Mom glances at me. “We did, if it’s the one I think it is.”
“Not anymore?”
She points at the drawing. “See this pattern on the handle, and the applied flowers? I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s the one Gran sold some ten years ago to a collector.”
“Dammit!” Max squeezes his eyes shut, then reopens them. “Forgive my language, ladies. Which collector, Renée?”
“I don’t know,” Mom says. “My mother sold it while Lucie and I were in Nice on vacation.”
I look at her. “We can find the collector’s name in the computer, no?”
“It was on our previous computer.” Mom shoots me an apologetic look. “I never managed to recover the data after it crashed.”
I remember that computer giving up the ghost, but this is the first I’m hearing about the lost data. “What? We’re missing years of records?”
“No, sweetie,” she says. “Gran didn’t trust computers. She kept her own books of pen and paper.”
“The ledgers!”
Mom nods. “And we have the receipts, of course.”
“Great!” I head to the bookcase with all our financial and administrative documents.
Mom and Max follow.
I turn to Mom. “Would you point me in the right direction?”
Sliding her finger over the boxes and binders, she moves from left to right, top to bottom, until she’s scanned the last shelf.
We wait patiently.
She turns toward us. “I’m missing two years of boxes.”
I blink. “How? What happened.”
“Nothing irreparable.” She taps my hand reassuringly. “I hope.”
Shehopes? “Mom! Explain.”
“Gran must’ve kept those boxes in her little office upstairs. Violette”—she glances at Max—“that’s my sister, must’ve transferred them to her attic with a bunch of other stuff when we were clearing out Gran’s office.”
“OK,” I say. “I’ll give her a call and seeif we can drop by.”
We say our goodbyes and head to the car.
“Will your aunt let us open those boxes?” Max asks.
Silly questions deserve silly answers!“For ten thousand euros, maybe.”
“I’ll need to stop by a bank.”
I stop mid-stride. “Did you just build on my joke, or were you being serious?”
He blinks, glances at the car, and pats his pockets for the key. “I’ll let you cogitate on that while we drive.”
10
LUCIE
