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

My blood runs cold. I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a bucket of ice water.

“I didn’t want to tell you until I knew I had something solid. There was no plausible reason for a business trip to London. So I figured if I went to the Armand foundation first, I could justify running by Martin’s on the way home.”

“London is hardly on the way home from Antibes. It takes a half day to get there.”

“Yeah, eleven hours, to be exact.” Marla shrugs. “That’s why I was gone so much longer than I thought I’d be, but I was out of the apartment and that was half the battle.”

My heart is pounding so hard I’m afraid I’ll crack a rib.

“Are you saying you have news about my father?”

She chews her bottom lip nervously.

“Not yet.”

“Then it’s hardly justifiable. I can’t believe you’d bait me like that. After all these years? That’s a new low, Marla.”

I walk to the door.

“Please don’t be mad at me. I just— I can’t tell you… yet.”

I turn back to her. “But you do know who my father is?”

She nods. “I can’t tell you yet. I need a little more time.”

She must think I’m an idiot. As I open the door, I say, “I’m going to ask Levesque to recommend someone to sell the apartment because I can’t do this anymore.”

June 1930

Paris, France

Dear Diary,

I thought Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald had been traveling. As soon as I finished her wardrobe, she told me they were leaving to get away from the crazy life in Paris. But recently, I learned that she has been in and out of hospitals in Switzerland after suffering a nervous breakdown.

That day at Harry’s Bar, she was so obviously distraught; I feel bad that I didn’t make more of an effort to help her. However, she seemed in better spirits when we met for her fittings. She was elated with the clothes and even paid me on time.

I had no idea she was teetering so close to the edge until Andres and I bumped into Scott near the Jardin du Luxembourg. When we asked after Zelda, he mumbled something vague. Upon learning he was in Paris alone, Andres insisted we go somewhere for a drink. After a moment’s hesitation, he agreed. Once he’d gotten a few down the hatch, he opened up about Zelda’s ailments.

Surely having to put one’s wife in an asylum takes its toll, but Scott seemed weary and lifeless. It was as if even our company was too much for him to bear. Scott without Zelda is like champagne without bubbles.

Something Scott said in particular haunts me. He said it felt like it was only a few years ago that people were stepping aside to let us, the younger generation, run the world, because our young, fresh minds saw things clearly, with hope and ambition. He hung his head and pronounced that perhaps it was time for us now to pass the mantle to the next generation. If we couldn’t live with the intensity of youth anymore, what was the point in even trying?

Twenty-Four

January 29, 2019—10:00 a.m.

Paris, France

Two days after I caught Marla in the Martin Gaynor lie, Dr. Campbell called. Based on the style of the prose, the age of the paper, and typewriter ink, he is as certain as he can be that the manuscript is the work of Andres Armand.

It’s fabulous news, but the timing could be better.

The tour kicks off in less than a week. I can’t spare the time away, but now, there’s new urgency in picking up the manuscript.

Until we figure out our next step, we need to get it into safekeeping.

“Hannah, everything will be fine,” says Tallulah. She has settled in well and has been picking up the slack after Marla pulled another disappearing act.

I hadn’t wanted to gossip about my mother, the forty-five-year-old groupie, but Tallu needed to know what was what since I hadn’t exactly fired Marla. I knew letting her go would open another massive can of worms, so for now I’m letting Marla come and go as she pleases.

When I was at the office, Marla took her suitcase and left. She was gone when I returned. My money is on her being holed up somewhere with Martin, but that’s okay. I know I can count on Tallu to hold down the fort while I go to London to pick up the manuscript. I’m telling the truth when I say the trip will take one day.

“Go on,” Tallulah says. “If I need anything, you’re a phone call away. Everything will be fine.”

I check the Eurostar listings. There’s a train leaving tomorrow at 5:45 a.m. It will put me in London around 8:30. There’s a return passage that leaves shortly after 1:00 p.m., arriving in Paris around 3:30 p.m.

It will be a whirlwind—and an expensive one at that—but I really don’t have a choice. Since it is such a quick trip, I justify not texting Marla to say I’m picking up the manuscript without her.

Now that it has been authenticated, the fewer people who know about it, the better. I do, however, let Monsieur Levesque know.

“This is big news,” he says on the phone. “When word gets out, it will create a stir. We need to be prepared.”

I wonder what he means by prepared, but he’s already moved on to something else before I can ask.

“This must be the day for good news,” he says. “I received an audit of the annuity that has covered the utilities and fees for the apartment all these years. It is the type we now call an inflation-indexed annuity. It was designed to pay out increasingly more over the years to cover the rate of inflation. I don’t know if they called it that back when it was originally established, but I do know it was originally purchased in the name of your great-grandmother Ivy. Over the years, it has provided more than was