The statues his parents spent so many hours on were relics of another time, a different way of life. Fabrice disdained his father’s business: making cabinets by day, saving saints at night.
Fabrice’s passion was for words: finding graceful ways to string them together himself, and reading the prose and poetry, literature and sonnets, written by others. Surely words were what would lead France into the modern world, not an ancient craft like carving.
Words were what transported Fabrice.
And those words had brought him to Paulette.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PRESENT DAY
PARIS
Cady
Despite her misgivings that Jean-Paul might want something from her, he simply bade Cady a polite “good evening” when they arrived at her Métro stop, thanked her for the lovely day, and kissed her on each cheek.
His rapid departure felt rather anticlimactic after the day they had spent together—not to mention the many questions that had nagged at her—but Cady was also glad to retreat, alone, to her small apartment, dining in silence on simple falafel takeout at her postage-stamp-sized kitchen table, gazing at the woman in the photo, and wondering who had carved Gus and why.
She spent the next day photographing the Montmartre carousel, situated at the very foot of the steps to the Basilica de Sacré-Coeur. Afterward she meandered up the hill to the cathedral, trying to ignore the way her photography bag dug into her shoulder as she explored the winding cobblestone alleys that had hosted so many well-known artists: Picasso and van Gogh, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Twice Cady stopped at cafés: first for coffee, then for a Campari. She liked to think it was proof that she was falling into the rhythm ofthe City of Light. When she asked a waiter if he knew of an English-language bookstore, he suggested she try the Abbey.
According to her phone, it was located not far from her apartment. She took the Métro back to the Quartier Latin, walked down Boulevard Saint-Jacques, then took a left onto rue de la Parcheminerie.
Cady spied a Gothic façade, carved arched doors, a Canadian flag waving in the breeze, and several book-crammed carts crowding the sidewalk. Inside was a warren of book-lined paths.
A slightly musty smell hung in the air, reminding Cady of Maxine’s Treasures.
Grief, sodden and heavy, weighed upon her chest. If Maxine was looking down upon her now, Cady knew, she would be proud. But that didn’t keep Cady from wishing, desperately, viscerally, hopelessly, that things were different. That she and Maxine were huddled over the counter in the shop, debating names for the baby, looking forward to adding to their unorthodox little family unit.
“Bonjour, may I help you?” asked a young man behind the register, in unaccented English. He was thin and wore wire-rimmed glasses and a cardigan, as though sent from central casting to work in a bookstore.
“Have you ever heard of the novelist Fabrice Clement?” Cady asked.
“Oh, sure. Clement was one of the new wave of French authors that emerged after the Second World War. This area was a hotbed of creativity and radical thinking back then. Sartre and de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, they all hung out in cafés and jazz clubs in this neighborhood. Americans, too: James Baldwin and Richard Wright.”
“Would you have any of Clement’s novels? Preferably in English?”
“Let’s see... we should have a copy ofLe Châteauaround here somewhere. That was Clement’s biggest success by far, though he went on to write several other novels.” He led the way along one narrow hall of books and down a steep staircase. Finally he stooped, scanned a couple of shelves, sneezed, and said, “Aha. Here it is.”
He handed her a slightly battered copy of a book with a red-and-black dust jacket, titledThe Château. A photo of the author on the rear cover showed a brooding, hawk-eyed man, good-looking but severe.
“It’s a classic from that time,” the bookseller said as he straightened and headed back to the register.
“Is he still writing?”
“I doubt he’s still alive, to be honest. I haven’t heard anything about him for years. People still read the book in university, sometimes, in courses about the Nouveau Roman or anti-novel movement.”
“Oh.” Cady had no idea what he was referring to.
“What I always thought was interesting about it is that it’s a roman à clef.”
“What does that mean?”
The young man looked surprised.
“Sorry,” Cady said, trying to ignore her flaming cheeks. “I wasn’t what you would call a literature person in school.” She hadn’t beenanysort of person in school.
