wild thing.” She caught my look. “Why would I? I didn’t want to worry him.”
“Well, you told him now, didn’t you?” We stepped into the elevator. “We’re days behind schedule. We won’t be home when he’s expecting us.”
My mother waited for the bellhop to join us with our bags, and pressed the button. “We’ll simply spend a week less than I planned in Paris afterward. We’ll be home on time, and your father doesn’t have to worry about anything.”
“Go home early? You promised me that after Vevey, we’d talk about Rose. About going to Limoges—”
“We’ll talk about that when we get home.” She smiled as the elevator began to move downward. “When the time is right.”
I stared at her. “When the time is right? It’s right now. We’re already here.”
“Ma chère—” A glance toward the bellhop, listening to our English babble with uncomprehending curiosity.
I ignored him. “We can’t just go home, not after everything I’ve found out.”
“It’s not for us to do, Charlotte. It’s a job for your father.”
“Why? I’ve been doing a pretty good job on my own, better than—”
“It’s not suitable,” my mother snapped. “You need to go home, not go off on another wild goose chase. Your father will take things up. I will ask him, later. When we get home.”
Later. Always later. Rage pooled in my stomach. “You promised.”
“I know, but—”
“Maman, this is important to me.” I touched her arm, trying to make her see. “Not to give up until—”
“I’m not giving up, chérie.”
“That’s what it looks like. How urgent is this going to be to you when we’re on the other side of the Atlantic again?” My voice rose. “When it’s not an easy promise you can make and then break, just to get me moving?”
The elevator chimed, doors sliding open. Maman glared at the curious bellhop, and he picked up our luggage and scuttled toward the hotel desk.
“Well?” I challenged.
“This is not a suitable place for such a discussion. Come along, and no more fuss, please.” Gliding out into the busy hotel court.
“Fuss? Is that what this is about?” I stamped after her.
She turned, giving me a tight smile. “Please, Charlotte? You’re already in so much trouble with your father. I will be too, if there are any more delays about this, so please just stop misbehaving and come along.”
I stared at her. I just stared. My beautiful self-assured mother, gnawing at her perfectly painted lips, worried she might get in trouble with my father. She hadn’t dared tell him I’d bolted off to France. She hadn’t dared tell him we’d be so much as a week late. She’d say anything to get me on that train to Vevey, like a little girl lying her way out of a spanking. If she didn’t deliver me home on time and with a flat belly, she was going to be in trouble.
Maman had always made me feel like a child. I looked at her now, and I felt like the adult.
“You’re not going to look for Rose, are you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Because Rose is dead!” she snapped at last. “You know that, Charlotte!”
“Possibly. Maybe even probably.” I tried to be fair, even in my anger. “But that isn’t good enough for me, and you promised I could run it to the end. For peace of mind, if nothing else.” A pause. “If Dad won’t pick the search up again, can you honestly tell me you’ll push him for me?”
She exhaled sharply. “I’m going to pay for our rooms. Try to compose yourself.”
Off she marched in angry little steps, heels clicking. I stood with the luggage, feeling strange and brittle as glass, and when I looked across the hotel court I saw Rose. Not really, of course—it was just a sullen pimple-pocked girl leaning against the broad window waiting for her parents to finish checking in—but the French sunlight made a halo out of her blond head, shadowing her face, and for a moment I let myself believe it was Rose. Rose looking right at me, shaking her head a little.
You’re not a child, Charlie, I imagined her saying. Or a coward.
She’d always been brave. Even when she was afraid of being alone, of being abandoned, like that day in the Provençal café, she was still brave. She must have been terrified when she found out she was in the fix I was in now, and yet she hadn’t given in when her parents tried to “arrange things” for her. She’d had her baby and then