I stood up and walked into my bedroom, then returned with the torn photo. I handed it over to Titine. “I found this last night when I went through the apartment. He’s here, Titine. He’s in Paris, looking for me.”
Titine glanced at the jagged photo pieces, her nostrils flaring, her breath quickening. “Get rid of that picture, Ruby. Now.”
“But I know he’s here, Titine. I heard him last night on the bridge, and today, he was following me. I know it was him.”
Titine closed her eyes for a second and sucked in a deep breath. “That’s impossible,” she finally said.
“How? I mean, maybe he followed us here. Is he—”
Titine shot up from the couch and pushed past me. “He’s not here, Ruby. Now, throw the picture away and forget about him.” She stormed toward the door, a little ball of red fury.
“His name is Thomas, isn’t it?” I called after her. “Thomas Riley. And he gave me the scars I have on my back and stomach, didn’t he?”
Titine stopped before she reached the door, and I noticed her hands trembling as she turned back around to face me.
“Yes, Ruby. Thomas gave you the scar on your back. And he’s not in Paris. He won’t find you here, I promise. You have to believe me.”
“But I—”
“No buts. He’s not here. Throw the picture away and promise me you’ll stop thinking about him, and that you won’t mention his name to a soul. It’s in the past, and there’s no need for you to remember how badly that man hurt you. Okay?”
I nodded, wondering why she wouldn’t tell me more and why she was so sure he wouldn’t find me in Paris. Because as I gazed back down at the eerie photo in my hands, I knew I hadn’t been mistaken this morning. It had been his jet-black hair blowing in the wind, his unforgiving eyes staring me down, and his creepy, crooked smile shooting my way.
It was him. It was Thomas.
But when the skin underneath Titine’s eyes turned gray again, weariness settling into the little lines on her forehead, I decided I’d better drop it for now.
She reached for the door, but gripped her stomach as she did so.
“Titine, are you okay?”
She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “I’m fine. Just a little bug, like I told you.” Dropping her hand from her stomach, she turned to me.
“The show starts at nine o’clock tonight, but we have to be downstairs for hair and makeup by eight. I know you’re probably not going to show up, but I want you to remember, this isn’t only about you. I need this job right now, more than you can possibly understand.” She looked away, her jaw hardened, her eyes pained. “And if Robert is going to give Jean-Pierre money to keep this club going after everything that’s happened, you need to do your part. All of the dancers here…whether they would say so or not, we’re all counting on you, Ruby.”
Titine stood in my doorway, so small and weak, the energy drained from her body.
And as I studied her face, her pale skin, the light freckles spotting her nose, I noticed for the first time how much she looked like my mom.
Suddenly Titine’s words from earlier today raced through my mind.
You’re not the only one with things going on, you know.
I need this job right now, more than you can possibly understand.
She slipped out the door, leaving me with a realization that was too enormous for me to even begin to wrap my head around.
Titine didn’t have a bug.
She was pregnant. She was pregnant with my mother.
EIGHTEEN
I walked to the window, my mind a blurry, fuzzy haze that refused to believe the evidence staring me in the face. I closed my eyes and did the math again in my head.
If my mother had been born in August 1960, then Titine—my grandma Martine—would’ve gotten pregnant around November 1959. Which meant she was only four weeks pregnant at the most—but most definitely pregnant.
Down on the busy Parisian boulevard below my window, it was just another winter day in Paris, but so much had already happened today. Between the release of the incriminating photo in the papers, Thomas trailing me to François’s apartment, finding François…dead, my own near brush with the murderer, Antoine fighting Jean-Pierre, the electric kiss I’d shared with Antoine…and now this, my mind was more jumbled and confused than ever.
I walked over to the desk, wracking my brain to find the true reason I’d been taken away from Édouard in the dance studio on the very day I’d found out I was having a baby girl, only to be dropped into a life where I was finding dead bodies left and right, and where my grandma was my best friend and was pregnant with my future mother.
Just thinking through all of that made me feel like a mental case.
Reaching for the desk drawer, I pulled out my thick scarlet journal and flipped right to the entry I was looking for. The words I’d written had faded even more since my first day here—making me fear that with each passing moment, I was losing my future as Claudia.
December 1, 1996
I spoke to my mom today, for the first time in six months. When I tried to tell her how beautiful it is out in California, and that I would love for her to come visit, she huffed into the phone and told me that if I expected her to come within a thousand-mile radius of Grandma Martine, I was nuts.
I know my mom sees my move out to San Diego to go to college near my grandmother as the ultimate betrayal. But besides the fact that Mom is prissy and uptight while Grandma Martine is kind, zany, and unpredictable, I’ve never fully understood why my mom refuses to even try to have a relationship with my grandmother. The two of them haven’t spoken since before Dad died…and neither of them will ever open up as to why. They’ve never told me anything about my grandfather either. All I know about my mother’s childhood is that she was raised in New York, and that she never got along with her mother.
And now, what little relationship I was able to hold onto with my mom after we lost Dad—amid the blame she dealt me for his death—has been obliterated by my choice to live near the one person in my family who makes me feel loved, and worthy of that love.
I wish things were different with my mom. I remember a time when she did love me, when she would pick me up in her arms and squeeze me so tight, I thought nothing bad could ever happen to me. But then something bad did happen. The worst thing of all.
I know my desire for my mom to forgive me, and for my mom and my grandma to be close, are just hopeless dreams. I can’t change the past. So I need to stop trying.
I stared down at my own faded words, and as the last line disappeared before my eyes, I realized something. Claudia’s past hadn’t happened yet. Which meant I could change it.
Or I could damn well try.
I riffled through the mess on Ruby’s desk, searching for a nice, clean piece of paper, something on which I could write a letter. But when I found a striking black-and-white postcard of the rooftops of Paris and La Tour Eiffel, just as I’d viewed it from Ruby’s balcony, a rush of hope spread through me.
On the back of that vintage postcard, in Ruby’s dainty handwriting, I composed the most important letter I would ever write.
A letter that, potentially, could change everything.
NINETEEN
A pair of round, perky breasts bounced frantically in my face as I opened the door that led backstage.
“Ruby! Where have you been? You were supposed to be down here half an hour ago! You still have to do makeup, and Jean-Pierre has been looking for you.”
I barely heard the young dancer’s shrieks or noticed how my brain had automatically translated her French into English. I couldn’t take my eyes off her breasts and the skintight silver-and-black costume that revealed them.
On top of everything else that had happened today, would I be performing with my breasts hanging out? Why hadn’t anyone told me about this?
Before I could get the question past my quivering lips, the dancer grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the dressing room. On t
he way there, my question was answered for me. There were breasts everywhere. Small ones, plump ones, lively ones, large but slightly saggy ones—you name it. They were all romping around, skittering through the backstage area in complete chaos.
With my eyes wide and my jaw permanently hinged open, I was led into the dressing room, where my gaze landed on a flashy, crimson-colored, sequined leotard—complete with a giant hole in the middle of both the back and the front—hanging next to a makeup station with Ruby written in red lipstick on the top of the mirror.
Dear God.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that on a night as big as this, I would be performing in that. And really, after everything I’d been through today, baring my chest should’ve been the least of my worries.
Well, at least I’d be baring Ruby’s chest.
As I took a seat at my mirror, swarms of tall, beautiful dancers flitted around the dressing room, applying another coat of deep-red lipstick and jet-black eyeliner, not seeming fazed in the slightest that their breasts were hanging out for the world to see or that one of their own had been murdered backstage just last weekend.
Ruby’s own startling beauty reflected back at me in the mirror, and as I took her in once again, I knew in my gut that this would be her last performance. My last performance.
And even though I was doing this for Titine, deep down in this shared soul I now had with Ruby, I knew that I wanted to perform tonight. I remembered being here in this dressing room, breasts and makeup swirling around, French chatter and high-pitched, nervous laughter filling up the air. And I knew that when I’d been here before, I had loved this. Every last second of it.
As Ruby’s hands, which were now my own, dug through the makeup case in front of me and applied a coat of light foundation to the pale skin under my eyes, I knew I could do this. I already had done this. And tonight would be no different…except for the fact that I was seeing everything with a new set of eyes—blue ones instead of green, to be exact.
While my hands went to work, I noticed that I didn’t have to think about how to line my eyes without smudging or which colors to choose or how much or how little to put on. I just knew. And I hadn’t known how to do this magnificent work of makeup artistry in my life as Claudia. I was lucky if I remembered to dab on a little lip gloss every morning.
After I finished brushing on the last coat of sparkly rose blush, I turned to face my costume…or, really, my lack of a costume. It was time for Ruby’s perfect set of breasts to make their onstage debut. Well, I was sure this wasn’t their actual onstage debut, but I could feel them quivering with nerves all the same.
Luckily, by the time I was slipping on the half leotard, the last dancer had cleared out of the dressing room and had closed the door behind her. I strapped on my sparkly red heels, attached a fan of black feathers to the curls I’d pinned atop my head, and spun around to take one last look in the mirror.
As I took all of Ruby in—her delicately arched dancer’s feet, her bare, toned legs, her flat stomach and plump breasts—a nervous laugh escaped my lips. This was just insane. If I ever did get back to my life as Claudia and tried to tell someone about this—about me dancing around topless at a nightclub in Paris in this sex-bomb body—no one would ever believe me. Hell, I was living this, and even I was having a hard time believing it all.
The door swung open behind me and broke up my nervous giggling fit. I spun around to find a young dancer with large, brown doe eyes holding a full bouquet of dark-red roses.
“Salut, Delphine,” I said, her name instantly shooting from my lips.
She was the fourth dancer in the photo I’d found of Ruby, Gisèle, and Titine—the same one I remembered from my grandmother’s photo album. And she was the dancer who’d originally discovered Gisèle’s body.
“Pour toi,” she said, handing the roses over to me, an apprehensive look on her face.
“Merci.” I took the long-stemmed roses from her shaky hands.
She opened her mouth again as if she wanted to say something more, but quickly closed it.
“Is there something else?” I probed before she could race out the door.
She peered back over her shoulder at me, shaking her head profusely. “No, it is nothing,” she said, her accent thick but endearing. “You are going to be magnifique tonight, Ruby, I know it.”
As I watched her leave the dressing room, I felt as if I knew her from somewhere…but not from the memory I had of her finding Gisèle. It was something else, something eerily familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Amid the massive bunch of sweet-scented roses, I spotted a little white envelope tucked into the center of the bouquet. As I reached my hand in between the stems, a jagged thorn pricked my index finger. I yanked my hand back out, but a drop of my blood had already smeared the back of the envelope.
When I flipped the envelope over, I forgot about the prick in my finger or the blood that splattered in tiny droplets at my feet.
Because there, in bold red ink, was a name I did not expect to be written on that envelope.
Claudia.
I dropped the blood-smeared envelope to the ground and stared at it. How? How could anyone here know that I’m Claudia? I thought back to the night I’d first woken up in this body. Had I said my name out loud to anyone besides Titine?
I breathed out a shaky sigh as I remembered that I had. I’d told Titine and Jean-Pierre that my name was Claudia, not Ruby. All of the other dancers had been standing around as well. So anyone could’ve done this.
This was obviously some sort of weird joke, and at least whoever had done it had paired the note with a stunning bouquet of roses.
But as I picked up the envelope and looked more closely at the edgy handwriting, I wasn’t so sure this was a friendly prank. With trembling fingers, I slipped open the flap and pulled out the tiny white card.
Inside I found one lone sentence written in English in thick red print.
I know who you are.
I stared at the note, willing it to say something else—something that made sense, something that was kind and thoughtful. But no matter how many times I blinked and refocused my panicked pupils onto that scratchy, haunting red handwriting, the words wouldn’t change.
Someone here knew me. Someone here knew Claudia.
Could it be Thomas? Or Véronique? Or was it possible that Delphine had something to do with this?
I smashed the roses and the note into the trash, not wanting my hands to be in contact with them for another second. I had to get out of here. I had to find Titine.
Flinging the door open, I scoured the backstage area for her red hair, her emerald eyes, and her dazzling smile. But all I found was a blur of bouncing breasts and silver and black sequins shimmering through clouds of cigarette smoke.
I pushed through the throngs of dancers until I reached a quiet hallway off to the side, but when I didn’t find anyone back there, I turned around to head toward the wings. Just as I was almost around the corner though, a high-pitched voice crackled through the air. Whipping back around, I spotted a glimmer of light underneath a black door down the hallway. Inching closer, I sucked in a silent breath when I heard that same woman’s voice on the other side—it was Titine.
But she wasn’t alone. There was a man’s voice too, and his was one I also recognized. When I closed my eyes and tried to place a face with his reassuring tone and his American accent, I couldn’t.
“What are you talking about, Titine?” he asked.
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb with me,” she said in her best tough-woman voice. But from knowing her so well, both in her young and old age, I could detect the real tone she was hiding underneath—my young grandmother was sad. She sounded broken.
“Gorgeous, I really have no idea. I’ve been away for the past four weeks on-site in Mexico. I just arrived in Paris this morning. How could I possibly know what it is you’re upset about?”
“Don’t call me gorgeous,” she yelled
, her voice strangling in her throat as a low sob escaped from her lips.
“Titine, baby. What is it? What’s the matter?” the man asked, his voice softer now, endearing even.
After a long pause, she finally answered him. “I’m pregnant. And it’s yours.”
I swallowed hard as I realized what was going on. The man she was talking to was my grandfather.
“Get away from me!” Titine snapped. “Don’t even try to touch me. I know what you’re planning on doing tonight.”
“My God, Titine. What are you talking about? What do you think I’m doing tonight?”
“You think I’m stupid? You sleep with me, tell me you’re falling in love with me, get me pregnant, and then show up a month later and think you can just forget it all happened? If you’re done with me and you’re on to the next dancer, you might as well fess up and be a man about it.”
“Fuck, Titine! What is going on? What do you mean, I’m on to the next dancer?”
“You’re going to sleep with her tonight! She told me!”
“Who?”
I waited anxiously on the other side of the door, hoping, praying that the name she was about to say wasn’t the one I thought it was going to be.
“Ruby. My best friend, Ruby.”
The door handle jiggled, and I dashed behind a black curtain to my right to hide while Titine stormed away from the man who had gotten her pregnant, from the man who I was apparently supposed to sleep with later tonight, from the grandfather I’d never known in my life as Claudia.
As I peeked around the curtain and spotted the back of his head—his wavy blond hair and his medium, firm build—I knew it was him. Robert Maxwell.
“Titine, wait!” he called after her.
But it was too late. The haze of legs, sparkles, breasts, and smoke had already swallowed her up.
I sank to the ground and plunged my head into my hands in an attempt to stop the spinning, the confusion, and the nausea that was taking hold in my weak stomach.
No wonder I’d felt sick each time Jean-Pierre had mentioned Robert’s name. He was my grandfather.
Dancing with Paris (A Paris Time Travel Romance) Page 15
