Read Chapter 19: The Locket's Echo

The drawer stuck halfway, as if it had decided it didn't want to be opened. Camille tugged harder, and the old wood groaned before surrendering with a jolt, sending a cascade of yellowed receipts and dried-out pens sliding forward. She was looking for a plug adapter—Thérèse had mentioned there might be one in the bedroom's sideboard—but Thérèse had also mentioned the house was full of things that hadn't been touched in twenty years. The adapter hunt was turning into an archaeology dig.

Her fingers brushed against something soft at the back. Velvet. She pulled it out.

A small hinged box, dark blue, faded at the edges. It wasn't locked. The latch gave with a whisper of resistance, and Camille's breath caught in her throat.

The photograph inside was folded to fit, creased along a line that had nearly worn through. It showed a young woman standing in front of a bakery on a Paris street, sunlight catching the gold chain at her throat. Her smile was tentative, as if she wasn't sure she deserved to be in the frame. The locket hung just below her collarbone, small and round, catching the light.

Camille's hands began to tremble.

"Mamie." The word came out as barely a whisper.

She traced the edge of the photograph with her fingertip. The locket in the image was identical to the one missing from her luggage. The same dull gold finish, the same simple engraving she had never been able to decipher—her grandmother had always said it was a family secret, and that a lady never told. Camille had worn it every day since the funeral. It had been in her travel case, wrapped in tissue paper like a relic. And then it had vanished, somewhere between Montréal and this remote corner of Quebec.

Her throat tightened. She pressed the photograph to her chest, as if she could absorb the warmth of the woman in the image. The sorrow came not as a wave but as a slow, quiet flood, rising from her stomach to her ribs until her eyes burned.

She did not hear Antoine's footsteps on the stairs. She only became aware of him when the doorframe creaked under his weight.

"Camille?" His voice held that tentative edge, the one he used when he wasn't sure if he was intruding.

She looked up at him through a blur of tears, the photograph still pressed to her chest. His face shifted almost immediately—from curiosity to alarm to something softer, more careful.

"Wh-what happened? Is it the phone? Did your editor call again?"

She shook her head, unable to find her voice. Then she held out the photograph. He crossed the room slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal, and took it from her hands with the reverence of a man handling something sacred.

He studied the image. She watched his eyes move from the woman's face to the locket at her throat. Something clicked there, a quiet understanding. He had seen the locket. He had seen her touch it absentmindedly during meals. He had also seen her expression when she'd realized it was gone from her unpacked case on that first chaotic evening.

"It's her, isn't it? Your grandmother?" His accent thickened the way it did when he was moved.

Camille nodded, pressing her palm against her mouth to stifle a sob. "I found it in the drawer. I don't even know why I opened it. I was looking for an adapter. And then—" She gestured helplessly at the photograph.

Antoine sat on the edge of the bed beside her. The springs protested beneath the sudden weight. He turned the photograph so the light from the window caught it better. "She's beautiful. This was Paris?"

"Rue Cler. She ran a small bakery there. My grandfather proposed to her outside that shop." Camille managed a watery smile. "She always said yes to him, in the end. But she made him wait six months to prove he deserved her."

Antoine's mouth curved in a small smile. "Your grandfather earned it, I hope."

"He did. For fifty-two years." The tears came faster now. "I'm sorry. I don't usually—I don't cry like this."

"You don't have to apologize," he said quietly. "This is your home, too, for now. You can cry here."

The simplicity of the statement undid her further. She let out a shuddering breath, and the sobs she had been holding back escaped in uneven bursts. To her surprise, she felt Antoine's hand settle on her back—tentative, light, as if he were afraid she would shatter. She didn't. She leaned into the contact instead.

"I should have found it," he said, his voice barely above a murmur. "Your locket. I promised I would look, and I let the blizzard and the letter and everything else distract me. I failed you."

She raised her head, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. "You didn't fail me, Antoine. You had no reason to search my room. The intruder—whoever it was—maybe it was just a drifter looking for something to sell. The locket has some value but not much. It's not like they'd know."

"That doesn't matter." His jaw tightened. "It mattered to you. That's enough."

Camille studied his face. There was something almost painful in his expression—a familiar self-flagellation, the same guilt that surfaced whenever he spoke of his father's unfinished portrait, or the letters he had avoided for years. He carried his failures like stones in his pockets.

"Come here," she said softly, and to her own surprise, she reached out and pulled him into an embrace. He stiffened at the contact, held himself rigid for a long moment, and then—slowly, carefully—his arms wrapped around her. His chin rested against the crown of her head.

They stayed like that for a long moment, the photograph crumpled slightly between them. The room felt smaller, warmer. Outside, the wind had begun to pick up again, rattling the windowpanes, but inside, there was only the sound of their breathing.

Antoine pulled back first, his cheeks flushed. He cleared his throat and gestured at the photograph. "Where is she now? Paris?"

"In a cemetery in the eleventh arrondissement. Under a cherry tree that blooms in April." Camille smoothed the crease in the photograph, a gentle, reverent gesture. "She always said she wanted to be under a tree that would turn pink in the spring. So people would know her tomb was a happy place."

Antoine's eyes grew distant. "My father knew what he wanted. He wrote it down—detailed instructions, like an engineering blueprint. The plot, the headstone, the inscription. He'd chosen it all years before." He let out a hollow laugh. "I didn't even realize the executor would have copies of everything he'd ever planned. I thought if I didn't open the letters, I could pretend he didn't plan any of it."

They sat in silence for a moment. Camille looked down at the photograph again. So many things had been left unsaid between her grandmother and herself—not out of conflict, but out of the casual assumption that there would always be more time. She had never asked who the locket originally belonged to. She had never asked about the engraving's meaning.

The photograph. No one had ever shown her this photograph. It must have been tucked away in an album, folded and forgotten.

A thought struck her, cold and clear as winter light. "Antoine—do you still have your mother's old photographs? The ones from before she left?"

He blinked, thrown by the redirect. "In boxes in the basement, I think. I've never gone through them. Why?"

"The letter said the item in the safety deposit box is time-sensitive." She gripped the photograph, her heart beginning to beat faster. "Your father was a planner. He planned everything. That letter came three years ago. What if the item doesn't have an infinite expiration date?"

Antoine's face went pale beneath his beard. "I've been avoiding those letters for years."

"And it almost cost you the letters." She held up the photograph, her grandmother's face gazing out at them. "I didn't know this existed until I found it by accident. Your father's instructions exist too. What if you miss the window?"

He stared at her, the weight of his avoidance settling visibly onto his shoulders. Then he stood, shoving a hand through his hair. "The storm. The roads. The timetable the executor gave me—it ends next week."

"Then we have to reach Montréal before it does."

"We," he repeated, the word hanging strangely in the air.

Camille slipped the photograph carefully back into its box and rose to meet his gaze. "You'll need a navigator who reads French legalese. And I'll need a reason to stop thinking about what I can't retrieve." She touched her collarbone, where the locket should have hung. "We both have things we're afraid to face. Maybe we have better odds facing them together."