Jude
In my eyes, we're already prepared. If you want, we can talk Thursday night to review.
Gemma
Yes, definitely want to talk Thursday.
Jude
Okay.
On a shaky huff, she sat back in her chair, then raised both hands in front of her.
They were quivering.
* * *
Monday morning, Gemma swung by the house she'd grown up in.
Her red-headed brother Hugo, now twenty-six, lived in an apartment of his own. But her youngest red-headed siblings, Nicolas and Ronan, ages twenty-three and twenty, still lived at home. Every morning followed the same pattern with those two. They'd hit snooze on their alarm clocks until the last possible second. Then they'd rush to scarf down breakfast, rush to get ready, then rush out the door a few minutes behind schedule.
She found them in the “scarf down breakfast” phase of their morning.
“Gemma! Can you make me pancakes?” Ronan asked as soon as he caught sight of her.
“No, indeed. Shockingly, I didn't swing by to cook for you two people.”
“My eggs,” Nicolas said, holding out a spoonula to her. “Can you take over with these real quick while I get some orange juice?”
“Also no. Good morning, though.”
“Gemma!”
“Is Mom up?”
“No.”
Gemma had both expected and hoped to hear that her mom was not yet awake. Since the stroke, she'd needed more sleep than before. Her tendency to rise late suited Gemma's purpose today since she'd come on a clandestine mission.
She sailed past the kitchen mayhem into the messy den/office space of their home. Starting seven years ago, after Mom's hospitalization, she'd spent a great deal of time sitting at the desk in this room, attempting to keep her family afloat. To this day, she acted as a buffer between her mom and bill collectors whenever she could. That task resembled nothing so much as running to one fire to douse it with a bucket of water only to spot another fire burning.
In the right bottom desk drawer, she found the file she sought. She flicked through it until she came to the item she was after—her parents' marriage certificate. She laid it on the desk, then pulled out Gracie and Paul’s marriage certificate and arranged them side by side.
Gracie and Paul's certificate had no seal and was a fill-in-the-blank-style document. It had printed sections, but all the personalizing details had been added by hand.
Were these certificates different because one was much older? Because they'd originated in separate counties? Or, as Gemma feared, because Gracie and Paul's was a fake?
Her sense of unease regarding Gracie and Paul's certificate deepened. She wasn't ready to foist her worry on her relatives, though. Her mom was weak, Grandma Colette was volatile, and Gracie was one hundred and two. She'd very much like to cushion this conversation with more facts. Hopefully kinder facts. In order to do that, Gemma needed to uncover additional details.
But how? What was her next step?
ChapterEleven
The rubber was about to meet the road.
The night she and Jude had been prepping for had arrived. In no time, they'd sit down for dinner with Cedric and Vincent. And when they did, they'd need to convince the two Frenchmen that their romance was real. Anxiety buzzed in Gemma's stomach as she steered her Vespa toward the strip mall parking lot Jude had chosen as their meeting spot.
She'd told Jude once that she had the ability to study a paper map, then get to her destination without consulting directions along the way. It was a challenge she enjoyed, a skill she took pride in. Before setting off from Bayview to Bangor just now, she'd studied her map extra-hard, not wanting to get lost. She could just imagine herself saying,Sorry that I'm late to your very important case, Jude. I looked at my paper map but forgot the route halfway here and ended up in New Hampshire.
