Hidden in Paris by Corine Gantz Page A

panic in preparation for the trip, it all seemed to go remarkably smoothly. The pull that small ad in the paper had had on her was confounding. Whenever her resolve weakened, she’d merely go back to the envelope, retrieve the cut-up page of the
Los Angeles Times
, and read the ad again. Each time, she’d feel joyous like a small child. She always loved surprises, and secrets! She knew none of this was properly examined, was not without consequences, and was wrong in a way. But she was doing it.
    Lola folded the page of the paper and placed the stack of Euros, the three passports, and the three airplane tickets back into the manila envelope. In her modeling days, Paris had always been her favorite city. To Mark, the world outside of the U.S. was narrowed down to Mexico and the Bahamas. He would never find her there.

Février

Chapter 7
    Annie’s stomach cramps had not eased since the night before. Going three miles per hour on the
périférique
while Lucas moaned about the wheels of her minivan, made her feel even more sick to her stomach. She did not want to talk and was thankful for Lucas’s silence. Through the rain on the van’s window, she was suddenly taking a sobering look at France through what she figured to be a Bel Air resident’s eyes. Gone were the charming cafés, the flower shops, the statues, the parks, the architecture. All she noticed now was the dismal weather, the pollution, and the endless string of rotted cars filled with people with rotted teeth. Paris was nothing but a dump and soon it would be all in the open.
    What struck her was how little movement there had been in her life in the last two years, how very still things had been. For one, since Johnny died she had stopped driving. It had not been a conscious decision, but a profound, inexplicable aversion. This was the first time the van was out of the garage since. She reasoned that she had been traumatized by his car crash. It was only natural. But then why did she not even want to see the van. If she needed something from the garage she’d send Maxence or Lucas to fetch it. Lucas periodically insisted she needed to work on the issue, but she dismissed it. In the rare instances when she needed to get out of her neighborhood, she simply took buses. The day before, she had surprised herself by insisting that Lucas pick up Lola at the airport using the van. Lucas had raised an eyebrow.
    “Why?”
    “I can’t very well ask her to take a cab, can I?”
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “I want things to go smoothly. I want them to feel welcome and at ease.”
    “What about
me
being at ease?”
    She pushed Lucas with both hands toward the garage and she let him lift the metal curtain. “Let’s air out the monster, see if it can still roar.” Lucas turned toward her looking offended. “I hope you are not referring to my private anatomy.”
    In a few minutes, they would be at the international gate where Annie had come off the plane as a newlywed. Had she really once been the kind of person who flew over oceans, drove in unknown cities, moved to new countries?
    “I am missing work for this?” Lucas said. “I just don’t see why you could not drive on your own.”
    “I don’t feel capable of driving, I told you a million times that I’m not ready.”
    “You are capable,” he said. “And you’re ready.”
    “When I’m ready to drive, you’ll be the first one informed.”
    Later on, as she stood in the dense crowd that faced the international gate at Charles De Gaulle Airport where Lola and her children should have appeared a long time ago, she was back to feeling more anticipation than fear. There were people everywhere, people doing things, going places and she was right in the thick of the action. She was waiting for an unknown woman to become part of her life. She could not help but feel proud of herself for breaking that spell with the van, and for making this tremendous plunge towards the unknown.
    But an hour after the