Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

I nod. I don’t really agree, but I hear her. And I want her to know that.

As I digest what she’s told me, I let a few more minutes of silence hang between us before launching into my final point, and I’m glad to have some good news for her.

“The third thing I wanted to say was if I were to hire you, you’d have to respect the fact that I would be your boss.”

Through the hazy ambient light I see her blink. She sits up straighter, adjusts her posture.

“You can’t think of me as your daughter,” I continue. “If I ask you to do something, you can’t second-guess me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She nods with the vigor of someone trying to save her own life.

“Hannah, I promise. I will be a model employee. I’ll be at your beck and call.”

“If I hire you, it will be for a sales position. Is that something you’d want to do?”

“You mean selling seats on the tour?”

I raise my brows. “Yes. That’s exactly what you’d be doing. I need this tour to be a success right out of the gate and the only way that’s going to happen is if we are booked out for months at a time.”

“I think I’d be good at that,” Marla says.

“I do, too. I’m going to hire you on a probationary basis to see how you do between now and the first tour—”

Marla’s phone rings. I’m a little irritated when she answers it in the middle of what she should think of as a job interview.

“Hello?… Oh! Hello, Dr. Campbell; this is Marla. It’s good to hear from you so quickly. How can I help you?”

Marla puts the phone on speaker so I can hear what he’s saying.

“I’ve had a chance to read through the copy of the manuscript you delivered the other day,” he says. “While it’s quite early in the process, my gut feeling will not let me rule out that it could be the work of Andres Armand. However, I can’t quite authenticate it at this point. Would it be possible for me to have a look at the actual manuscript?”

Marla looks to me.

“Hello, Dr. Campbell. I’m Hannah Bond, Marla’s daughter. She put you on speaker so I could hear the call. We would be happy to return with the original.”

We make arrangements to call him back once we know when we can make the trip.

“Wow, that was fast,” I say after we disconnect the call.

“At least he didn’t give us a big, fat shrug like we got from Professor Sore-Bone,” Marla says. I stifle a laugh at her play on words. “What exactly will it mean if Dr. Campbell thinks this is the work of Andres Armand?”

“It will mean a newly discovered Armand book. Then we’ll have to figure out what to do with it. Do we consult literary agents ourselves or do we partner with the Armand foundation? If Armand has descendants, we need to find out if they have any claim on the book. I have no idea what copyright laws say about who owns the manuscript. It might even fall in the public domain, for all I know.”

“Maybe Monsieur Levesque can help us figure it out,” Marla suggests.

“Or more likely he can direct us to someone who can. In the meantime, I’ll keep reading Ivy’s diaries. I know she and Andres had a relationship, but did he live here, too? I can’t imagine who else all the men’s stuff would belong to, but Ivy seemed so adamant about not living with him outside of marriage.

“It seems like she was good about journaling for the first three years or so and then there are long stretches when either she didn’t write or the diaries are missing. And then we have the partial diary from 1940 that was there by the bed, which is more about the impending war than anything else.”

“Don’t you think that people mostly write in diaries when times are hard?” Marla says. “The rest of the time you’re living life and you’re too busy to pour out your heart on the page. But the day-to-day, that’s the juicy stuff. It’s like that saying about how life is what happens when you’re making other plans.” She stops and takes a deep breath, then clears her throat. “That’s why I’m trying to live in every moment right now, Hannah. I know I can’t go back and change the past, but I’m grateful for this chance to have you in my life now. Thank you for letting me prove myself to you through this job. I promise you I won’t mess up.”

I don’t quite know what to say. Especially when Marla starts crying.

“I don’t mean to get all emotional on you.” She sniffs, looks up, and fans her face with her hands. “Never mind me. Carry on. Nothing to see here. Time to start prepping for London.”

Frankly, I’m taken aback by her gratitude.

“Sounds good to me. I was thinking—maybe we should make a trip to Bristol while we’re there to see if we can go through marriage records. Something’s still not sitting right with me about the timeline.”

April 1929

Paris, France

Dear Diary,

I am bereft and without words.

A letter from my cousin Abigail arrived. All I am able to do is copy it here, because even after reading the news several times, I still can’t believe it’s true.

Dear Ivy,

I tried to reach you at rue du Cardinal Lemoine, the only address your parents had for you. However, my letters were returned as recipient unknown. Until now, I did not know how to find you.

I am now writing with a heavy heart to inform you that your parents have passed. Your father died of apoplexy last July. Your mother could not bear to be without him. It is believed she died of a broken heart barely three months later.

They have both been laid to rest in Canford Cemetery. The next time you are home,