“I’ll call you again tomorrow morning,” Raphael says.

“Not before ten, please.” I blow a kiss to my phone screen.

We hang up.

“Was that Raphael?” Pàpa asks, sitting down across the table from me.

I nod.

He shakes his head. “I still can’t believe you hid your pregnancy from us and then hid Lily for six months. Six months, Mia!”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Màma calls from the blanket on the floor where she’s spent the past two hours fawning over Lily’s every smile and sound.

What I still can’t believe is their reaction.

Màma called me yesterday night, moments after Raphael had left my hotel room to fly to Paris and confront Gaspard. He’d offered to deliver my note while he was at it, but when I called Delphine, she refused to delegate her task. “He’ll be all Raphael’s after I’m done with him,” she promised.

Lily and I were supposed to go back to Paris this morning, but that’s not what happened.

On the phone, Màma told me Pàpa was on his way to bring the two of us home. They’d called all the hotels in and around Estheim—which hadn’t taken long seeing as there are only three of them—and found out where I was staying. My parents wanted to finish the conversation. Besides, they couldn’t bear the idea of me not staying at their house.

As we drove there, my hands shook and my chest felt as if I’d gotten trapped between two jostling elephants. I was on tenterhooks about our impending talk and Raphael’s confrontation with Gaspard. Mine went a lot better than his, judging by the brief account he just gave me.

After Delphine handed the creep my letter, which made him green in the face, Raphael took over and tried to reason with him. When that didn’t work, he threatened him and ended up hitting him right there in the diner. A fistfight ensued. The owner called the cops, and the two were taken to the police station.

That’s what I managed to pull out of him over the phone, and I’m hoping to hear more tomorrow night when Lily and I get back to Paris.

As for my parents, we ended up talking all night, and both of them responded to my revelations with remarkable equanimity. That and an immediate grandparental devotion to Lily. It started with “she’s so sweet” the moment we walked in the door, then quickly escalated to “little angel,” and reached “the most adorable, smartest, and prettiest little girl in the world” three hours later.

Pàpa leans in. “Does Eva know about Lily?”

I nod. “She’s helped me a lot.”

“Does she know about the video?”

I nod again.

“Good,” he says. “She’s level-headed, our Evie. I’m glad you trusted at least one family member enough to share your secrets.”

“Pàpa, please—” I begin.

“We may have been too strict and too uptight as parents, but I thought…” He shakes his head, his expression pained. “Don’t you know how much we love you? How could you doubt we’d take your news with anything but forgiveness?”

I turn to Màma for support, hoping she’ll ask him to drop the subject. Except she doesn’t this time. She picks up Lily and joins Pàpa and me around the table.

“Your dad isn’t blaming you, herzele,” she says.

“Of course not,” Pàpa says. “I’m blaming myself.”

Màma touches my hand. “We just want to understand why you chose not to lean on us when you were in trouble. We need to know what we did wrong as parents.” She pauses before adding. “And I need to know where I failed as a shepherd.”

“You did nothing wrong,” I say. “Nothing at all. It’s just…”

Màma’s eyes bore into mine. “What?”

“There was this woman, Suzelle… She came here asking for your help years ago.”

“How do you know that?” Pàpa asks.

“I overheard your conversations.” I stare at my hands. “You said you’d think about it, and when she returned, you refused to help her. You reported her to the police instead.”

My parents say nothing.

“So I figured your kindness was reserved for those who deserved it, and your forgiveness didn’t stretch to… impure women.”

I look up.

Both of them are shaking their heads, looking at me with a mixture of regret and sympathy.

“We were going to help Suzelle in every way we could,” Màma says. “We’d prepared money, made arrangements for her lodgings, and secured a small job until she’d found her bearings.”

I knit my brows, perplexed.

“Just to be thorough, I asked an old buddy from the vice squad about her,” Pàpa says.

Màma smiles. “Cop habits die hard.”

Pàpa’s mouth compresses into a hard line. “Some of her story checked out. Suzelle wanted to escape from her pimp’s clutches, all right, and she did want to quit her profession. Only it wasn’t to get a second chance.”

“Then why?” I ask.

“She wanted to start her own procuress business.” Pàpa smirks. “When my buddy did a bit of digging, we learned that Suzelle had already recruited two teenage girls from the housing project on the other side of the river.”

I put my hand over my mouth, dazed.

Pàpa nods and taps his hand on the table as if to say, so that’s that.

“I’m going to make your favorite truffle ravioli. Would you like me to cook something apart for Lily?”

“We’re good,” I say. “I brought everything she needs.”

“Did I tell you she’s the most wonderful thing in the world?” Màma asks as Lily digs her little fingers into her grandmother’s cheek.

Thank God I cut her nails last night.

“At least a dozen times,” I say.

Pàpa’s gives me a conflicted look as if he’s on the fence about something.

“What is it?” I ask.

“There’s no pressure, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but will you bring your Raphael here sometime?”

“Only if you’d like to,” Màma adds quickly. “And if he’s up for it.”

“I’d love to,” I say. “And so would he.”

The expression of relief on their faces is priceless.

Pàpa goes to the kitchen, refusing my offer to help him with the cooking, as always.

“He thinks you and I jinx his dishes just by touching the ingredients,” Màma says before taking Lily to the garden to show her Pàpa’s beautiful apples.

I wrap one of Màma’s shawls around my shoulders, sit on the porch, and watch them.

For the first time in years I can breathe even if my future is far from being unicorns and rainbows. Gaspard will likely post the video. Genevieve will continue badmouthing me to Raphael and to everyone in their circle. Raphael may discover he isn’t made for long-term relationships, after all.

Which is why I still haven’t told him he’s Lily’s dad. I hate the idea he might think Genevieve had a point and I’m using our baby to tie him to me.

There’s also the little matter of my upcoming defense, which I might fail, seeing how little I worked lately.

I’m aware of all that, yet I’m not worried. And that’s because whatever force hurtles me over the edge, and however high the cliff, I know I won’t splinter and burst to pieces.

There’s enough love around me—and in my heart—to cushion my fall.