Bailey walks toward the museum.
Seth follows several feet behind her.
She doesn’t turn around, but she knows he is behind her. She knows he is following her in case she needs him.
She fights against her desire to turn around. She fights the desire to see the car pulling away, moving down the cobblestone streets. To see her grandfather, again. Ever since he’s been sick, she feels their goodbyes differently—the aftermath of each one, stinging.
Should she be surprised that with what’s going on, she’s not also focused on Hannah? That she’s not worried about her? She isn’t. If Bailey trusts anything, she trusts Hannah to do what is needed to take care of herself—and to take care of her.
Maybe that’s what happens when you have a mother who never asks you:What do we do now?
You believe her that she knows.
Bailey takes a deep breath and keeps going. She walks the narrow cobblestone streets, passing the restaurants gearing up for late-afternoon cocktails and bites. The marina lit up in the distance.
She keeps going up the steep and windy hill that lands her by that former castle, a large photograph of Picasso gracing the outside.MUSÉE PICASSO, ANTIBESin large letters alongside his face.
Inside, she heads directly to the ticket booth. It’s crowded. They needed it to be crowded. They needed a public place where Bailey canblend into the crowd—where they both can—so he can make sure no one followed them here. So her father can make sure they’re free to do it. To go where they need to go next.
The tour guide is waiting there, just like Nicholas said he would be, holding a sign that saysTHE FRENCH WAY TOURS.
“Bonjour,” he says. “Are you here for the four p.m. tour?”
Bailey nods. Yes, she is. The 4 p.m. tour. The last tour of the day.
The tour guide smiles and motions for her to stand with the group assembling around him. Eight to ten of them waiting for him to start walking them through.
That is all that is apparently required. She was ready to hand him her confirmed ticket. But he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask for her passport either. He doesn’t need any further proof that she is on his list.
She stands to the side with the others who are waiting. A young family, two older couples, and a guy close to Bailey’s age in wire-rim glasses, a backpack slung over his arm. He nods in her direction, like an acknowledgment of their shared twentysomething status. Bailey nods back, turns away.
A few moments later, the tour starts. The guide begins by sharing the history of the museum—the castle that was once the Château Grimaldi built upon the foundations of the ancient town of Antipolis. It had served as the residence for the local governor for centuries, had been a town hall, a barracks, and the Grimaldi Museum. And, for a period of time, it became the home to Picasso.
Bailey forces herself to focus, to look interested. In another world, she would be interested. But now she grows increasingly anxious as the guide walks the group through the new collection on the first floor. The visiting collection. It’s a young artist’s collection, paintings with lots of geometric shapes. A large triangular sculpture in the middle. The guide is explaining the artist’s intention with thattriangle, but Bailey only hears every third word. Her heart is racing so loudly that she thinks the rest of the group must hear it, but they don’t notice.
When they get upstairs, the guide starts to move them through the Picasso Collection. He walks to the room in the back with Picasso’s gorgeous plates and the painting Bailey is supposed to be looking for. TheUlysses and sirenspainting. The bench in front of it.
He talks about the surrealist qualities—Picasso’s lessons on temptation—but Bailey isn’t listening. She is only listening for the moment when he motions toward the door. Toward where the group is going next.
“This way please…” he says.
But Bailey doesn’t go with the rest of the group. She hangs back. She hangs back until after the tour group leaves. She pretends to be enamored by those gorgeous ceramic plates lining the wall. She studies each one of them for several minutes, as if someone is going to test her on them. As if someone is watching her.
Because someone is.
The young guy. The one with the wire-rim glasses. He stays back too, and he is watching her. There is no question he is watching her—the only question is why.
It could be that he is just interested in her. He’s a backpacker close to her age. Maybe he is looking for someone to hang with that day, looking for someone to travel with.
Or is it something else?
She isn’t waiting to find out. She pretends to be looking at a painting, Wire Rims not coming any closer. Not yet.
Then, she moves. She passes the elevator, heads toward the back steps. She flies down those steps, not looking behind her. She doesn’tgo back out to the street to find Seth, not yet. Not when it will disrupt the plan, the only plan that gets her to her father.
She passes by the women’s room, where he might think to wait for her—if he is waiting for her. And she rounds the corner to the family bathroom, the single stall, where she locks the door behind her. She rests against the door, willing her heartbeat to slow. She rests against the door even when a few people try the lock, giving a couple of friendly knocks—before giving up, moving on.
She stays there long enough that if Wire Rims was just trying to approach her for innocent reasons, he’d have long since given up and left the museum. He’d head out to the closest bar and try his luck with another person who catches his eye.
