“Mama!” Lucie exclaimed, not moving from Cam’s lap. “Look at what Diep can do with eggs! They fly like birds. It’s magic.”
“It really is,” I said, watching the second egg land in the pan, its yolk intact.
“Shall I sit with you while you eat, darling?” I asked her. “On the terrace?”
Lucie hesitated, then looked at the cook. “I want to stay here and see the eggs,” she said, leaning her head against Cam’s shoulder. “May I?” she said after my face fell. “Just for today?”
“Of course, darling,” I replied, forcing a smile. I had counted on her taking to the staff, but perhaps not so quickly. “How amusing,” I said. “Flying eggs.”
I made my way back upstairs, walked down the tiled hallway, stepping only in the middle of it, the slight clack of my low-heeled day shoes the only sound in the house. When I reached the end of the hall, I paused in front of the master bedroom. I leaned against the doorway and looked inside. I’d never had such a large bedroom. Our apartment in Paris was beautiful, but the French didn’t build the same way in their country.
I closed my eyes a minute, remembering my childhood bedroom. In our neglected farmhouse, the walls were a mix of old chipped paint and water leaks. In the bedrooms, there were creaky metal beds everywhere with sagging mattresses that felt like sleeping on wet cardboard. Like the rest of the house, my bedroom was inhabited by children of various sizes with too little space and privacy to properly grow.
I looked at my new bed, already made by one of the servants, the light streaming in to kiss the room, and wished I could transport the restless child that I had been to this place. But it wasn’t worth looking backward. My childhood was lost, but I had Lucie. She, I had vowed when I started to feel her move in my stomach, would have everything I had not. She would be the opposite of me.
I walked into the bedroom and put my hands on the bed. I was tempted to climb back in, my body still not set to the hours of the Orient, but I noticed there was a door to my left slightly ajar. I thought it was the closet, but quickly realized that it was the door to the adjoining room, the small one that Victor had taken for his study. One of the servants must have opened it and forgotten to close it when I was downstairs.
Below the only window in the room was a large wooden desk, simple but well polished, which must have belonged to Théodore van Dampierre. On top were a typewriter, a navy-blue blotter, two of Victor’s pens, and a few Michelin guidebooks. I looked down at the familiar red covers, the picture of the Michelin Man—André and Édouard had noticed one day that a haphazard stack of tires resembled a figure—printed on each cover. I picked up the most recent guide, its familiarity giving me a certain comfort, and ran my thumb over the price indicated on the cover. Twenty-five francs.
There were three drawers on each side of the desk and one wide, shallow drawer between them. Only one had a small silver keyhole in it. Instinctually, I reached for it, but it was locked. I opened the drawer below it. Empty. Then I opened the middle drawer. Inside was a small silver key. I took it up quickly, pressed it between my fingers, and then slipped it inside the keyhole. It unlocked without a sound, and I pulled the drawer open.
Inside was a stack of papers, held together with a metal clip. On the top of the stack was a document I had seen before. I had read it on the boat. It was an internal report that had circulated through the company. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it except that instead of focusing on the factories in France, it went into detail about the plantations in Indochine.
I knew much about the company. But I had never read an internal memo before. All I had ever read were the guidebooks.
But halfway into our boat journey, that changed.
Victor and I had left the small window of our cabin open, and late in the day, despite blue skies, there was a sudden downpour. I jumped up from the top deck and headed down to close it as soon as I felt the