I wasn't about to stop now.
Outside, the sky stretched endless and dark, stars scattered like broken glass across black silk.
I closed my eyes and let the engines carry me toward whatever came next.
5
ELLA
Hopeful things first.
That was the promise I made myself as I stepped back onto the street, Paris bright and alive in the late morning sun. I repeated it like a small prayer, something to hold onto before the harder parts of this trip swallowed me whole.
There would be time for officials and paperwork. For signatures and cold rooms and people explaining the mechanics of my sister’s death as if logistics could soften the loss.
But not yet.
First, I wanted Rose.
Not the version preserved in grief back home. Not the careful wife Randy mourned or the dutiful daughter my parents remembered. I wanted the woman who’d lived here. The one who’d chosen this city again and again until it became part of her life.
The version of my sister I’d never fully known.
On paper, Rose’s life in Paris had been easy to explain. She’d been a corporate trainer, flown in and out of cities for years, teaching leadership workshops and executive development. Herfirm was headquartered in France. Paris, she’d said, was just a hub. A base. Somewhere central while she trained teams across Europe—London one week, Berlin the next, Milan after that.
It had sounded plausible. Responsible. Respectable.
Randy had believed it without question. My parents, too. Rose had always been competent, polished, reliable. If she said she was working, no one thought to look closer.
But standing here now, surrounded by the evidence of a life that felt rooted rather than temporary, I couldn’t help wondering how much of that story had been true.
Maybe she had traveled. Maybe she’d stood in boardrooms and conference centers, flipping through slides and delivering rehearsed insights about leadership and synergy and growth.
Or maybe she’d stayed here.
In this apartment. In this city. Coming back to the same streets, the same places, the same quiet routines that didn’t belong to a woman passing through.
Maybe Paris hadn’t just been her base.
Maybe it had been her choice.
The thought made my chest ache with something sharp and tender all at once. Rose hadn’t just been visiting a city. She’d been building a life—carefully, quietly, under the protection of a story no one thought to question.
And if that was true, then the things she’d left behind weren’t just souvenirs.
They were clues.
I started with the easiest one.
The bookstore.
I’d noticed the receipt tucked into the novel beside Rose’s bed the night before—a narrow strip of paper stamped with a name and an address in the Latin Quarter. The edges were softened from being handled, folded once and tucked deep into the pages, like something she meant to come back to.
So, I took the metro, emerging into streets that felt younger somehow—crowded with students, tourists, couples leaning into each other with careless intimacy. Music spilled from open doorways. Someone argued loudly in rapid French, punctuated by laughter.
The bookstore sat between a stationery shop and a tiny gallery, its window crammed with mismatched displays. Paperbacks stacked sideways. Handwritten recommendation cards taped beneath covers. A cat sleeping atop a pile of travel guides.
I smiled despite myself and pushed inside.
