Cara Black - AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

But Nelie, eyes closed, was asleep. With satisfaction, Aimée saw that there was a flush of color in her cheeks.

“Half a liter, Mademoiselle Leduc,” the white-coated attendant said, pulling the needle out of her arm. “But we don’t know if your blood will match.”

“I understand,” she said. “I just wanted to do something.”

“Someone will benefit,” the attendant assured her.

“Thank you for letting me come up here to do this so I could spend time with her.”

“What my boss doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” The attendant winked. “Pretty tough, eh?” He pressed the gauze down over the needle site with a firm hand. “And you with stitches!”

He cocked an eyebrow as he taped the gauze in place. “Are you all right?”

She wished she were.

IN L’HÔPITAL NECKER’S linoleum-tiled hallway, laced with the odor of alcohol, Aimée joined René at the nursery window. A row of swaddled babies lay in white Plexiglas tray tables. Some were connected to tubes.

“Our girl’s a trouper,” René said. He pointed to the far right.

Stella’s toes kicked the blanket. Her little balled fists flailed. A basket of stuffed pink pigs sat by her.

“She loves pigs,” René said. “She laughed when I went oink, oink.”

Impossible for a two-week-old, the manual said, but Aimée let that pass.

René slipped his arms into his Burberry raincoat and picked up his briefcase. “Got to rush, Aimée. Now that I’ve got your signature on the Fontainebleau contract, I’ll messenger it to them from the office.”

“Fantastic.” He’d made enough to pay the rent and much more.

“Me, I’ve got a network to monitor,” Aimée said, glancing at the time. “Talk to you later.”

René paused and shot her a look.

“Feel up to a rave with me and Magali tonight?”

“ Non, merci. Magali must wonder what’s become of you.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. She knew he’d cancel his date and hold her hand if she asked him to. But he had a life of his own and she couldn’t intrude on it.

“Stella will be raised by her mother,” René said. “You made that happen. You did a good thing.” He took her hand and rubbed it.

“It’s for the best, Aimée. You know, I’ll miss her, too.”

He looked away.

Aimée swallowed. At the hospital door, René turned and stared at her as if he were reading her thoughts. “A baby would slow you down. Not your style, you know that.”

She summoned a grin. “All those dry-cleaning bills, not to mention the cost of diapers!”

At the hospital gate she watched René’s Citroën turn the corner onto rue Vaugirard, then she turned and walked back. One last look. That’s all.

She stood at the nursery window until a nurse appeared and picked up Stella. Aimée waved good-bye as they left the ward. She waved good-bye to those little pink toes.

Long after Stella had gone, Aimée’s breath clouded the glass. Of course, Stella should be with her mother. But deep inside she ached for that warm bundle beside her on the duvet. Those blinking blue eyes filled with wonder. Somehow it could have been her style. People did it all the time. She would have managed. She would have been the mother she’d never had.

She made herself walk down the chilly corridor. She could do this. But the ache inside wouldn’t go away. She collapsed onto a waiting-room chair, sobs choking her. A hand began stroking her back. She looked up into the eyes of a nurse.

“Lost someone?” the nurse asked.

I’ve lost her forever.

Aimée rubbed the tears from her face and sniffled.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “Trite as it sounds, every day the pain will lessen. It never goes away but you’ll remember the good things.”

Aimée nodded, took a deep breath, and hurried down the hallway.

SHE CLIMBED THE STEPS to her apartment and opened her door to Miles Davis’s wet nose pressed into her palm. But the high-ceilinged rooms were empty of a cooing Stella.

She washed the streaks from her kohl-smudged eyes. Dotted eye cream, for puffiness, in circles beneath them, using the last squeeze of Dior’s fine-line concealer. At this rate, she’d need extra-strength putty.

Concentrate. She had a network to monitor, systems to check, work, there was always work to be done. At her desk, she booted up her laptop; Miles Davis nestled at her feet. Outside her open balcony doors, the Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile bell chimed the hour and leaves scuttled in the rising wind.

She performed routine maintenance, monitored the router connections, the firewall design. Yesterday’s cold espresso sat forgotten by her keyboard. That done, she hit Save for the backup copy. Not bad—only ten minutes to get the system online once more.

Someone was knocking at her front door. She hit Send and grabbed her scarf from the duvet. The faint odor of talcum powder rose from it. She chewed her lip trying not to think of what could have been.

At the front door she peered through the keyhole and saw the hem of a blue smock and the legs of her concierge encased in their support pantyhose.

“Another box, Mademoiselle,” Madame Cachou said, frowning with disapproval as Aimée opened the door. “You’re lucky I didn’t throw the others out, but the—”

“Désolée,” Aimée interrupted. “I forgot, deadlines . . . I know, the plumbers complained.”

The box sagged open, contents spilling over the parquet—letters in her grandfather’s scratchy handwriting and something white.

“Not the plumbers, Mademoiselle,” Madame Cachou said. “This was on my steps today, blocking the way. A lady left it.”

Curious, Aimée bent to peer closer.

In the box lay a long lace christening gown smelling of cedar. On top of it was a color photograph protected by plastic, the colors still vivid. In the photo, a smiling couple held an infant by a baptismal font. She recognized the dark brown wood font of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile and a younger version of her father in his good blue suit, her grandfather with a black mustache, a slimmer Morbier, and the woman who must be her mother.

Her stomach knotted. She hadn’t seen a photo of her mother since her father had burned them, right after she’d left them.

Young, hair in a simple knot, a light in her eyes that the camera caught. Those carmine red lips. And for the millionth time Aimée wondered what had happened to her mother.

“Beautiful,” Madame Cachou said. “You don’t see many christening gowns like this anymore. Friends of your family, Mademoiselle?”

Aimée’s thoughts returned to her dim hallway and the flushed face of Madame Cachou. She felt stupid, sifting through memories, wallowing in self-pity. But she couldn’t help thinking that the christening gown would fit Stella.

She nodded. Her grandfather must have saved this and it had gotten mixed up with other people’s boxes in the basement. She had better make nice, keep Madame Cachou on her good side.

“I’ll have to apologize and thank the tenant who left this. Which floor does she live on?”

“No tenant that I know of,” Madame Cachou said. “ Et alors, the way people come and go these days, it’s like the Gare du Nord.”

“What do you mean?”

“The lady said you might need this.”

“Need this?”

“For your baby,” Madame Cachou said.

The hair rose on the back of Aimée’s neck.

“You modern career women!” Madame Cachou sighed, hands on her ample hips. “Rushing everywhere. No time to cook.” She glanced into Aimée’s hallway. “Or clean. At least someone respects tradition.”

But the baby’s not mine, Aimée almost said.

“What else did this woman say?”