Hidden in Paris Read Online Free PDF Page A

than brick; something strong enough to never again let pain in. That home—that house—was her Great Wall of China, her Maginot line. It was her refuge and her jailor, her passion and her foe, her salvation and her demise.
    She rubbed cream on her hands where the skin was the worst. She did everything herself in the house. No job too small, or too big. The very table she sat at was an example. She had painted it a warm tone of red, painstakingly varnished it, and had nearly passed out from the fumes. The stairwell was another example of her work, reconstructed plank by plank, so were every chair, couch and sofa in the house: scavenged, reupholstered and the woodwork refinished by yours truly.
    The soft January light flattered and caressed every surface of the beloved kitchen. The carrera marble countertop, she kept in perfect shape. The ancient tile floor, she had regrouted herself with a hundred-year-old recipe that mixed sand, glue, and pigment. The glorious three-oven eight-burner AGA range, she had recomposed piece by piece.
    The light and the silence of midmorning gave the kitchen the wistful feeling of an old painting. Those were lonely hours before the boys came back from school. Maxence was nine now, Laurent seven, and Paul five. They walked to school at the
Lycée International,
a few blocks away from the house. Thanks to the French education system, they came home for lunch daily so that she could do what she did best—feed them and smother them to death. In exchange, the boys gave her life meaning and purpose.
    The enemy was Thinking. No, the enemy was Time, or having too much of it when the kids were at school, especially now that Paul was in kindergarten. Too much time bred too much thinking and that she could not have. Her next therapy, she had already decided, would have the combined benefits of being cheap and brutal. She wanted to refinish the maple wood floor in the entryway, a task that included, but was not limited to, sanding, gluing, restoring, tinting, varnishing, coughing, and crying. But projects didn’t solve everything; as her arms and fingers moved, so did her mind, and in pretty tight circles, too. And projects ended. Once the floor was refinished, then what? And now that she was utterly and desperately penniless, now really what?
    Money had come to them via Johnny’s side of the family, in the form of a substantial inheritance at a time when the dollar was worth a whole lot more. She and Johnny had visited dozens of places, penthouses with pools, and apartments with views of the Trocadéro or the Eiffel Tower. The real estate woman wore skintight suits and stiletto heels and walked with each foot precisely in front of the other, as though there were cliffs on either side of her. Annie became excellent at imitating her behind her back to make Johnny laugh.
    They saw the house on a spring day. The stiletto woman had shown it to them as an afterthought. “It came on the market this morning. I haven’t seen it, but look at the listing, an eight-bedroom townhouse with a private garden in the heart of the sixteenth arrondissement? There is work, it says. But the street alone is a gem,” she had assured them with a whisper that indicated that awe and respect were
de rigueur
. “It isn’t authorized to through traffic. There is a gate to the street.”
    “A Parisian’s take on the gated community,” Johnny pointed out.
    “I’m against it on principle,” Annie said.
    But as soon as the three entered the street, bird songs and the smell of jasmine replaced the noise and smell of traffic. The street was lined with centuries-old gnarled sycamores, and the trees’ tender spring leaves filtered light like in a meadow. The real estate woman’s ankles bent in frightening angles on the cobblestone pavement, and Annie admired one more time the way French women surrendered to the enslavement of elegance.
    The houses on the private alley were all
hôtel particuliers
, town houses, which really