“Why is that odd? She tells everyone she loves them all the time. Everyone except me. Have you tried calling her?”
“Her phone is switched off.”
“Why would she switch her phone off?” His concern deepened. He thought of her going back to a place she hadn’t returned to since she’d left with Jackson. A place that held nothing for her except memories of violence and loss. The thought of her facing that alone made his chest ache. “I’ll fly to Paris.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“The same way everyone does it. I’m going to get on a plane.”
“But you have work.”
“This is more important. Élise hasn’t been back there for—how long is it? Eight years? Someone should be with her.” He pulled his phone out and searched for flights while Jackson gaped at him.
“You’re going to take time off?”
“I did it when Gramps collapsed.”
“Gramps is family.”
“So is Élise. People will have to cover for me.” Again. He already owed more favors than he could ever repay. “There’s a direct flight to Paris leaving tonight. All I need is the address.”
“I don’t have an address. She’s worked for me for the past eight years.”
“But you went to her apartment the night you rescued her. What do you remember about it?”
“It was eight years ago and I was dealing with an abusive husband and a terrified woman. I wasn’t exactly looking at the neighborhood.”
Sean reined in his impatience. “Think!”
“All I remember is getting her out of there and trying not to break every bone in that man’s body.” Jackson spread his hands, clearly frustrated. “She lived near the river, I know that. We were in her apartment for less than half an hour. She just stuffed a few things in a case while I kept watch in case he showed up. I could just see the Louvre from her bathroom window. Rue de Lille, yes that’s it. She lived on the Rue de Lille.”
“Apartment number?”
“No idea.”
Rolling his eyes, Sean booked himself a flight out of Boston. “Let’s just hope it isn’t a long street.”
“You’re just going to turn up there and hope you can find her?”
“If you don’t have her address, I don’t have much choice.”
“How do you know she’s going to want to see you?”
“I don’t. But I know that if she’s back in that place she’s going to need a friend.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE APARTMENT WAS coated with thick dust and a deep layer of memories. They choked her, suffocated her, made her throat ache and her eyes sting. It hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed and everywhere she looked she saw her mother. And mistakes.
The feelings she’d buried pushed their way to the surface. Picking up a pot she’d made in school when she was eight years old, she turned it over in her hand, remembering her mother’s delight on the day she’d brought it home.
She’d just been kidding herself, hadn’t she? When she’d thought she’d moved on, she’d been kidding herself. All she’d done was ignore the past, block it out, refuse to look at it like a child closing her eyes in a dark room so that she couldn’t see what was there. But she hadn’t really moved on. There was a big black hole in her life and instead of filling it in, she’d fenced it off and tiptoed around it, afraid to look at it, afraid that if she took one wrong step she’d fall back in.
Tired after the long flight and crushed by the memories, she collapsed on top of the bed, unable to sleep, and spent the night thinking of her mother, tortured by guilt, knowing she couldn’t live here, sharing this tiny apartment with the ghosts of her past.
But she couldn’t go back, either.
Sean didn’t need another reason to stay away from Snow Crystal. The O’Neils didn’t need someone disrupting their famil