The Paris Widow, page 5
“I’m sure it makes for some fascinating reading.”
I don’t answer, because that’s when a ship slips by on the other side of the sails. Another mega yacht like the Flying Fox, but darker. Sleeker, its massive body towering above the water. I count the half-dozen men patrolling the upper walkways, the shiny brass letters glinting high on the hull, gold against black fiberglass.
Aphrodite IV.
“Adam, did you hear me?”
I force my gaze away from the boat. “I’m sorry—what?”
She steps up behind me, winding an arm around my waist, pointing with the other one to a spot closer to shore. “I said steer us over there. Let’s park this thing and go for a swim.”
I nod, heart hammering, and it’s a good thing Stella is behind me so she can’t see my face. I stand here, trying to breathe, trying to gauge what it means. The Aphrodite IV is here, on the coast of Capri, in the same bay Stella and I are sailing at the same exact time. Surely the world is not that small. Surely this can’t be a coincidence.
Stella’s breath is hot on my back. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course.” But my voice sounds hoarse, and I have to clear my throat. “Everything is great.”
The Aphrodite IV. Fuck fuck fuck.
“But your heart.” She presses her palm to the center of my chest, holding it there. “It feels like it’s going a mile a minute.”
I peel her hand from my chest and lift it to my lips, dropping a kiss on her knuckles, stretching the moment long enough to get my shit together. I gesture to the ladder leading to below.
“Grab the bottle of rosé from the fridge, will you? The rental agency said there’s cheese and crackers down there, too.”
“A boozy picnic, my favorite.” She slips past me, disappearing down into the cabin.
While Stella bangs around below, I sail us close enough to see the people behind the yacht’s windows, close enough to make out their faces. A blonde maid, cleaning the glass. A chef in a starched white hat in a downstairs galley. A man with dark hair and a broad back in an upstairs room. He’s facing the other way, but it’s him, I know it. He didn’t see me, but I saw him, and that’s enough.
I give a yank to the helm, loosen the sails, catch a breeze that will carry us to the shoreline. I need to get us away from here, away from the big yachts. Away from one big yacht in particular. By the time Stella emerges from below, the Aphrodite IV is in our rearview.
But not out of my mind.
I think about it for the rest of the afternoon, what it means that they’re here. I think about it while Stella and I swim laps around the boat. While we sip rosé and feed on cheese and crackers, followed by sweaty, salty sex on the deck. While the boat spins slow circles on the anchor, offering up views of the sparkling Marina Piccola on one side, the Aphrodite IV on the other. A dangerous, dark cloud looming in a sea of blue.
A coincidence, or a shiny black promise of what is to come?
Six
Stella
Paris
I stare up at the man I spotted across the square, the one with the dark hair and the long limbs and the white shirt stretched over broad shoulders. His nose is too long. His chin is too pointy. His shirt isn’t even white but light blue.
“You’re not him. Dammit.” I shove my hands in my curls and tug, desperation burning my cheeks like a bad rash.
It’s ridiculous to blame this man. Logically, I know this. According to the label on his shirt, he’s one of the good guys, a member of the gendarmerie. He and a half dozen of his colleagues are busy corralling the crowd, holding them back so the rescue workers can clear the building of more bodies. By now the square is full of people like me, searching for news of their loved ones.
He blinks at me, and his eyes are kind. “Who are you looking for, madame? Perhaps I can help.”
“My husband. Adam Knox. I can’t find him anywhere.”
The officer gestures to a woman a few feet away, clutching a clipboard to her chest. “Have you spoken to my colleague? She is maintaining a list of missing...”
He says more, but I don’t hear it. I’m already lurching in the woman’s direction, pushing my way through the crowd. “I need to add my husband’s name to the list. Adam Knox.”
She hands me the clipboard and a pen. “Write down his full name, height and hair color, clothing description, and your cell phone number.”
The top page is already three-quarters full, and it’s not the only one. Underneath are dozens of pages filled with scribbles from people like me, clinging to hope. Astrid Dubois, 172 cm, blonde and blue dress, 06 48 62 44 07. Gregory Gilberto, 2 meter, bald with white and blue striped shirt, +39 31 49 70 4. At the very bottom, two names are crossed out, a heavy line drawn through the middle. Found? Or found dead?
“Have you looked on the grass?” the woman next to me asks, her words heavy with an Eastern European accent. “That’s where they’re bringing the people.”
I press pen to paper and start writing, not bothering to look over. “Yes, I’ve looked on the grass. I’ve looked in the square. I’ve looked everywhere. I called the hotel. I called my husband a million times, and his cell keeps going to voicemail. I’ve been looking for him for more than an hour now and I don’t know what else to do. There’s no sign of him anywhere. WHERE IS HE?”
My words spiral into a loud and hysterical shriek, and the people around me go quiet, watching me warily.
The woman who handed me the clipboard shakes her head. “Madame, s’il vous plaît. We are doing the best we can.”
I hand her back the clipboard and then the tears come on hot and fast, spilling down my cheeks in heavy, hiccuping sobs. It’s an open-mouthed, full-body sort of cry, the kind that steals my breath and shocks me with its intensity, just like it shocks this woman. She wraps a gentle hand around my elbow and tugs me away from the crowd, finding me an empty bench. I plop onto it, sending up a mini–mushroom cloud of dust, then drop my face into my hands and bawl.
Now what? What the fuck do I do now?
I give in to the tears, picturing Adam wandering the streets of Paris, those awful sunglasses sitting lopsided on his nose. I see him patting his pockets for his phone, and my mind runs through all sorts of scenarios. Innocuous, reasonable explanations for where Adam could be, why he’s not answering his phone. That in all the chaos and confusion he lost his cell, or the battery is dead. He is unconscious in a hospital or in the back of an ambulance somewhere. He’s back at the hotel, oblivious to the disaster in the square, wondering where the hell I am. He can’t reach me with a dead or lost cell phone.
The last thought stirs a ping of relief, of hope, and I pull out my phone and try the hotel again.
“Yes, hello, this is Stella Knox calling again. I’m looking for my husband, Adam.”
“Yes, Madame Knox. The manager alerted the entire staff. We know to watch for him. But I’m very sorry to say he’s not here.”
“Can you transfer me to our room? Maybe he slipped upstairs without anyone seeing.”
There’s a long pause, and I know what she’s thinking. I can hear the desperation in my own voice. I don’t need her to point it out for me.
“Of course, madame. One moment, please.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then the phone rings. And rings and rings and rings. I count them, twelve long beeps while I tell myself he’s fine, that when a fireball turned the building inside out, he and his stupid sunglasses were long gone. I tell myself that there must be an explanation that doesn’t include death. There has to be.
I hang up as someone taps me on the shoulder. A pretty woman in heels and a suit. She holds out a bottle of icy water and a packet of travel-sized tissues. “No offense, but you look like you could use these more than me.”
A fellow American, judging by the accent.
“Thank you.” I pluck the items from her hands, wedge the bottle between my thighs and peel open the sticker on the tissues, using the first two to mop up my face. Tears and makeup and dust and grime and more tears, which are nowhere near stopping. I pull two more tissues from the packet and blow my nose, then chug half the bottle. The dust and fear have made me desperately thirsty.
The woman doesn’t walk away. She just stands there watching me, waiting for me to get settled. And then she offers up a small smile.
“I couldn’t help but overhear. Your conversation with the policeman, I mean.” She waves a hand in his direction, but he’s already moved on. “You said you’re looking for someone?”
I nod. “My husband. He went back to the café for his sunglasses and now...”
Now what? The tears strangle me all over again.
“Perhaps I can help,” she says, and it’s then I fully take her in.
Her hair, brown curls shiny and styled like she just walked out of a salon. Her makeup, thick but impeccable, with berry lips and the kind of heavy-handed contouring you find on a YouTube tutorial. I take in the cobalt blouse peeking out from a dark tailored suit, the baby-pink polish on her fingernails, the man lingering at the edge of the crowd with a camera balanced on a shoulder, watching us.
I know who this woman is. What she’s doing here.
“You’re a reporter.”
My first instinct is to be angry. Reporters make a living by profiting off another person’s tragedy. They shove their mics into panicked faces and step into the paths of victims fleeing the scene. They find sobbing women on park benches and broadcast their despair for clicks and views. It’s televised rubbernecking, and I want no part of it.
The woman points at her cameraman. He lifts a hand in a wave, but he doesn’t come over. Not yet. “That’s Steve, and I’m Stephanie. We work for France 24, an international news channel broadcasting around the clock in French, Arabic and English. Our viewers would be very interested in hearing what happened to your husband.”
She’s not even halfway through her spiel when I’m already shaking my head no. This woman doesn’t care about my husband, and she definitely doesn’t care about me. Also, what the hell am I supposed to say? I don’t know what happened to him. I’m not ready to contemplate the worst, especially not on live television.
“I understand your reluctance, but I promise to be gentle. You can say as much or as little as you’d like. But I meant it before, about being of help. Our broadcasts reach three hundred million homes all over the planet, with a combined weekly viewership of 45.9 million. Perhaps one of those people might have seen your husband.”
And just like that, I’m up off the bench, lifted by the hope I hear in her words. Forty-six million people. Not all of them will be in Paris, but still. That’s a lot of eyes on a picture of Adam. I’ll do whatever it takes to find him, including fall apart on live television.
I scramble to open my phone, bypassing the shot of us on my lock screen and pulling up the photograph I snapped just yesterday, a close-up of Adam beaming at me across the breakfast table. Happy. Friendly. A broad smile and face that’s handsome enough to be memorable. I pull up the image on my screen and turn the brightness as high as it will go.
After that, things move fast. She gives a thumbs-up to the cameraman, and he hustles over, fiddling with the camera on his shoulder, flipping switches and positioning us for the best shot. They do a couple of quick sound tests, and then she turns to me.
“I’m standing here with...”
She shoves the microphone under my chin. “Stella Knox.”
“Thank you for joining me, Stella. I understand your husband is one of the people missing.”
“He’s not missing. It’s just that I can’t find him.”
Okay, yes. I do realize how this sounds. It sounds like I’m delusional, like I’m grasping at fictional straws, but I don’t care. I white-knuckle my phone, pointing the screen at the camera.
“This is him. Adam Nathaniel Knox. K-N-O-X. He’s six foot three, has brown hair with a big cowlick and a scar on the left side of his forehead.” With my other hand, I draw a half-inch line up mine with a fingernail, remnants from when a horse tried to kick him when he was twelve.
I think of his face when he first told me the story, of his self-deprecating laugh when I said he was lucky he didn’t lose an eyeball, and there they are, my damn tears again, gushing like a broken faucet. The reporter glances at the cameraman, and I imagine him zooming in on one as it rolls down my shiny cheek, over the purple splotches that I know have sprouted on my face and neck. People with red hair and porcelain skin do not make pretty criers, as forty-six million people are currently witnessing. But the last thing I care about right now is what I look like.
“It sounds like you have reason to believe he was near the café when it exploded.”
I shake my head, quick and decisive. “No, we were there before. We had lunch there, but then after we left, he realized he forgot his sunglasses, so he went back. We were supposed to meet back at the hotel, but he hasn’t shown up and he hasn’t called me yet, either. Maybe he lost his phone. I don’t know.”
“Lost it in the explosion.”
“Or while running away from it. I don’t know. That’s just it—I don’t know. But I do know a person doesn’t just disappear. He has to be somewhere.”
The reporter’s brow crumples, an overly articulated expression of concern for the camera—or maybe for me. For my vehement denials. I know I sound like a madwoman.
“I see. What else would you like our viewers to know about your husband, Stella? What do they need to know about Adam Nathaniel Knox?”
“That he’s kind. And so smart. He owns a shop that sells reclaimed antiques to builders and architects. That’s what he was doing in Paris, buying pieces for his store. We’re supposed to be on a plane right now, but I can’t leave this city without him. I can’t... I literally don’t know what I would do if...”
A fist tightens around my throat, and my lungs do one of those stuttering sobs that sucks down the rest of my words. I close my eyes and disappear into my head for a bit, breathing hard. Come on, Stella. You can do this. Forty-six million viewers, and all you need is one. Just one person who’s seen Adam alive. The pep talk works. I open my eyes, and my lungs loosen up.
The reporter gives me an encouraging nod, tilting her head toward the camera.
I turn and stare into it, and everything else fades away. The busy square. The smoke and dust. The smell of charred wood and rubber. I don’t even care that I just broke down on live television. I see my picture of Adam lit up in the glass, and I put everything I have into what I say next for the camera.
“Please. If you’ve seen this man or think you have, please call me at the Hôtel Luxembourg Parc here in Paris. If I’m not there, you can leave a message with the reception desk, and I’ll call you back as soon as possible. I’m begging you, please. Please help me find my husband.”
The reporter’s eyes gleam at my performance. From triumph. I can practically hear her thoughts as they tick through the incoming bounty. Ratings. Promotions and awards. An Emmy. I’m like one of those weeping parents you see on TV, begging for the safe return of their kidnapped child. This is broadcast-news gold.
She manages to hold her expression steady as she pivots, aiming her solemn face at the camera. “Reporting live from Place Carlou Aubert in Paris, I’m Stephanie Wilbanks for France 24.”
Seven
It’s dark by the time my phone finally dies, the battery wound down from calling the hotel obsessively. After my interview on France 24, the pile of messages blew quickly out of control, people calling with tips, far too many to relay over the phone, and other reporters asking to feature me.
All afternoon long, I let a long line of reporters point their lenses at my ratty hair and splotchy cheeks while I sobbed for their cameras and the world. All that, and still no sign of Adam. Only a thumping headache and a bone-deep exhaustion, like I ran an ultramarathon on no food and zero sleep. The journalists sucked me dry, and then they sucked down the battery on my phone, leaving me no other choice than to leave the square. Alone.
At the Hôtel Luxembourg Parc, the doorman sees me coming. He takes in my dust-covered hair and skin, my clothes coated with sweat and grime and other people’s blood, and he frowns because he knows who I am. I’m that woman, the poor American tourist whose husband was blown to bits.
“Madame Knox.” He whisks open the door with a polite nod.
I thank him and scramble inside, where people are everywhere. Wheeling their luggage across the marble floors, dodging the crowd sipping cocktails on couches and at little round tables, waiting shoulder to shoulder at the bar. Grinning like a literal bomb didn’t just go off four blocks from here.
That’s not what the cops are saying, by the way—bomb. Other than that first female cop I spoke to, the police have steered far, far away from the menacing word. They are calling it “an explosion,” and they’re quick to point out that because it happened at a restaurant, it could have been caused by something as innocent as a gas leak—though nobody seems to be buying it. That old woman I helped up off the sidewalk isn’t the only one I’ve heard blaming the blast on terroristes.
Is that what this was? Did some lunatic blow himself and my husband up as some kind of perverted political statement? If that’s true, I don’t know how I’ll ever get past it. How do you make sense of something so senseless?
I push my way through the crowd to the reception desk, a long stretch of beige marble and polished wood staffed by three pretty Frenchwomen in matching crisp jackets. I step up in front of the one who checked Adam and me in, a thin brunette named Manon.
“I’m so sorry,” she says to me in English. “If there is anything I can do...”
She doesn’t finish, which is fine by me because I don’t want her to. More tears are gathering in my sinuses, and I’m desperate to get away from her and all these people so I can cry in the privacy of my own room.
I don’t answer, because that’s when a ship slips by on the other side of the sails. Another mega yacht like the Flying Fox, but darker. Sleeker, its massive body towering above the water. I count the half-dozen men patrolling the upper walkways, the shiny brass letters glinting high on the hull, gold against black fiberglass.
Aphrodite IV.
“Adam, did you hear me?”
I force my gaze away from the boat. “I’m sorry—what?”
She steps up behind me, winding an arm around my waist, pointing with the other one to a spot closer to shore. “I said steer us over there. Let’s park this thing and go for a swim.”
I nod, heart hammering, and it’s a good thing Stella is behind me so she can’t see my face. I stand here, trying to breathe, trying to gauge what it means. The Aphrodite IV is here, on the coast of Capri, in the same bay Stella and I are sailing at the same exact time. Surely the world is not that small. Surely this can’t be a coincidence.
Stella’s breath is hot on my back. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course.” But my voice sounds hoarse, and I have to clear my throat. “Everything is great.”
The Aphrodite IV. Fuck fuck fuck.
“But your heart.” She presses her palm to the center of my chest, holding it there. “It feels like it’s going a mile a minute.”
I peel her hand from my chest and lift it to my lips, dropping a kiss on her knuckles, stretching the moment long enough to get my shit together. I gesture to the ladder leading to below.
“Grab the bottle of rosé from the fridge, will you? The rental agency said there’s cheese and crackers down there, too.”
“A boozy picnic, my favorite.” She slips past me, disappearing down into the cabin.
While Stella bangs around below, I sail us close enough to see the people behind the yacht’s windows, close enough to make out their faces. A blonde maid, cleaning the glass. A chef in a starched white hat in a downstairs galley. A man with dark hair and a broad back in an upstairs room. He’s facing the other way, but it’s him, I know it. He didn’t see me, but I saw him, and that’s enough.
I give a yank to the helm, loosen the sails, catch a breeze that will carry us to the shoreline. I need to get us away from here, away from the big yachts. Away from one big yacht in particular. By the time Stella emerges from below, the Aphrodite IV is in our rearview.
But not out of my mind.
I think about it for the rest of the afternoon, what it means that they’re here. I think about it while Stella and I swim laps around the boat. While we sip rosé and feed on cheese and crackers, followed by sweaty, salty sex on the deck. While the boat spins slow circles on the anchor, offering up views of the sparkling Marina Piccola on one side, the Aphrodite IV on the other. A dangerous, dark cloud looming in a sea of blue.
A coincidence, or a shiny black promise of what is to come?
Six
Stella
Paris
I stare up at the man I spotted across the square, the one with the dark hair and the long limbs and the white shirt stretched over broad shoulders. His nose is too long. His chin is too pointy. His shirt isn’t even white but light blue.
“You’re not him. Dammit.” I shove my hands in my curls and tug, desperation burning my cheeks like a bad rash.
It’s ridiculous to blame this man. Logically, I know this. According to the label on his shirt, he’s one of the good guys, a member of the gendarmerie. He and a half dozen of his colleagues are busy corralling the crowd, holding them back so the rescue workers can clear the building of more bodies. By now the square is full of people like me, searching for news of their loved ones.
He blinks at me, and his eyes are kind. “Who are you looking for, madame? Perhaps I can help.”
“My husband. Adam Knox. I can’t find him anywhere.”
The officer gestures to a woman a few feet away, clutching a clipboard to her chest. “Have you spoken to my colleague? She is maintaining a list of missing...”
He says more, but I don’t hear it. I’m already lurching in the woman’s direction, pushing my way through the crowd. “I need to add my husband’s name to the list. Adam Knox.”
She hands me the clipboard and a pen. “Write down his full name, height and hair color, clothing description, and your cell phone number.”
The top page is already three-quarters full, and it’s not the only one. Underneath are dozens of pages filled with scribbles from people like me, clinging to hope. Astrid Dubois, 172 cm, blonde and blue dress, 06 48 62 44 07. Gregory Gilberto, 2 meter, bald with white and blue striped shirt, +39 31 49 70 4. At the very bottom, two names are crossed out, a heavy line drawn through the middle. Found? Or found dead?
“Have you looked on the grass?” the woman next to me asks, her words heavy with an Eastern European accent. “That’s where they’re bringing the people.”
I press pen to paper and start writing, not bothering to look over. “Yes, I’ve looked on the grass. I’ve looked in the square. I’ve looked everywhere. I called the hotel. I called my husband a million times, and his cell keeps going to voicemail. I’ve been looking for him for more than an hour now and I don’t know what else to do. There’s no sign of him anywhere. WHERE IS HE?”
My words spiral into a loud and hysterical shriek, and the people around me go quiet, watching me warily.
The woman who handed me the clipboard shakes her head. “Madame, s’il vous plaît. We are doing the best we can.”
I hand her back the clipboard and then the tears come on hot and fast, spilling down my cheeks in heavy, hiccuping sobs. It’s an open-mouthed, full-body sort of cry, the kind that steals my breath and shocks me with its intensity, just like it shocks this woman. She wraps a gentle hand around my elbow and tugs me away from the crowd, finding me an empty bench. I plop onto it, sending up a mini–mushroom cloud of dust, then drop my face into my hands and bawl.
Now what? What the fuck do I do now?
I give in to the tears, picturing Adam wandering the streets of Paris, those awful sunglasses sitting lopsided on his nose. I see him patting his pockets for his phone, and my mind runs through all sorts of scenarios. Innocuous, reasonable explanations for where Adam could be, why he’s not answering his phone. That in all the chaos and confusion he lost his cell, or the battery is dead. He is unconscious in a hospital or in the back of an ambulance somewhere. He’s back at the hotel, oblivious to the disaster in the square, wondering where the hell I am. He can’t reach me with a dead or lost cell phone.
The last thought stirs a ping of relief, of hope, and I pull out my phone and try the hotel again.
“Yes, hello, this is Stella Knox calling again. I’m looking for my husband, Adam.”
“Yes, Madame Knox. The manager alerted the entire staff. We know to watch for him. But I’m very sorry to say he’s not here.”
“Can you transfer me to our room? Maybe he slipped upstairs without anyone seeing.”
There’s a long pause, and I know what she’s thinking. I can hear the desperation in my own voice. I don’t need her to point it out for me.
“Of course, madame. One moment, please.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then the phone rings. And rings and rings and rings. I count them, twelve long beeps while I tell myself he’s fine, that when a fireball turned the building inside out, he and his stupid sunglasses were long gone. I tell myself that there must be an explanation that doesn’t include death. There has to be.
I hang up as someone taps me on the shoulder. A pretty woman in heels and a suit. She holds out a bottle of icy water and a packet of travel-sized tissues. “No offense, but you look like you could use these more than me.”
A fellow American, judging by the accent.
“Thank you.” I pluck the items from her hands, wedge the bottle between my thighs and peel open the sticker on the tissues, using the first two to mop up my face. Tears and makeup and dust and grime and more tears, which are nowhere near stopping. I pull two more tissues from the packet and blow my nose, then chug half the bottle. The dust and fear have made me desperately thirsty.
The woman doesn’t walk away. She just stands there watching me, waiting for me to get settled. And then she offers up a small smile.
“I couldn’t help but overhear. Your conversation with the policeman, I mean.” She waves a hand in his direction, but he’s already moved on. “You said you’re looking for someone?”
I nod. “My husband. He went back to the café for his sunglasses and now...”
Now what? The tears strangle me all over again.
“Perhaps I can help,” she says, and it’s then I fully take her in.
Her hair, brown curls shiny and styled like she just walked out of a salon. Her makeup, thick but impeccable, with berry lips and the kind of heavy-handed contouring you find on a YouTube tutorial. I take in the cobalt blouse peeking out from a dark tailored suit, the baby-pink polish on her fingernails, the man lingering at the edge of the crowd with a camera balanced on a shoulder, watching us.
I know who this woman is. What she’s doing here.
“You’re a reporter.”
My first instinct is to be angry. Reporters make a living by profiting off another person’s tragedy. They shove their mics into panicked faces and step into the paths of victims fleeing the scene. They find sobbing women on park benches and broadcast their despair for clicks and views. It’s televised rubbernecking, and I want no part of it.
The woman points at her cameraman. He lifts a hand in a wave, but he doesn’t come over. Not yet. “That’s Steve, and I’m Stephanie. We work for France 24, an international news channel broadcasting around the clock in French, Arabic and English. Our viewers would be very interested in hearing what happened to your husband.”
She’s not even halfway through her spiel when I’m already shaking my head no. This woman doesn’t care about my husband, and she definitely doesn’t care about me. Also, what the hell am I supposed to say? I don’t know what happened to him. I’m not ready to contemplate the worst, especially not on live television.
“I understand your reluctance, but I promise to be gentle. You can say as much or as little as you’d like. But I meant it before, about being of help. Our broadcasts reach three hundred million homes all over the planet, with a combined weekly viewership of 45.9 million. Perhaps one of those people might have seen your husband.”
And just like that, I’m up off the bench, lifted by the hope I hear in her words. Forty-six million people. Not all of them will be in Paris, but still. That’s a lot of eyes on a picture of Adam. I’ll do whatever it takes to find him, including fall apart on live television.
I scramble to open my phone, bypassing the shot of us on my lock screen and pulling up the photograph I snapped just yesterday, a close-up of Adam beaming at me across the breakfast table. Happy. Friendly. A broad smile and face that’s handsome enough to be memorable. I pull up the image on my screen and turn the brightness as high as it will go.
After that, things move fast. She gives a thumbs-up to the cameraman, and he hustles over, fiddling with the camera on his shoulder, flipping switches and positioning us for the best shot. They do a couple of quick sound tests, and then she turns to me.
“I’m standing here with...”
She shoves the microphone under my chin. “Stella Knox.”
“Thank you for joining me, Stella. I understand your husband is one of the people missing.”
“He’s not missing. It’s just that I can’t find him.”
Okay, yes. I do realize how this sounds. It sounds like I’m delusional, like I’m grasping at fictional straws, but I don’t care. I white-knuckle my phone, pointing the screen at the camera.
“This is him. Adam Nathaniel Knox. K-N-O-X. He’s six foot three, has brown hair with a big cowlick and a scar on the left side of his forehead.” With my other hand, I draw a half-inch line up mine with a fingernail, remnants from when a horse tried to kick him when he was twelve.
I think of his face when he first told me the story, of his self-deprecating laugh when I said he was lucky he didn’t lose an eyeball, and there they are, my damn tears again, gushing like a broken faucet. The reporter glances at the cameraman, and I imagine him zooming in on one as it rolls down my shiny cheek, over the purple splotches that I know have sprouted on my face and neck. People with red hair and porcelain skin do not make pretty criers, as forty-six million people are currently witnessing. But the last thing I care about right now is what I look like.
“It sounds like you have reason to believe he was near the café when it exploded.”
I shake my head, quick and decisive. “No, we were there before. We had lunch there, but then after we left, he realized he forgot his sunglasses, so he went back. We were supposed to meet back at the hotel, but he hasn’t shown up and he hasn’t called me yet, either. Maybe he lost his phone. I don’t know.”
“Lost it in the explosion.”
“Or while running away from it. I don’t know. That’s just it—I don’t know. But I do know a person doesn’t just disappear. He has to be somewhere.”
The reporter’s brow crumples, an overly articulated expression of concern for the camera—or maybe for me. For my vehement denials. I know I sound like a madwoman.
“I see. What else would you like our viewers to know about your husband, Stella? What do they need to know about Adam Nathaniel Knox?”
“That he’s kind. And so smart. He owns a shop that sells reclaimed antiques to builders and architects. That’s what he was doing in Paris, buying pieces for his store. We’re supposed to be on a plane right now, but I can’t leave this city without him. I can’t... I literally don’t know what I would do if...”
A fist tightens around my throat, and my lungs do one of those stuttering sobs that sucks down the rest of my words. I close my eyes and disappear into my head for a bit, breathing hard. Come on, Stella. You can do this. Forty-six million viewers, and all you need is one. Just one person who’s seen Adam alive. The pep talk works. I open my eyes, and my lungs loosen up.
The reporter gives me an encouraging nod, tilting her head toward the camera.
I turn and stare into it, and everything else fades away. The busy square. The smoke and dust. The smell of charred wood and rubber. I don’t even care that I just broke down on live television. I see my picture of Adam lit up in the glass, and I put everything I have into what I say next for the camera.
“Please. If you’ve seen this man or think you have, please call me at the Hôtel Luxembourg Parc here in Paris. If I’m not there, you can leave a message with the reception desk, and I’ll call you back as soon as possible. I’m begging you, please. Please help me find my husband.”
The reporter’s eyes gleam at my performance. From triumph. I can practically hear her thoughts as they tick through the incoming bounty. Ratings. Promotions and awards. An Emmy. I’m like one of those weeping parents you see on TV, begging for the safe return of their kidnapped child. This is broadcast-news gold.
She manages to hold her expression steady as she pivots, aiming her solemn face at the camera. “Reporting live from Place Carlou Aubert in Paris, I’m Stephanie Wilbanks for France 24.”
Seven
It’s dark by the time my phone finally dies, the battery wound down from calling the hotel obsessively. After my interview on France 24, the pile of messages blew quickly out of control, people calling with tips, far too many to relay over the phone, and other reporters asking to feature me.
All afternoon long, I let a long line of reporters point their lenses at my ratty hair and splotchy cheeks while I sobbed for their cameras and the world. All that, and still no sign of Adam. Only a thumping headache and a bone-deep exhaustion, like I ran an ultramarathon on no food and zero sleep. The journalists sucked me dry, and then they sucked down the battery on my phone, leaving me no other choice than to leave the square. Alone.
At the Hôtel Luxembourg Parc, the doorman sees me coming. He takes in my dust-covered hair and skin, my clothes coated with sweat and grime and other people’s blood, and he frowns because he knows who I am. I’m that woman, the poor American tourist whose husband was blown to bits.
“Madame Knox.” He whisks open the door with a polite nod.
I thank him and scramble inside, where people are everywhere. Wheeling their luggage across the marble floors, dodging the crowd sipping cocktails on couches and at little round tables, waiting shoulder to shoulder at the bar. Grinning like a literal bomb didn’t just go off four blocks from here.
That’s not what the cops are saying, by the way—bomb. Other than that first female cop I spoke to, the police have steered far, far away from the menacing word. They are calling it “an explosion,” and they’re quick to point out that because it happened at a restaurant, it could have been caused by something as innocent as a gas leak—though nobody seems to be buying it. That old woman I helped up off the sidewalk isn’t the only one I’ve heard blaming the blast on terroristes.
Is that what this was? Did some lunatic blow himself and my husband up as some kind of perverted political statement? If that’s true, I don’t know how I’ll ever get past it. How do you make sense of something so senseless?
I push my way through the crowd to the reception desk, a long stretch of beige marble and polished wood staffed by three pretty Frenchwomen in matching crisp jackets. I step up in front of the one who checked Adam and me in, a thin brunette named Manon.
“I’m so sorry,” she says to me in English. “If there is anything I can do...”
She doesn’t finish, which is fine by me because I don’t want her to. More tears are gathering in my sinuses, and I’m desperate to get away from her and all these people so I can cry in the privacy of my own room.
