The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

“We’ll go soon,” said Audrey, who perched herself on Lara’s bed and smoothed her daughter’s hair. “You need to rest.”

“I’m in danger,” said Lara.

“No,” said Audrey. “You’re not.”

“But you don’t understand,” said Lara.

“I understand everything,” said Audrey. “You’re safe now.”

Ben had a million questions to ask Lara, yet he couldn’t bring himself to form a single one of them.

“You need to rest,” said Audrey. “I’m here now. Nothing will happen to you.”

“But—” Lara began.

Audrey reached out and stroked her daughter’s hair. To Ben’s amazement, Lara’s eyes began to close and she appeared to be fighting the urge to sleep, but Audrey kept stroking her hair. “Just rest.”

Before she fell off to sleep, Lara murmured, “He sent me a ticket.”

“I know,” said Audrey.

Eight hours later and with Lara’s prodding, the doctors released her from the hospital, still perplexed about the cause of her fever, yet with her vital signs all healthy, and her insisting she wanted to leave, there was no real reason to keep her.

She was agitated, still wanting to go home to Kerrigan Falls. Gaston had arranged for the four of them to be on the first flight out in the morning.

Ben could see Barrow’s face fall at this news. He’d hoped to talk to her about what she’d seen at the circus. At the coffee machine in the lobby of the hotel, he cornered Ben. “Has she said anything?”

“No,” said Ben, as concerned about Lara’s behavior as Barrow was. “She’s extremely cagey right now, but she’s been through a lot, so I guess that is to be expected.”

While Lara rested in her room, the others gathered on the sofas around the lobby like ladies-in-waiting.

“She wants an earlier flight,” said Audrey.

“We can’t get an earlier flight.” Gaston seemed frustrated.

After a few hours, Ben checked in on her in her room. He found her sitting on the edge of the bed like she was unsure what to do next. “Can we go to Montparnasse?”

“Yeah,” he said, moving toward the hotel phone. “I’ll just call Audrey.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Just the two of us.”

“It’s almost ten o’clock. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” She’d just come back from near death and here she was proposing some new scheme for them in Montparnasse.

“I’ll go by myself then.” She reached into her closet for a jacket.

“No, I’ll go with you, but you need to make up your mind,” said Ben, irritation in his voice. “You keep telling us you’re not safe here, and now you want to run to Montparnasse—alone—to get into more trouble.”

“I missed you, too.” She smiled.

As they crossed the Seine in a taxi and cut over by Les Invalides to Montparnasse, Lara seemed distracted. Her fingers lightly touched the glass, as if the scene in front of her was fragile and impermanent. Drugstores, vendors selling televisions, restaurants with pictures of food displayed in unappetizing, plastic-looking poses—she gazed out at all of them with wonder.

“You can let us off here,” she said to the taxi driver when they got to a circle. She was out the door while Ben settled with the driver and then scrambled to follow her. He found her standing in front of Le Dôme Café, looking up. “It hasn’t changed.”

He thought that was an odd comment for her to make, but after what she’d gone through he was just happy that she was upright and speaking mostly coherently. So he let it go, but he found that he was angry at her, too. While Barrow and Gaston were convinced she’d been abducted by an otherworldly circus, he wasn’t sure he agreed. Her strange behavior, however, was only making him more suspicious.

“What do you want to do?” Ben wasn’t quite sure about the purpose of this adventure, but Lara seemed mesmerized by a typical Parisian street.

“I just wanted to see the place again.” Lara was turning on the street, looking around in amazement. He stopped her from rotating, because she was attracting attention. This got him wondering when she’d eaten last; maybe a meal might restore her. He’d managed to leave a note with the front desk telling Audrey where they’d gone. He figured they’d get settled in a restaurant and then he’d duck out to the bathroom and call her to reassure her mother that Lara was fine. “Why don’t we eat something?”

Lara turned to him, delighted. “Oh yes, I would love that.”

“Okay,” said Ben, taking her hand. She curled her fingers in his as they crossed the street, finding an Italian restaurant on Boulevard Raspail that had outdoor seating. A fan sent a cool breeze past them on a rather stuffy night with the air like a bath.

“Picasso had a studio right there.” Lara pointed to the right. Ben turned to see where she was pointing, thinking it was odd that Lara would know about Picasso’s studio. In Montparnasse, she now seemed animated and alive, moving the saltshaker around the table, as if the act of touching things was new to her. She seemed to marvel at sports cars and clothes, craning her neck to follow a man with a mohawk and piercings as he walked by.

Ben ordered a glass of wine, refusing to let Lara have any. She frowned and took a sip of his before he’d even had a chance to taste it. He was grateful as the spicy drink hit the back of his throat. God, he’d needed a drink. Hesitating, he swirled his glass. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“You know what happened. I went to the circus.” She leaned back in her seat, focusing on the traffic and not meeting his eyes. There was a childish smile on her face.

“Really?”

“What do you mean, really?”

“I thought you might have been abducted.”

Lara made a face that said she disagreed. “At the gala, after I thought I’d seen Todd, there was a strange man.”

“Jesus,” said Ben, sitting back in his seat. “First Todd, now a strange man. That fucking gala was sure