When Cosima put her arm around her, Edie leaned into the nook of her shoulder. It happened without hesitation or effort, easing away the last of the worry from Cosima’s stomach. She indulged the impulse to lean down and kiss Edie on the temple, which earned her a quick smile.
“Well, this cat is loved now,” Cosima said. “You talked to the docent. Where do you think we should look for Agatha’s clue?”
“Not here.” Edie turned around under Cosima’s arm and put her own arms up on Cosima’s shoulders.
“No? Is there another bony cat somewhere?” Edie’s eyes were new-leaf green in the sunny courtyard.
“There could be. Turns out that Rouen has at least half a dozen old, amazing churches. But no.” She smiled again, the way the cat might have, once, with the rat caught beneath the points of its claws.
“What did the docent tell you?”
“First, the bad news. He said there isn’t anywhereherethat a visitor almost fifty years ago could have hid something that wouldn’t have been found already. It’s a gallery and artists’ space now, but before that it was an art school, crawling with children.”
“Disappointing.”
“Yes. However, when Agatha would have been around in the seventies, the cat mummy was still big news. There’s a café a short walk away that’s been around forever. Back when the cat mummy was recent, the daughter of the café owner took over management. Mostly as a joke, she had a sign painted with a cat skeleton on it and hung it up over the café doors. Ever since, it’s been known as ‘The Dead Cat.’”
“And you think Agatha might have left something there?”
Edie picked up a strand of Cosima’s hair and twirled it around her finger. The gentle tugging sensation made Cosima’s knees go weak.
“I reallydothink so, because the other thing the docent told me is that ever since the German occupation of France, people have been pinning letters to one of the walls of that same café.”
“Oh.” Now Cosima could feel Edie’s same excitement quickening her pulse, because pinning a letter to the wall of a French café sounded like something Agatha would do. And wasn’t that surprising—that in the short time they’d been following her clues, Cosima had started to get a sense of what made Agatha Llewellyn tick?
“That’s right,” Edie said, nodding her head. “I’m talking about letters they hoped loved ones would find on their way over the channel, or letters to their future selves, or—”
“—to a treasure hunter.”
“Right. The café never takes anything down. Only the person who a letter is meant for can claim it.”
Cosima picked up one of Edie’s long braids and smoothed it over her chest—a touch with no purpose but to reassure herself of Edie’s aliveness. “Let’s go, then.”
Edie stepped next to Cosima and wrapped two arms around her elbow, and they ambled the few blocks to the café, a low building straddling a street corner whose forest-green awning sheltered bistro tables. The upper story was half-timbered, and over the awning was a gilded wooden sign, Le Chat Mort, showing a cat skeleton chasing a ball of string. The café’s double glass doors emitted a pleasant smell of coffee, wine, baking bread, and cooking onions as people came in and out.
“Let’s sit by the wall.” Edie slipped off her coat in the warm room. Her snug black T-shirt looked effortlessly cool with her braids, jeans, and Converse, and it put her lush body on display, turning the heads of more than one of the people seated around the glossy wooden tables.
“The docent wasn’t exaggerating about this place never taking the letters down.”
The eight-foot-tall wall ran uninterrupted by windows along the entire back of the café. There had to be thousands of letters tacked up, folded into thirds or tucked into envelopes and layered like shingles. A wooden ladder leaned against the wall, presumably so that customers could climb it to post their writings higher up or study what they found there. Some of the letters were new, the paper stiff and the ink vivid, while others were brittle with age. Each of them had a name written large along its margin to identify the intended recipient, making the wall look like a giant illustration made up of names in different inks on every color of paper—though the overall effect was not of chaos, but a Gallic tidiness.
“I’m hoping it will be easy to find the general era that Agatha wrote her letter in.” Edie sat down at a table next to the wall, her eyes on its contents. “All of these look like they could’ve been left yesterday. The names are in Sharpie and glitter pen.”
A server came around. Cosima informed her that Edie was vegan so the server could tell her Edie’s options and Cosima could translate.
“I’ll have the potato gratin and sparkling mineral water,” Edie said. “Can you also ask her about the letters and where we might find one from the seventies?”
Cosima ordered for herself, then asked, “Pourriez-vous m’indiquer où je pourrais trouver une lettre rédigée dans les années soixante-dix? Une dame plus âgée de notre entourage nous a demandé de la chercher.” It wasn’t strictly true that Morag had sent them here to get Agatha’s letter, but true enough.
“Je demanderai à la propriétaire de venir à votre table dès que possible. Elle saura vous aider.” The server set down utensils and wove back to the bar through the tables.
“The owner is going to help us when she gets a chance.” Cosima pushed her chair away from the table to make more room for her legs.
“It isn’t terrible watching you speak FrenchinFrance,” Edie said with a smile. “Although if you didn’t speak French, I would be absolutely scandalized by the quality of Swiss boarding schools.” Edie put her elbows on the table and leaned closer. “Speaking not at all of Swiss boarding schools, I have a feeling the phone call you took wasn’t the kind that was great, and then I started thinking about what time it is in California, and now I’m worried. This is actually a reason I may never have a phone again by choice. It means I’m unable to look up news about Phoebe Frank or you, and so I can’t blow a fan on my mental spirals until they’re spinning so fast I can’t think. I’mserene now, I’m sure you’ve noticed. Anyway, you don’t have to share with me what may or may not be going on, but I’m interested to listen if you want me to.”
Cosima surveyed the letters on the wall, thinking about her mother’s note that she and Edie had found in the wallpaper.
You’re impossible, her mother had written,and right now, made only of stars and hopes I didn’t know I had.
