reason,” I managed to say, but she was hugging me again. Two hugs in as many minutes—my mother hadn’t hugged me in recent memory, at least not since before the Little Problem. Even longer. I didn’t quite mean for it to happen, but my arms stole around her cinched waist.
“Oh, chérie—” She pulled back, dabbing at her eyes, and I found my voice.
“How did you find me?”
“Your telephone call from London, you said you were looking for Rose. What else could that mean but that you were haring off to see your Tante Jeanne in Rouen? I took the boat and telephoned her when I arrived in Calais. She said you’d been and gone already, to Roubaix.”
“How did she know—” But I’d told her myself, hadn’t I? No, Tante, I’m not staying. I have to go to Roubaix. I’d been trying so hard not to shriek at her for how she’d thrown Rose out, I’d given myself away.
“It’s not a big place, Roubaix.” My mother gestured at the hotel court. “This is only the fourth hotel I’ve checked.”
What stinking bad luck, I thought, but some part of me was saying in a small voice, She hugged me.
“Tea,” my mother decided, just as she’d decided in the Dolphin Hotel in Southampton not even a week ago. A handful of days seemed like too small a time to contain Eve and Finn and everything I’d learned about Rose.
My mother ordered tea and then looked me over anxiously, shaking her head. “You look a mess! Have you been living rough? Mon Dieu—”
“No, I have money. I—I pawned Grandmaman’s pearls.” The shame of that stung me suddenly; the only thing I had of my mother’s mother, and I’d traded it away for a wild goose chase. “I can get them back, I promise. I have the pawn slip. I’ll pay out of my own savings.”
“I am just happy to know you weren’t sleeping in a ditch,” my mother said, waving the thought of her mother’s pearls away. That surprised me all over again. My mother, not caring about the pearls she’d always pointedly said should have been left to her? “Traveling alone across the Channel! Chérie, the danger!”
Not alone, I almost said, but I really didn’t think Maman would be reassured to hear that I’d traveled with an ex-convict and a pistol-toting drunkard. I had a moment’s fervent gratitude that Eve and Finn had already gone upstairs. “I’m sorry I worried you. I never meant—”
“Your hair,” she clucked, and smoothed a flyaway strand back behind my ear. How did I suddenly feel so small and helpless when I’d spent my last few days breaking Eve’s door down, getting a Luger pointed at my face, crossing the Channel . . . ?
I straightened in my chair, marshaling arguments. Maman wasn’t going to hear me unless I sounded like a grown woman with a plan, not a sulky child with a temper tantrum. “This wasn’t about me being ungrateful about the Appointment. It was—”
“I know.” My mother lifted her teacup. “We rushed you, your father and I—”
“No, it’s not that. It was about Rose.”
“—with this thing in Switzerland. The Appointment.” That capital letter again. “You panicked when we got off the ship in Southampton.”
I shrugged. True enough, but—
“We only want what’s best for you, your father and I.” Reaching out to pat my hand. “All parents do. So we pushed you onto the boat before you knew what was happening.”
“Did I ruin everything?” I managed to ask, meeting her eyes. “Is it too late now for . . .” I didn’t know how late was too late for the procedure to be safe. I didn’t know anything.
“We can get another appointment, ma chère. It’s not too late for that.”
A pang went through my chest, part disappointment and part relief. I felt the Little Problem inside me as though it were vibrating, though my stomach was perfectly still.
My mother’s hand reached out to cover mine, warm and soft. “It’s frightening, I know. But in these cases, earlier is safer. Once it’s done, we’ll go home and give you time to rest, reflect—”
“I don’t want to rest.” I looked up, a familiar thread of anger rising through all my confusion. “I don’t want to go home. I want to try to find Rose, if she’s still alive. Listen to me.”
My mother sighed. “Surely you aren’t still hanging on to hope for Rose.”
“Yes,” I stated. “Until I know she’s dead. Because after James, I can’t just write her off.