Chapter 7
ELLA
Evening settled over Paris gently, the way everything here seemed to—without asking permission, without making a spectacle of itself.
The sky dimmed from pale blue to steel gray as I walked, streetlights flickering on one by one, their glow reflected in shop windows and puddles left over from an earlier rain.
I checked the address on my phone again as I slowed my pace.
The clinic sat at the end of a narrow side street, its facade modest and unassuming. No grand entrance. No sweeping glass doors or comforting signage. Just a low building of pale stone, a small plaque near the door listing its name in understated lettering.
This was it.
My chest tightened.
I had put this off all day—let myself wander through Rose’s Paris, chasing beauty and meaning and hope like talismans I could hold up against the truth. But hope didn’t answer questions. And it didn’t explain how my sister had gone from walking these streets to lying still in a hospital bed.
I pulled my coat tighter around me and stepped inside.
The air changed immediately. Cooler. Sterile.
It smelled faintly of antiseptic and something medicinal I couldn’t identify.
The lighting was harsh, fluorescent, unforgiving.
A long reception desk stretched across the far wall, manned by a woman typing briskly on a computer, her posture rigid with efficiency.
I hesitated just inside the doorway, suddenly aware of how out of place I felt. My French—halting at best—buzzed uselessly in my head. My confidence from earlier evaporated.
This wasn’t a theater or a bookstore. This was real.
I approached the desk.
“Bonsoir,” I said softly.
The woman looked up, eyes flicking over me with a quick assessment that felt more like inventory than interest. “Oui?”
“I—” I swallowed. “Je suis la s?ur de Rose Rousseau.” My accent was clumsy, my grammar probably wrong. “Elle … elle est morte ici. Dans un accident.”
Something shifted behind the woman’s eyes. Not sympathy. Recognition. Or annoyance.
She sighed and glanced at the clock mounted on the wall behind her. “You are very late,” she said, switching to English without warmth. “These matters are handled during the day.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry. I just arrived in Paris yesterday. I didn’t—”
She cut me off with a sharp look. “You are American?”
“Yes.”
Of course, I was.
Her mouth thinned. “You should have come this morning. Administrative offices are closing.”
“I understand,” I said, my voice tightening despite my effort to stay calm. “But I was told this is where my sister was brought after the accident. I just need to ask a few questions. And … about her remains. Her ashes.”
That earned me a raised eyebrow.
“She was cremated,” the woman said briskly. “Yes. The paperwork is not finished.”
“I know they’re pending release,” I said. “I’m her next of kin handling arrangements here.”
Another sigh. Louder this time.
“You Americans,” she muttered, not bothering to lower her voice. “You come when it is convenient for you and expect everything to stop.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
“I’m not expecting that,” I said, heat creeping into my cheeks. “I just—my sister died. I’m trying to understand what happened.”
The woman’s fingers paused over her keyboard. She studied me more closely now, as if reassessing whether I was worth the effort.
“Sit,” she said finally, gesturing toward a row of plastic chairs along the wall. “I will see if someone is available. But I cannot promise anything.”
“Thank you,” I said, even though the word tasted thin.
I sat.
The waiting room was nearly empty—just a man in work clothes staring at his phone and an elderly woman clutching her handbag like a lifeline. The television mounted high on the wall murmured softly in French, the sound barely registering.
I clasped my hands in my lap and waited.
Minutes passed. Then more.
Every time someone walked by in scrubs or a white coat, my pulse jumped. No one stopped.
I replayed the accident in my mind, though I had only fragments to work with. A call in the middle of the night. My mother’s shaking voice. Words like collision, severe injuries, efforts made.
Efforts made.
What did that mean? Had Rose been conscious? Afraid? Had she asked for anyone?
My throat tightened.
I waited for a long time. It felt like hours.
Finally, a man appeared at the doorway behind the desk. He was middle-aged, hair thinning at the temples, glasses perched low on his nose. The receptionist spoke to him in rapid French, gesturing toward me without looking in my direction.
He frowned slightly, then nodded.
She waved me forward.
“Come,” the man said curtly.
I followed him down a narrow hallway that smelled even more strongly of disinfectant. Doors lined the walls, each marked with small, impersonal placards. We stopped outside an office barely larger than a closet.
He gestured for me to sit.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, folding his arms.
Straight to the point.
“I want to understand what happened to my sister,” I said. “The accident. And … I was told her personal belongings were collected. I need to know where they are.”
He glanced at a file on his desk, flipping it open with practiced ease. “Rose Rousseau. Yes.”
The sound of her name in this place—flattened into ink and paper—made my chest ache.
“She was brought in after a vehicular collision,” he continued. “Severe trauma. She did not die immediately.”
My breath caught. “She was conscious?”
“For a brief period,” he said. “Yes.”
The word landed like a blow.
“She spoke?” I asked. “Did she say anything?”
He hesitated just long enough for hope to flare—and then extinguish.
“I am not authorized to discuss details of her final moments,” he said. “That information is documented, but it is not for family release without proper request.”
“I am her family,” I said, my voice rising despite myself. “I’m her sister.”
“And you are late,” he replied coolly. “These requests require appointments. Forms. Translation, in some cases.”
Frustration surged through me, hot and sudden. “I didn’t know how this worked,” I said. “No one told me. I’m trying to do this the right way.”
“You should have consulted the consulate,” he said. “Or come earlier. Or brought someone who understands the system.”
You Americans, the receptionist had said.
I clenched my jaw. “What about her belongings?”
The man flipped another page. “They were released.”
“To whom?” I asked.
He paused.
“Someone listed as an authorized contact,” he said carefully.
“Her husband?” I asked. “Randy Kent?”
He shook his head. “No.”
My stomach dropped.
“Then who?”
“That information is not included here,” he said. “Only that belongings were collected.”
Collected.
By someone else.
“Was there a visitor?” I asked quietly. “Someone with her before she died?”
His eyes flicked up, sharp now. Assessing.
“There was someone present briefly,” he said. “The name was not recorded.”
Not recorded.
My hands trembled.
“So, you’re telling me,” I said slowly, “that my sister was conscious, that someone visited her, that her belongings were taken by someone who is not her husband—and you can’t tell me anything else?”
“That is correct.”
I stared at him, disbelief and grief tangling in my chest until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“This is unacceptable,” I said, my voice breaking. “She’s not just a file. She’s my sister.”
He looked at me for a long moment, something like weariness flickering across his face.
“Madame,” he said, “death is administrative as much as it is personal. You will need to follow procedure.”
Procedure.
The word echoed in my head as he stood, clearly signaling the conversation was over.
“I can give you the address of the funeral service handling the cremation,” he added. “You may inquire about the ashes there. During business hours.”
“Tomorrow,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
He opened the door.
Dismissed.
I stumbled back into the waiting room, my legs suddenly unsteady. The fluorescent lights seemed brighter now, harsher. The air too thin.
I sank into one of the plastic chairs and stared at the floor.
Rose had been alive. Briefly. Conscious enough to see someone. To speak, maybe. To know she was dying.
And I wasn’t there.
I hadn’t even been in the same country.
Tears blurred my vision before I could stop them. I pressed my hand to my mouth, trying to hold it together, but the weight of everything—the city, the language, the bureaucracy, the unanswered questions—crashed down all at once.
I felt small. Stupid. Like a child who’d wandered into a world she didn’t understand and been punished for it.
You Americans.
I hugged my arms around myself and let the first sob break free, then another. My shoulders shook as I bent forward, grief spilling out in messy, humiliating waves.
No one came to comfort me.
The receptionist glanced over once, then looked away. The television droned on. Life continued.
I cried, anyway.
Right there in the waiting room, surrounded by strangers and silence and the knowledge that my sister’s last moments belonged to someone else.
I didn’t know how long I sat there like that—folded in on myself, breath hitching, tears sliding down my face unchecked. Time lost its edges in that waiting room. It stretched and warped, minutes swelling into something heavier, harder to carry.
At some point, my crying quieted into something smaller. Quieter. The kind of grief that lived in your chest instead of spilling out of it.
I wiped at my cheeks with the sleeve of my sweater, embarrassed by the wet tracks, the red swelling around my eyes. I was a grown woman. And I felt utterly unmoored.
I tried to steady my breathing the way I’d learned to do in moments of panic—slow in through my nose, slower out through my mouth—but every inhale seemed to catch on the same thought.
Rose had been awake.
She’d known she was hurt. Maybe dying. She’d been aware enough for someone to visit her, to hold her hand, to take her things when it was over.
And I had been walking through my life in New York, assuming there would always be time.
The idea hollowed me out.
I lifted my head and looked around the waiting room again.
The man in work clothes was gone now. The elderly woman still sat rigidly in her chair, eyes fixed straight ahead, her face a mask of practiced endurance.
A nurse passed through the room without looking at me, shoes squeaking faintly against the floor.
No one asked if I was okay.
No one here had time for that.
I stood slowly, my legs stiff, and crossed to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The mirror over the sink reflected a version of me I barely recognized—eyes glassy and rimmed red, hair escaping its loose tie, mouth drawn tight like I was bracing for impact.
I splashed water on my face, gripping the porcelain edge of the sink as I leaned forward.
Get it together, I told myself. You can fall apart later.
But the thought rang hollow.
I straightened and studied my reflection again.
This was what being out of my depth felt like. Small and exposed and painfully aware of everything I didn’t know. The language. The rules. The way death was processed here like a task to be completed rather than a loss to be mourned.
I dried my hands and stepped back into the hallway, heart thudding a little too fast. The receptionist glanced up as I passed but said nothing.
I walked out into the evening air like someone emerging from underwater.
Paris had darkened while I was inside. The streetlights cast soft halos on the pavement, and the sky had turned the color of bruised steel. Cars passed in a steady stream, tires hissing faintly against damp asphalt.
Life, again. Uninterrupted.
I paused on the sidewalk, pressing my fingers briefly to my throat as if I could calm the tightness there with touch alone.
Tomorrow, I’d have to come back. Tomorrow, I’d have to ask again—better questions, sharper ones. Tomorrow, I’d need to be composed enough to navigate paperwork and offices and strangers who didn’t care how much this hurt.
Tomorrow, I’d have to be brave.
But tonight, I was just tired.
I pulled my coat closer. Rose’s face floated in my mind—not sick or broken, but alive. Laughing. Bright-eyed. So certain she’d had more time.
“I’m trying,” I murmured under my breath, not sure who I was talking to anymore. “I promise, I am.”
Paris didn’t answer.