19. Grace
Grace
The wine had gone straight to my head. Well, to my belly.
I was warm and fuzzy, not drunk. Loose in a way I hadn’t been since before the Russian showed up at my café.
Jean had kept refilling my glass during dinner, and I’d kept emptying it because the food was incredible and the conversation was easy, and for one evening I’d almost forgotten why we were here.
Almost.
Garrett had laughed twice at Jean’s stories during dinner. Actual laughs. Short, surprised sounds, like they’d escaped before he could stop them.
I did my best not to stare when it happened the first time, but considering how quickly he frowned afterward, I was pretty sure I’d failed.
“Now then.” Jean pushed back from the table, piling dishes to carry to the kitchen. “Shall we see what secrets your grandmother left you?”
Butterflies swirled inside my stomach, jostling around as though they’d also had too much wine.
Garrett stood and carried the dishes for Jean.
Jean led us through a doorway off the kitchen into what must have been a sunroom once.
Now it was crammed with books and equipment, including a large worktable under a window, magnifying lamps on adjustable arms, and trays of small tools.
The sun had set, so he switched on several lamps that bathed the table in bright, even white light.
“Grace, sit here.” He rolled a stool toward the table for me and washed his hands thoroughly at a small sink in his workshop, drying them on a clean cloth. He patted the table, and Garrett placed the velvet pouch in front of him, then took up position behind us, hovering like the bodyguard he was.
Jean drew the egg from its pouch, cradling it like the precious thing it was. He turned it slowly under the light, examining the smooth surface.
“Extraordinary.” He set the egg on its bag and pulled one of the magnifying lamps closer, peering through its lens. “The enamel is exceptional. Whoever made this was a master. May I open it?”
I nodded.
He found the tiny catch and pressed. The egg split open to reveal the golden yolk inside. Another soft sound escaped him as he lifted the yolk free and set it beside the outer shell. “And this opens as well?”
“The hen’s inside.”
Jean repeated the process, and the jeweled hen emerged. The sapphire in its beak glinted under the bright lights, and the fire of the tiny diamonds practically erupted.
“Beautiful.” He turned the hen over, examining it from every angle under his magnifier. “Now, I should tell you—my expertise is gold and jewelry, but ancient time periods. Greek, Roman, Persian. This is outside my specialty.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” Garrett said. “You can probably give us a solid guess whether it’s authentic to the period, at least.”
Jean shrugged one shoulder, but a small smile tugged at his mouth. The humility was genuine, but so was the expertise underneath it. He held the hen directly under the magnifying lamp. His fingers moved slowly, probing. “There’s a seam here. And a mechanism... in the tail feathers, I think...”
I leaned forward on my stool, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut for a moment to clear my vision. Maybe I’d had a little bit too much wine, or maybe a shot of adrenaline mixed with the wine was too much for my system to handle.
There was a soft click, and the hen’s breast swung open on a tiny hinge, revealing a hollow space inside. And nestled in that space, folded into a tight square, was a piece of paper.
“Oh,” I breathed.
Jean raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you know this was here?”
“No.” I pressed a hand against my chest, feeling my lungs and heart working double time. It was open. And another secret had been hidden inside. “We were fairly sure it would open but didn’t know how.”
He used a pair of tweezers from his tool tray to extract the paper.
It was yellowed with age, the edges soft, the folds worn nearly through in places.
He set it on the table and, with painstaking slowness, unfolded it.
The writing inside was in a script I didn’t recognize, and some of the letters were smudged beyond reading.
“Cyrillic,” Jean said. “Russian.”
Russian. A Russian egg. A Russian letter. And a Russian man who’d shown up at my café with a photograph of my grandmother.
“Can you read it?” I asked Garrett.
“I can only speak the language. I didn’t learn to read it.” To Jean, he asked, “Can you?”
“Not well enough to translate. But technology can help.” Jean pulled out his phone, opened an app, and photographed the letter. The three of us sat in silence while the phone processed.
“Are you all right?” Garrett laid a hand on my back, and my heart got really confused about whether it was supposed to calm down or get more excited. But as quickly as he’d touched me, his hand moved again. He was just getting my attention, not doing something special, right?
“The app’s really slow.” Did my grandmother know the paper was inside? Was it hers? “She never mentioned speaking Russian, let alone knowing anyone from Russia. I’m so lost.”
“Ah, here we are.” Jean studied the screen, frowning. “Some of it is illegible, but the rest...” He read silently for a moment. “It mentions Marseille. Something about courage or bravery. And something being kept safe? No, it must mean ‘safekeeping.’”
“What else?” I leaned closer.
Jean looked up at me. “Delphine.”
The room tilted and spun, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut. It wasn’t the wine this time.
Delphine. The word written on the back of the photograph. The photograph of my grandmother, standing in the rubble of a bombed city, wearing her velvet jacket.
“The photo,” I said. “It said Delphine on the back.”
Garrett explained for Jean: “Someone showed up at Grace’s shop asking questions. He had a photograph of her grandmother from the 1940s, with ‘Delphine’ written on the back.”
“Could Delphine be a place?” I asked. “A town, maybe?”
“No.” Jean shook his head. “It’s a French name. Fairly common for women of that era.”
I gripped Jean’s arm, as though he could reveal all of Didi’s secrets for me. “Is the letter written to someone named Delphine? Or from her?”
Jean studied the translation again. “Neither. It seems to be giving the egg to this person to keep it safe.”
I pressed my hand against my stomach, trying to settle the churning there. None of this made sense. My grandmother’s name was Diana. My brother and I had called her Didi.
Not Delphine. Never Delphine.
I stared down at the letter even though I couldn’t read a word of it.
The paper was so thin. So fragile. My grandmother had kept this secret inside a hidden thing for decades.
Had she told anyone? Had she told my father, maybe?
No, if she had, he wouldn’t have given me the egg along with her costume jewelry.
He would have done something with it himself.
Why, Didi? What were you hiding? “What if Delphine was her?”
Garrett and Jean both looked at me.
“What if Diana wasn’t her real name? What if she was Delphine, and she... became Diana?”
Jean was quiet for a long moment. “Did you know her parents?”
I stared at the letter. At the name. “She was an orphan.”
“Jean.” Garrett’s voice was low. “Do you know anyone who can help with this? Another expert or someone who can provide some more context? It has to be someone you trust not to spread the word about what we’ve found.”
“Bien s?r, I do.” Jean set his phone down. “A colleague who specializes in lost Russian artifacts. I can email him tonight. I suspect he’ll be very interested in what we’ve found.”
Delphine.
Didi, was that you?