Chapter 335: The Man Under the Umbrella Is My Dad

Aria took the key out of her pocket and laid it on the table between them.

Madame Aubert didn’t pick it up. She turned it with one gloved finger until the bow faced her, and the letters caught the grey light from the window over the sink.

"Alors elle l’a gardée," she said.

"So she kept it," Damien said.

"What does it open?" Aria asked. "Something here?"

Damien translated. The old woman shook her head.

"Rien ici."

"Nothing here," Damien said.

"Then why does it say J.S.?"

"Pour que tu viennes me voir d’abord."

"So you’d come to her first," Damien said.

Madame Aubert turned the key once more under her finger. "Elle est arrivée un matin avec cette clé. Les lettres venaient d’être frappées. Elle m’a dit : si un jour une fille vient avec ?a, c’est la mienne."

"She came in one morning with this key," Damien said. "The letters were freshly stamped. She said, ’If a girl ever comes in with this, she’s mine.’"

"Why you?" Aria asked. "Why would she trust a florist?"

Damien translated. Madame Aubert almost smiled.

"Parce que je vends des fleurs. Je ne pose pas de questions."

"Because she sells flowers," Damien said. "She doesn’t ask questions."

"And after that? Where does it go?"

Madame Aubert spread her gloved hands. "Elle ne me l’a jamais dit. Elle disait seulement : la clé rentre à la maison."

Damien was quiet a moment. "She never told her. She only ever said, ’The key goes home.’"

’Home,’ Aria thought. ’Which one?’

She closed her fingers around the key and put it back in her pocket.

Through the gap in the curtain, Jade glanced back at them, then turned to the street again.

"Show her the photo," she said.

Damien unlocked his phone and held it out. Madame Aubert took it in both hands and brought it close to her glasses.

The rain-blurred sign. The black umbrella. Geneviève laughing, white camellias against her coat, and the tall man beside her holding the umbrella over her and not over himself.

The old woman’s face changed.

"Le jeudi," she said. "Toujours le jeudi."

"Thursdays," Damien said. "Always on Thursdays."

"Des camélias blancs. Il les payait. Elle les portait." Madame Aubert touched the edge of the screen, where the flowers were. "Je n’en vends plus. Depuis qu’elle ne vient plus."

"White camellias. He paid, she carried them." Damien’s voice was even. "She doesn’t sell camellias anymore. Not since your mother stopped coming."

Aria thought of the white roses in the bucket by the door.

"Who is he?" she asked.

Madame Aubert’s thumb moved from the flowers to the man under the umbrella.

"Marcel."

For months she had looked at this photo and seen a stranger. A man with dark hair and a hard jaw, his collar turned up, his face half in shadow. Nobody she knew.

She leaned in and looked again.

The jaw. The way he stood, weight on one foot, as if he’d been waiting a long time and didn’t mind. She had seen that stance at the back of the hall at every school recital, back before Lydia.

Her father was in California, waiting for a surgeon to open his skull. He was grey and heavy, and he forgot things.

He had been this man first.

"Marcel Martin," Aria said.

Madame Aubert looked up sharply. "Tu le sais?"

"She’s asking if you know," Damien said.

"He’s my father."

Damien translated. The old woman looked from Aria’s face to the phone and back again, slowly, as if she were laying one picture over the other. Then she set the phone down on the table, face-up.

"Il était marié," she said quietly.

"He was married," Damien said.

"Pas avec elle."

"Not to her."

Aria already knew that. Lydia had been his wife before any of it.

She hadn’t seen her mother laughing under his umbrella on a Thursday.

Damien’s hand settled on the back of her neck, under the coat collar he had turned up in the car. His thumb moved once along her hairline. She leaned back into his palm and let it hold her up.

Madame Aubert pushed herself up from the chair, one hand on the table.

"Attends."

She went through the curtain into the shop. Aria heard the scrape of a tin on a shelf, and Jade’s voice, low, asking something in French. Madame Aubert didn’t answer her.

She came back with a biscuit tin, the paint worn off its corners, and set it in Aria’s lap.

"Elle a laissé ?a aussi. Elle a dit : si ma fille vient. Pas avant."

"She left this too," Damien said. "She said, ’If my daughter comes. Not before.’"

Aria lifted the lid.

Inside, wrapped in a square of tissue gone yellow, was a cassette tape. The plastic case was cracked across one corner. A strip of white label ran along its spine, and on it, in faded black ink, in a cramped hand that wasn’t her mother’s:

[Dr. Evans — Patiente G.]

Aria stopped breathing.

Dr. Evans had signed her mother’s death certificate. He had taken Lydia’s money. He had secretly recorded his patients for decades.

And her mother had left one of them in a biscuit tin with a florist.

"Did you listen to it?" Aria asked.

Damien translated. Madame Aubert shook her head.

"Je n’ai pas de lecteur de cassettes. Et je ne voulais pas savoir ce qu’il y avait dessus."

"She doesn’t have a cassette player," Damien said. "And she didn’t want to know what was on it."

Damien’s hand tightened on her neck. "Aria."

"I know," she said. "I see it."

She checked her phone without meaning to. 12:16. A little over thirty hours.

The curtain moved.

Jade stood in the gap. She didn’t come in. She kept one hand on the curtain and her eyes on the front of the shop, on the strip of street showing past the edge of the blind.

"Aria," she said quietly. "There’s a man on a motorbike across the street. He was there when we came in."

"So?"

"He still has his helmet on." Jade swallowed. "And he just took out his phone."