I can no longer lie to her. “I was curious about you. Theo was so protective of you. And when I heard news of his passing, I wanted to make sure you were safe.” I pause for a second. I should tell her thathewanted me to check on her. Thatheasked me to. But she speaks first.
“I’m such a fool.” She bites down on her lip. She won’t cry. She never does anymore. It’s as though all her tears were shed in those early months following Theo’s death. But I know this grimace and it’s obvious she’s in pain. I don’t move any closer though. I can feel she desperately doesn’t want me to touch her.
Jo stands. She is still clutching the correspondence between Theo and Vincent in her hands.
I should tell her all my secrets now, all my betrayals, in the hopes that I will only need to ask her forgiveness once, but I can’t make my mouth form the words. I’ve been living in paralyzing fear for weeks, ever since my run-in with Israels in the park.
“When was Marie-Celeste conceived?” she chokes out.
I have never let myself admit what I feared the most about my time with Theo. I have been over and over it in my mind, the dates I could have been impregnated, the clients during that time. I have convinced myself that Theo could not possibly be her father, but will I be able to persuade Jo? And what if I am wrong? There is a chance, ever so slight, though I have tried to reassure myself otherwise. And yet my daughter’s coppery hair concerns me every day, as does the way the gray comes out in her blue eyes when she is helping me sort the tulips. And yet I keep telling myself it is impossible, that Jo must believe me when I tell her Marie-Celeste has no connection to her or her family.
“When?” she yells as loudly as I have ever heard her raise her voice.
“After,” I say weakly.
“Are you certain?”
“As certain as I can be.”
For a brief moment I was truly happy. I had my daughter. I had my friend. And though Jo disappointed me when she abandoned our business together, I truly believed we would get past it. I was a fool for not knowing my sins would catch up with me.
Jo says nothing as she walks past me, and only once she is in the hallway do I hear a sob escape her throat.
31
Emma
“I would letyou defuse a bomb,” I say to Lucie as she finishes organizing our equipment while wearing her full bomb squad uniform in a suite at the Hotel Montalembert, only blocks from the museum. We’re ready for this, as ready as we’ll ever be.
“That sounds vaguely dirty.” Lucie giggles.
“I don’t even want to know what ‘defuse a bomb’ could be a euphemism for,” I reply.
“Perhaps the female orgasm,” Stella says. “Similarly complex.”
Lucie has toned herself down. She’s added makeup to mottle her smooth skin, creating dark circles beneath her eyes, red splotches on her otherwise golden cheeks. The uniform is a size too big and hangs off her lithe frame like a trench coat on a hanger. I am the opposite. For me she has played up all my features and overdone it with the makeup. When I look in the mirror I see a glamorous stranger.
I think again about how much we are risking to help Stelladestroy the Swansons. And not for the first time I wonder if it’s worth it, for any of us. We could sell Stella’s precious Van Gogh and be comfortable for the rest of our lives, but Stella is hell-bent on revenge. It’s what’s been fueling her, and it is the price the three of us will pay to receive a slice of the promised millions.
“I still can’t believe you were able to get all this equipment.” I look at the hard-shelled rolling suitcases that typically contain bomb detection gear. We’ve removed their guts and hollowed out a safe space for a stolen painting within each one.
“One day I’ll tell you everything I had to do to get it.” Lucie sighs with affectionate exasperation. She enjoys the Rock Star much more than the rest of her clients, and sometimes I wonder if what they have is more than transactional, or if it ever could be.
“Be careful,” Colette warns. “The packing compartments are the perfect sizes for the canvases in their original frames, but you must place them in delicately.”
“I know how to handle art,” I say.
“I’m allowed to be the nervous mother,” Colette says with authority. “I’ll say it again. Be careful. This paint chips very easily.”
“Shall we use code names to communicate during the heist?” Stella asks.
“Absolutely not,” I say at the same time as Lucie cheers.
“I would quite like to be Pussy Galore,” Stella announces.
“Oh, would you?” I ask.
“Maxwell and I once had a wild weekend in St. Moritz with Sir Sean Connery. He was absolutely the best of the Bonds, don’t you think? And I always admired Pussy. She was quite capable at judo.”
