Chapter 329: Poor Little Rich Aunt

Séverine was in the kitchen garden, kneeling in the mud, pulling carrots that were mostly leaves.

The rain had finally stopped. The garden sat inside an old brick wall, half of it gone to weeds, the other half planted in rows so straight they looked measured with string. A wheelbarrow with a flat tire leaned against the barn Damien had raided that morning.

She was wearing the black cashmere turtleneck again, the one from the porch. In daylight, Aria could see that both elbows had been darned.

’She dressed up to meet us,’ Aria thought. ’She put on the one nice thing she owns to tell us to get off her lawn.’

"Jade’s lying down," Aria said, picking her way up the row. "She isn’t sleeping, but she’s lying down. So I brought a different translator."

Damien stopped at the end of the row, hands in his pockets.

Séverine looked at him the way a cat looks at a vacuum cleaner.

"He fixed your roof," Aria said.

"Je sais. Théo me l’a dit."

"She knows," Damien said. "Théo told her."

Aria pressed her lips together and crouched beside the basket. "I have questions about the family."

Damien translated. Séverine pulled another carrot, knocked the dirt off against her boot, and laid it in the basket.

"Pose-les."

"Ask," Damien said.

"Jade told us the Orpheus family is broke. That they lost everything when my mother left." Aria looked at the darned sleeves, the flat tire, the barn with half a roof. "Is that true?"

Séverine sat back on her heels. For a moment she looked almost amused.

"C’est ce qu’on lui a dit."

"That’s what they told her," Damien said.

"And what’s the truth?"

Séverine wiped her hands on her trousers.

"Moi, je suis fauchée. La famille, non."

Damien was quiet for a beat. "She’s broke. The family isn’t."

Aria stared at her.

Fourteen children. One carton of milk. Six eggs from old hens. A beam over the foyer rotting from the inside.

"How not broke?"

Séverine looked toward the garden wall, as if she could see straight through it. "Des tableaux. Des maisons. Une banque à Genève. Des vignes en Bourgogne."

"Paintings. Houses. A bank in Geneva. Vineyards in Burgundy." Damien’s eyes narrowed. "She means they own the bank."

"Then why does this—" Aria gestured at all of it. The carrots. The wheelbarrow. The sweater. "Why does it look like this?"

Séverine picked up the basket and stood.

"Quand l’orphelinat de Lyon a fermé, j’ai demandé de l’argent pour les enfants. Ma mère a dit non. Alors je les ai pris quand même." She lifted one shoulder. "Ma mère n’aime pas qu’on lui dise non."

"When Lyon closed, she asked for money for the children," Damien said. "Her mother said no. She took them anyway. Her mother doesn’t like being told no."

"So she cut you off."

"Oui."

Aria didn’t need that one translated.

Her mother. Her mother had a mother. Somewhere, in a house with paintings and a bank, there was a woman who had heard the words fourteen orphans and said no.

’I have a grandmother,’ Aria thought.

Grandmothers were supposed to knit. They were supposed to smell like cookies and slip you twenty dollars when your parents weren’t looking.

"What’s she like?" Aria asked. "Your mother. My—" The word stuck. "What’s her name?"

Séverine was already walking toward the kitchen door. She stopped with her hand on the latch.

"Ma mère te les dira."

"My mother will tell you," Damien said.

"That’s not an answer."

"C’en est une."

"It is one," he said.

Aria got to her feet. "Does she know I’m here?"

Séverine glanced past the barn toward the empty gravel drive. Damien’s SUVs were gone. There was nothing out there but wet oak trees and the long dirt road to the village.

"Pas encore."

Damien didn’t translate right away. He was looking at the road too.

"Not yet," he said.

Séverine went inside. The door swung shut behind her.

Aria stood in the mud and felt the cold come up through her sneakers.

Damien’s hand found the back of her neck, warm and steady.

"You don’t have to meet her," he said.

"I know."

"I mean it. We get Leo. We go home. She never sees your face."

Aria leaned into his side. Somewhere in the house, a child was shrieking with laughter, and another was shrieking for real.

"Let’s get Leo first," she said.

At five, Aria found Jade on the third-floor landing, sitting in a window seat with her knees pulled up and her phone in both hands. The screen showed Leo’s number. The last message was still the video.

Fifty hours.

Aria sat at the other end of the window seat. Jade didn’t look up.

"I keep thinking he’ll send something," Jade said. "Anything."

"He will."

"You don’t know that."

"No," Aria admitted. "But I’m saying it anyway."

Down in the foyer, small feet thundered across the floor. Someone was counting in French. Hide-and-seek, maybe.

"What was Lyon like?" Aria asked.

Jade was quiet so long that Aria thought she wouldn’t answer.

"Cold," she said finally. "The heating only worked on the first floor. The little ones slept downstairs, and the big ones slept in their coats." She turned the phone over in her hands. "Leo used to sneak into the kitchen at night and steal sugar cubes. He split them with me. One for you, one for me, one for you."

"That’s three."

"He was bad at math on purpose." For a second, Jade almost smiled.

Aria waited.

"And Viktor Martin?"

The smile went away.

"Monsieur Martin wrote everything down," Jade said. "Every child. When we came, who brought us, who paid. He had a book for each of us. Leo used to say that if we ever got lost, Monsieur Martin’s books would know where we came from."

"Who paid for you?"

Jade didn’t answer.

Aria watched her face.

"Martin," Aria said slowly. "Like my father."

"It’s the most common name in France." Jade said it too fast, like she’d been waiting for the question.

"Jade. Who killed him?"

"I don’t know."

"Jade."

"I don’t know." Jade swung her feet down and stood. She pressed the phone against her chest. "I wasn’t there."

She made it to the top of the stairs before she stopped.

She didn’t turn around.

"Aria. When we get him back, don’t ask Leo about Monsieur Martin."

"Why not?"

Jade’s knuckles had gone white around the phone.

"Please," she said. "Don’t ever ask him."