Chapter Fifteen #2
“I do know. Mom—” Cosima stopped. She hadn’t ever called Phoebe “mom.” Not because Phoebe hadn’t wanted her to, but because even when she was young, Cosima had known that “mom” was a term of endearment, and there was always a part of her too angry with Phoebe to call her mom.
“Part of the reason Mom loved you is because she loved me so much, she wanted me to have a dad.”
“I think so. Yes.”
Cosima pinched the bridge of her nose so she wouldn’t cry.
“I should’ve had a mom for a lot longer than I did.
I’m barely thirty. I have so much ahead of me that I’ll need a mom for, and she won’t be there.
She’s turning our Castle, our home, into a performing arts center! We’re being evicted, Duncan!”
He laughed, a sound stuck midway between resignation and gratitude. “I’ll always be nearby if you need me.”
“And I’m grateful, but neither of us got quite what we wanted, did we? Even though we always knew what Mom wanted.”
Duncan laughed again, watery now. “We did. Like it was our job.”
“Well, I don’t have that job anymore, and neither do you.
For years, I’ve had this terrible pain, and I haven’t known what caused it.
I couldn’t find a doctor to help me with it.
I didn’t know if it would go away or if it would kill me.
When she died, I thought I would know. I think I secretly thought the pain was her, or her drinking.
But now I think the pain must have been secrets.
You know, Duncan, I would rather have a great big bleeding wound on the outside, where I could take care of it and help it heal, than an ache inside that I’m afraid might kill me. ”
Cosima heard his chair creak again. “I want you to know that I don’t regret my life with Phoebe. I would have married her. Even at the end, I would have.”
Cosima had never doubted it. “I think she thought she was keeping us safe from the worst of herself, but she didn’t ask us if we agreed with her plan.”
“Codependent, as you and my group have enlightened me.”
“I should go to one of these groups.” Cosima’s face felt hot against the glass of her phone.
“I think you should, yes.” Duncan cleared his throat again. “Cosima, darling?”
She knew he meant that he needed to know what to tell the PFS board. They were still good at having a full conversation without saying a word. But Cosima could look forward, now, to a future when they didn’t rely on silence and shorthand. Maybe someday they would even learn how to bicker.
She sighed, long and gusty. “I’d like to activate the board policy that deals with what to do in the event of incapacitation. I’m not keen on appointing an interim directly. That will invite power struggles later.”
She heard Duncan tapping on his keyboard. “In the section about CEO duty.”
“Yes. Wouldn’t that be Reggie?”
“The policy is that the most senior board member under the chair would serve as interim CEO, with certain limitations to powers … blah, blah, blah. Yes, Reggie. I think the only other time this was used was when Phoebe was quarantined in Romania after scouting locations with Gerwig and getting exposed to the measles.”
“I remember. Let’s get that started. Have the paperwork directed to my FileJoin account, and I’ll sign.”
“This only buys you ten business days. And you should know there are three new negotiated contracts on the table from the union, delivered yesterday. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to cause any panic about those jobs.
Reggie won’t be able to touch those contracts, and you wouldn’t want him to. And the CFO’s office has concerns.”
“The stock price.” Cosima’s stomach buckled again.
“Perhaps if you could authorize your assistant to—”
“I know. I’ll send a soothing memo.”
“And do you suppose an additional, revised version of that soothing memo could be shared for me to circulate to the executive producer of our show? I’ve been stalling by authorizing a great deal of B-roll of the garden waving in the breeze and silhouetted by the sunset.”
“Yes.” Cosima forced her jaw to unclench. She meant this yes, if only so there wouldn’t be a whiff of concern coming from the top to worry the people who needed their checks. The union would, rightfully, step in on their behalf as well if any concern went on too long.
The chair creaked. “Good. Good. I love you, Cosima.”
“I love you, too.”
After disconnecting, she closed her eyes, trying to focus on how Edie smiled when it was just for her. She wouldn’t think yet about how fast ten days would go by, or about the employees of PFS who depended on her presence and her decisions.
She put her hot phone in her back pocket and walked across the courtyard to where the plague burial pit had once been, now occupied by a patch of dormant grass shaded beneath a knobbly collection of lime trees.
“This is it, huh?” She stood as close as she could to Edie, who was gazing at a mummified cat displayed vertically on bright silk, glassed in from the elements.
The cat appeared to be leaping into the air, a bit of rope having trapped its front paw to hold it in place.
The shapes of its bones were visible through its skin, and a mummified rat sat at its feet. “That is a grim spectacle.”
“It really looks like if you gave it some food and water, or wrapped it in a towel and took it to one of those rescue places, it would wake up and be okay.”
Cosima did not agree, but she saw no reason to say so. “I have to assume that if it was interred here, it was a loved cat, so there’s that.”
“According to the docent, it might have been someone’s idea of a joke.
Because this place gets dug up so often, relatively speaking.
A cat mummy might’ve been a way to freak out a priest or archaeologist.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Or, another theory, it’s a black cat, so it might be here to ward off evil. They gave a dead cat a job.”
When Cosima put her arm around her, Edie leaned into the nook of her shoulder. It happened without hesitation or effort, easing away the last of the worry from Cosima’s stomach. She indulged the impulse to lean down and kiss Edie on the temple, which earned her a quick smile.
“Well, this cat is loved now,” Cosima said. “You talked to the docent. Where do you think we should look for Agatha’s clue?”
“Not here.” Edie turned around under Cosima’s arm and put her own arms up on Cosima’s shoulders.
“No? Is there another bony cat somewhere?” Edie’s eyes were new-leaf green in the sunny courtyard.
“There could be. Turns out that Rouen has at least half a dozen old, amazing churches. But no.” She smiled again, the way the cat might have, once, with the rat caught beneath the points of its claws.
“What did the docent tell you?”
“First, the bad news. He said there isn’t anywhere here that a visitor almost fifty years ago could have hid something that wouldn’t have been found already. It’s a gallery and artists’ space now, but before that it was an art school, crawling with children.”
“Disappointing.”
“Yes. However, when Agatha would have been around in the seventies, the cat mummy was still big news. There’s a café a short walk away that’s been around forever.
Back when the cat mummy was recent, the daughter of the café owner took over management.
Mostly as a joke, she had a sign painted with a cat skeleton on it and hung it up over the café doors.
Ever since, it’s been known as ‘The Dead Cat.’”
“And you think Agatha might have left something there?”
Edie picked up a strand of Cosima’s hair and twirled it around her finger. The gentle tugging sensation made Cosima’s knees go weak.
“I really do think so, because the other thing the docent told me is that ever since the German occupation of France, people have been pinning letters to one of the walls of that same café.”
“Oh.” Now Cosima could feel Edie’s same excitement quickening her pulse, because pinning a letter to the wall of a French café sounded like something Agatha would do.
And wasn’t that surprising—that in the short time they’d been following her clues, Cosima had started to get a sense of what made Agatha Llewellyn tick?
“That’s right,” Edie said, nodding her head. “I’m talking about letters they hoped loved ones would find on their way over the channel, or letters to their future selves, or—”
“—to a treasure hunter.”
“Right. The café never takes anything down. Only the person who a letter is meant for can claim it.”
Cosima picked up one of Edie’s long braids and smoothed it over her chest—a touch with no purpose but to reassure herself of Edie’s aliveness. “Let’s go, then.”
Edie stepped next to Cosima and wrapped two arms around her elbow, and they ambled the few blocks to the café, a low building straddling a street corner whose forest-green awning sheltered bistro tables.
The upper story was half-timbered, and over the awning was a gilded wooden sign, Le Chat Mort, showing a cat skeleton chasing a ball of string.
The café’s double glass doors emitted a pleasant smell of coffee, wine, baking bread, and cooking onions as people came in and out.
“Let’s sit by the wall.” Edie slipped off her coat in the warm room. Her snug black T-shirt looked effortlessly cool with her braids, jeans, and Converse, and it put her lush body on display, turning the heads of more than one of the people seated around the glossy wooden tables.
“The docent wasn’t exaggerating about this place never taking the letters down.”