“Just last week, sir,” I tell the officer. “Has something happened?” They exchange a look that tells me everything I need to know.
“Her body was discovered in the field two streets over last night,” the officer informs me with a blank stare. “She had been struck hard in the stomach and lost too much blood. Her husband is nowhere to be found and her neighbors said the two of you spent time together.”
“We did.” I am biting back tears as Marie-Celeste joins me at the door and I grasp her hand. “Her husband was a bully. He beat her quite often,” I tell them, though I know this remains too common.
“Yes. We have been told this. Her sister is hoping to find him and have him arrested. Will you let us know if you hear anything?”
“Absolutely.” I melt into my daughter’s side. She is slightly taller than I am and much sturdier.
When they are gone, I weep into her chest.
“That could have been you,” I murmur.
“But it was not,” she says, stroking my hair. “Because you saved me from that life. Perhaps I do not thank you enough.”
“You never need to thank me.”
“Then please know I am grateful every day.”
My relief is tangled up in the conviction that I can never confess to my crimes. Committing them kept my daughter safe and keeping them buried will continue to do so.
But I must find out exactly what Jo knows about what I have done.
Lisette tells me over teathat Israels has been in Paris for many months.
“It has been a lovely break for his favorite girls,” she says when I ask her about him. “Though to tell you the truth he has lost interest in them as of late.”
“Why do you think this is?” I ask, trying not to seem too eager for an answer.
“Some of them speculate that he has a new woman, someone he is serious about.”
“Do you know who?”
“Absolutely no idea. Probably French. It must be why he has disappeared, but good riddance, though some of my girls did enjoy his wit. I have no time for the banter of men like him.
Lisette is showing her age. Her joints crack loudly when she stands to fetch me more tea, and her movements are slow and calculated. She has asked me more than once if I would be interested in taking over some of her duties with her girls.
“You are an expert at keeping things organized,” she said the last time we met, and I was flattered that she had noticed. “I have heard how you helped the Van Gogh woman, and the van den Bergs say the tulip girls you help them manage always sell the most flowers at market.”
I blushed and thanked her for the praise, but I also said that I was finished with the profession. It wasn’t the girls I didn’t feel like managing; it was the men. I no longer had it in me to cater to their emotions, their whims, and their needs. I wanted to be entirely free of them.
She repeats her request to me one more time and again I turn her down. But I am swelling with pride when I leave her and walk to the Amsterdam home of the van den Bergs to collect my weekly pay for my work with their tulip business. It is Elise van den Berg, instead of her maid, who meets me at the door, which is quite strange.
“I was hoping I would catch you today,” she says, ushering me inside and inviting me to sit in their high-ceilinged front parlor. I perch on the edge of a silk-covered sofa, an ornate patternof peacocks splayed out beneath my thighs. I worry I’m coated in dust from my travels, and I would have worn something nicer if I had known I would be invited inside. But Madame van den Berg doesn’t seem to notice my traveling clothes or dirty street shoes.
“We have a possible placement for you if it is something that might be of interest?”
“A placement?” I say. “What do you mean?”
“As you may know, there is a growing demand for tulips in America. They are much beloved, and my son believes we should open an American subsidiary for our bulbs. We are hoping to send knowledgeable people to New York with him to begin the enterprise, people who have experience with what we do. It was my idea that we should send a woman along to make inroads with some of the wives and the girls who sell on the streets, and of course you were the first person to come to my mind.”
Leave Holland? The country that has come to feel more like home than Paris ever did? And what of Marie-Celeste?
“I couldn’t possibly,” I begin.
“No need to answer now. Please think on it. I know you have a relation living with you. We could accommodate her travel as well.”
“That is very kind. I appreciate it.”
