belgian, maybe. He wanted to know if you were in Paris, where you were staying. I told him I hadn’t seen you in weeks.”

“Papa, you shouldn’t have opened the door.”

“He knew about Elise, Claire. He named her. He said the Vergers were tired of your digging.”

Her fingers tightened around the phone. “I’m going to Orléans tomorrow. I need to find where my mother was sent, where she went after the convent. I need to find the locket.”

There was a long pause. Then, quietly, “She never told me. Elise never told me anything about her life before the convent. We met at a dance in ’62. She was working as a seamstress. She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw, but she lived in a cloud. Always looking over her shoulder. I thought it was just her nature. Then, after you were born, she started getting letters.”

“Letters from who?”

“I don’t know. She never showed them to me. But last week, when I remembered it—when I told you about Laurent hiring me to erase the painting—I went up into the attic loft. I found some old things of hers. One of those letters was in the lining of her winter coat. I brought it inside.”

Claire’s throat closed. “Papa. Where is it now?”

“I have it here. I was going to give it to you today, but you had already left for Orléans. Claire… you should come home.”

“I’ll come in the morning.”

She hung up, her heart hammering, and immediately dialed Marc. It rang three times before he answered, his voice low, muffled.

“Marc, my father—there’s a letter from my mother. A real letter. Can you meet me at his house tomorrow? I don’t want to go alone.”

Silence. Then, strained: “Claire, I can’t.”

“What? Why?”

“I can’t talk about this now.”

“Marc, after everything—what is going on with you?”

He took a breath, and when he spoke there was something sharp in his voice she had never heard before. “Leblanc found me. He’s been calling for three days. He knows I’m back in Paris. He gave me until Friday to pay what I owe.”

“Then let me help. I have money, I can borrow against the atelier, I can—“

“No.” The word came out hard, final. “You don’t understand what you’re offering. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Then tell me.”

Another long silence. She heard him exhale, heard a glass clink against something.

“I only got close to you because you were a lead.” His voice cracked slightly, then steadied. “That’s all it was. You were connected to the Verger case. I needed information. I needed something to hold over my creditors. I used you, Claire.”

The words hit her like a physical blow. She stopped walking in the middle of the street. A cyclist swerved around her, cursing.

“That’s a lie,” she said, but her voice wavered.

“It’s not.” His voice was flat now, automated. “I’m sorry. Find the letter. Find your grandmother’s truth. But do it without me.”

The line went dead.

Claire stood on the pavement, phone still pressed to her ear, listening to the empty hum of the disconnection. The evening crowds moved around her, indifferent. She replayed his words twice, three times, looking for the crack, the tell, the sign that he was lying to protect her rather than confessing a truth.

But she remembered the way he’d looked at her in Buenos Aires, hand in hand, his father’s ghost between them. She remembered the warmth pressing into her palm at Sacré-Cœur.

And then she remembered how easily he’d found her. How convenient it had been, a lawyer with a client who needed restoration work done in secret, just when she was struggling for commissions.

She had walked into his office alone. He had known exactly where to find her.

Claire lowered the phone. The air felt cold, even for October. She looked up at the street, at the wet cobblestones, at the windows of the passing buildings reflecting her own small, betrayed reflection.

She would go to her father’s house alone. She would read her mother’s letter alone.

She had been the one abandoned all along.

She turned and walked into the evening, not once looking back for the shadow she could feel watching her from a doorway across the street.