in this car or out of it, is ever mentioned to Monsieur Lesage.”
When we pulled up to the house, Lanh helped me out of the back seat. I leaned against him as we made our way up the slate walkway. I needed to disappear for a few days. I needed my mind to go blank. But first, I needed my child.
“I would like to see Lucie,” I whispered as we reached the door. “She’ll make me feel better,” I said, imagining the warmth of her hand in mine.
“Of course,” he said as Trieu opened the door for us.
I tried to straighten when we walked in the foyer, to not make a spectacle in front of Trieu, but Lanh didn’t let me.
“Allow me to help you upstairs,” he said. “Then you can relax.”
“Lucie,” I whispered, looking in Trieu’s direction.
“Madame Lesage would like her daughter brought to her room,” said Lanh loudly as he helped me up the stairs.
“Miss Lucie is not home,” said Trieu, looking at me with concern. “She walked to the lake with a friend after school to sail their toy boats. Cam is with her.”
I looked at Trieu and then Lanh again and started to sob. Everything that I counted on to make me feel better was disappearing.
“Please,” said Lanh, holding my arm tighter. “Bring Madame Lesage a glass of water. And hot tea. Very hot. And something to eat. Quickly,” he added as he helped me upstairs.
When we got to the bedroom, he let my arm go and I shuffled inside my closet. I took off my clothes and then came out in my robe and slipped between the covers. I could feel Lanh’s presence. He was outside the door, waiting for me to tell him I was fine, but I felt as if I might never be able to say those words again.
TWENTY-SIX
Marcelle
November 15, 1933
“It’s very strange for me to hear that,” Paul Adrien said, looking at me from across the small café table that I’d brought him to near the main gate of the Temple of Literature, the city’s prettiest Confucian temple.
“I imagine it is,” I said after I’d finished explaining to him that I had brought him to Hanoi under false pretenses.
“Because your letter was very … explicit.”
“Yes, it was. But I had to make sure you came. And I thought perhaps something explicit might do the trick.”
“It did,” he said, leaning closer to me. “But that is not what you have in mind?”
“It is not,” I replied sharply. “I’m afraid I deceived you.”
“Well, even clothed, you’re very pretty to look at,” he said, moving his tall frame back in the metal chair. “Am I right in thinking that you and I only met that one time, yes? In Haiphong at the café. There was whiskey.”
“That’s right,” I repeated. “And yes, there was much whiskey.”
“But then you had a letter delivered to me. You said you wanted to see me. You paid for my journey here.”
“I did.”
“Because you have thought about me, nearly every day, for the last four years,” he said, quoting the letter.
“That’s right,” I replied. Now that I had cleared up my false promises of a sexual relationship, I was enjoying his bewilderment.
“But you haven’t known me for four years?” he asked.
“I have, in a sense,” I said, looking at him. I had thought about this moment so many times, but now the words felt heavy on my tongue. “I’ve thought of you because you are the man who shot my friend Cao Sinh in the back. You are the man that killed him.” I noticed Paul Adrien stop moving, his spine bent, his hands suddenly still. He knew who Sinh was. “What kind of man shoots an innocent person from behind? I wondered. Does a police officer in Indochine, especially one who works for the secret police, have a different type of mind than the rest of us? Is he just capable of more cruelty? And what kind of man can live with himself after doing that? What kind of man is Paul Adrien? That’s what I’ve been thinking of for the last four years.”
“I see,” Paul said, closing his eyes for a moment. “If that’s the case,” he noted quietly, “then you have thought about me every day since the thirtieth of April 1929.”
“That’s right. As has he,” I said, looking to my left. I stood up and gestured to Khoi to approach us. He had been sitting across the park, waiting for my indication.
I’d needed to be alone