minimal searching. He says this is 1911. Ranko Novak is third row, second from left. If it’s something more you want, let me know details! Happy to help Richard’s friend. My regards to your injured hand.”
Fiona clicked the attached scan. A triangular group—ten in front, seven in the next row, and so on—of mustachioed men, gazing at one another rather than at the camera. A skeleton draped across the laps of the front row. On a rug in front of them all, a naked woman, ample backside facing the camera. A spoof photo, the belle epoque version of a goofy group shot.
She moved her finger on the screen to the third row, the second man. Dark curly hair, a long slit of a mouth. Hair slicked and parted down the middle. A skinny, floppy bow tie.
What had been so special about him? Fiona didn’t know what she’d expected, but something more than this. Ranko Novak was worth seventy years of devotion. Ranko Novak was irreplaceable, a hole at the center of Nora’s universe. And this was it? A face, two eyes, two ears.
Well, try telling that to someone in love.
She zoomed in. He didn’t get any clearer, just larger.
Her affair with Dan had started with a conversation after yoga class, a walk to the juice place around the corner, where he’d asked her thoughts on what the teacher had said that day about letting go of attachments. He said, “Money is one thing. If I wanted to be a monk I could give up my car and it would only hurt for a week. But people. That’s the hard part.”
They’d sat a long time, talking. Fiona said, “I always thought geese were so funny.” Dan had started laughing, and she said, “No, what I mean is, they mate for life, right? But they all look exactly the same. They are exactly the same! How would you ever tell one goose from another? I mean, what, do they all have different taste in music? But a goose could recognize its partner from miles away.”
“And we think we’re so special,” Dan said. He got it, and this was when she started falling for him. “True love and all that. You think we’re as random as the geese?”
“But the tragedy,” she said, “is that knowing it doesn’t change a thing.”
And here, a hundred and some years on, was Ranko Novak. A face among the faces, a goose like all the other geese. He was gone, and Nora was gone, and what had happened to the passion that had consumed them both? If Fiona could convince herself that it was floating around the world—just disembodied, leftover passion—wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to believe?
* * *
—
At two in the afternoon, Cecily called and said she’d changed her mind; she was about to board her connection at O’Hare and would be there late tonight. She didn’t need a hotel. An old college friend lived in the Latin Quarter. “I won’t be in your way,” she said. “I’ll work on Kurt. And then—do you think I should bring presents? For the little girl?”
* * *
—
At five o’clock, Fiona unwrapped her bandage to apply the ointment the doctor had given her. Her hand was hurting less. It was amazing how quickly you could forget physical pain, how soon you couldn’t even summon its echo.
At eight, Jake called. Serge had given him the number. He wondered if she’d come out and grab a bite. She was tired, she said, and managed to hang up. She’d have to have a word with Serge.
At nine forty-five, lying in bed, she started hearing sirens. Far too many, for far too long. At nine fifty, her phone started ringing. First Damian and then Jake—frantic, cryptic questions about where she was. Stay inside, they said. Then Richard was knocking on her door. She came out to the living room to watch the news. She stood in her nightgown, her feet cold. Serge paced the floor, swearing. Richard lay on the couch.
Fiona made herself breathe.
The attacks were far enough from here that she tried to imagine she was home, hearing about something on the far side of the world. There was no chance Claire had been out at what sounded like some kind of heavy metal concert; a person’s tastes couldn’t change that much. She might have been at that restaurant, or walking down that sidewalk, but the odds were small. The soccer stadium was up in Saint-Denis, where Claire lived; that worried her