Salman stayed with us for another three days, at the end of which we boarded a plane together bound for Paris. Aisha decided to stay in Phoenix for the time being, but promised she would catch up with us in a day or two.

“I need to take care of some things, maybe buy some heels, new dresses…plus, you have to be emotionally ready for a trip like this,” she said, fanning herself. “Read a few books, make reservations for one at a fancy French restaurant, smoke my first cigarette so when a suave man in a motorcycle jacket offers me one, I don’t look like an idiot…”

“Please don’t hook up with the first bad boy you see,” I said with a disapproving shake of my head. “If the two of you get in trouble, I’m not bailing you out.”

“No, but I might fall in love with a gorgeous painter dying of something tragic. Or cut my hair into a cute bob and accidentally wind up in a fashion show, mistaken for a model—”

“If you manage to accomplish all that in a week, I’ll be really impressed,” I said. “Why didn’t you study abroad?”

“I went to community college, remember?” she said sadly.

“Well, you’re an adult, now. You could live there if you wanted to. Come to Paris and camp out for six months—maybe more, if it proves to be everything you want it to be.”

“Tempting,” said Aisha, who stood at the mirror applying her makeup absently. “How long are you and Salman planning on staying?”

“Until we get tired of each other,” I said dreamily. “So, sometime around the year 2052 or so.”

“Maybe by then, you won’t be so disgustingly cute.” She scrunched up her nose in feigned horror. “You’ll have to get separate houseboats.”

Aisha had been talking nonstop about coming out and visiting us ever since Salman had informed her that he owned a houseboat on the Seine.

“No, even if we get divorced, I’m keeping the houseboat. Then, you can come and live with me, and we can wear high-necked sweaters and be a couple of old ladies together.”

“I never thought I would be rooting for my best friend’s divorce,” said Aisha, combing her hair back. “And yet, here we are.”

“Here we are,” I replied with a laugh. I leaned my head on her shoulder, and we stood there together, beaming at ourselves in the mirror.

* * *

On our first night back in Paris, Salman and I ate at that same corner restaurant on Rue Saint-Georges, at the same corner table where we dined on the night we’d met. We spent a couple of enchanted hours talking about nothing in particular. Salman wanted to know how the city had changed so much in our brief absence, while I countered that it was beginning to feel like an old friend, my second home. The domed ceiling of the Galeries Lafayette and the sweeping chestnuts of the Tuileries Gardens had become as dear to me as my own city, all the more heartwarming because he was here with me.

“I think I could spend the next year exploring this city and not come to the end of it,” I said over a second glass of wine. “When I return home, there will still be desserts I haven’t tried, department stores I never had the chance to go into, flowing skirts I never had the courage to try on.”

“But surely, even Paris would start to bore you, after a year of living here,” said Salman.

“Does it bore you?”

“Yes and no. Yes, because I’ve hardly paid attention to it—I’ve been so absorbed in my work. No, because now, you’re here, and nothing could ever be dull if you were with me.”

“In that case, maybe it’s time you worked less and paid more attention.”

“I’m planning on it,” said Salman, slicing the ends off his steak Polmard. “By the way, Asar wanted to meet with you while we’re here.” Seeing me flinch, he was quick to add, “He wanted to apologize.”

“Apologize for what?”

“For being a heel, basically. He had some sort of epiphany a couple mornings ago and realized he should never have treated you the way that he did.”

“Hmm.” I tapped the end of my fork pensively against my pursed lips. “Would you have had anything to do with this epiphany?”

Salman shrugged with an air of studied innocence. “Sometimes, miracles happen, you know? I guess even the most calloused heart can be made soft.”

I smirked skeptically, though the glow in my face betrayed my appreciation.

“Anyway,” he went on, “you’ll be seeing him tomorrow. He volunteered to help us with the packing and moving and whatnot.”

I’d finally received confirmation of my inheritance from the lawyer’s office, after a tense period of waiting, in which I had worried that Asar was going to refuse me the estate.

“He won’t hassle you, I promise.”

“Let’s hope.”

When we met up with Mr. Khan at the office the next morning, he was even more effusive than Salman had warned. With galumphing strides, he came running toward me, grabbing my hand in his and shaking it with all the enthusiasm of a dog begging for a bone.

“Cassie—” he said fervently, “do you mind if I call you Cassie? Salman has had nothing but good things to say about you lately.”

“Has he really?” I replied, raising a cool brow at Salman.

“I want you to have this,” said Asar, gesturing at the various papers and objects belonging to my father—an old pile of National Geographic magazines, an Italian pastry dish, a chest made out of sandalwood with a bronze lock—that stood in the back of the office. “It belongs to you, anyway. It should have gone to you all along.”

“Thank you, Mr. Khan,” I said with a slight bow. After talking it over with Salman, I had decided it was better to be gracious than spiteful. “What a relief to be finally reunited with the elk’s head that used to hang over our fireplace. Will you stay and help us?”

“Of course,” said Asar, with a touch of hesitation, presumably sensing that he couldn’t get out of it. “I’d be more than happy to help.”

We spent the next several hours carefully boxing up what remained of my father’s estate that had been left to me, only breaking the silence to ask questions.

By the time we had nearly finished, it was past noon, and a light rain was falling on the bike stands and lilac hedges outside, fogging the windows with its warm breath. I had just finished enthusiastically packing a large box of books—it contained a Joseph Campbell book on mythology and a paperback copy of Anna Karenina, which I had been meaning to read for ages—when a sealed envelope fell out of a nonfiction on journalism and fell to the ground.

“Salman?” I asked as I reached to pick it up. “Did you see this?”

“No, what is it?” he called from the other side of the room.

The envelope had fallen over on its back. I turned it over with a swelling of curiosity that only grew at the sight of my name: “For Cassie.”

Without bothering to answer Salman, I tore open the envelope with my thumbnail and pulled out a letter.

Dear Cassie,

By the time you read this, I will have passed on to wherever I’m headed. I’m leaving you the whole estate, or as much of it as you can keep the creditors from confiscating. I wish I had more to give you. Somehow, it still feels inadequate.

Being out of work and on the brink of death gives you a lot of time for thinking over the mistakes you’ve made. I wish I could say I had fewer regrets. I wish I had done right by you and your mother. The biggest mistake I ever made was walking out on you and her that morning. I should have stayed in touch. I should have reconnected after your mom’s death. I should have brought you back here instead of leaving you an orphan. So many “shoulds.” But I was too ashamed of what I had done. I wish I had my whole life to live over again. I wish I had lived it with you, and I’m sorry.

Love always,

Your father, Raymond

“Cassie?” Salman came striding over, pushing a chair out of his way. “What’s up?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Quickly, I slid the note back in the envelope, taking care not to let him see the tears in my eyes. “Just boxing up the past, is all. Are you and Asar about ready to go eat?”

* * *

That night was our last in Paris before Salman had to return home to Qia to complete a business deal. To commemorate the successful transfer of the estate into my name, we enjoyed a moonlit champagne picnic in the cabin of his private luxury boat, then ascended the deck to watch Paris drifting past, arrayed in all its jeweled glory.

“It looks so different at night, and from the river,” I told him as he stood with his arms around me, the warm wind on our faces. “This isn’t a side of Paris I’m used to.”

“Too romantic?”

“Almost.”

I’d never fully recovered from that first walk, where the city had imprinted itself on my heart with all its mundane glamor. Postboxes, awnings, rain-washed stones caked with the mud of a thousand shoes, gargoyles looming from the roofs of vermiculated buildings…there was magic to it, even in squalor.

“I suppose everyone has to choose the Paris they like best.”

“I like this one,” said Salman, leaning forward until we were one body. “A city of nearly three million people, and yet, it was so lonely before I met you.”

“And to think that when I got here, I had no idea who you were.” I turned until I was facing him. “I’ll never make that mistake again.”

“I don’t think you could, even if you wanted to,” he said, smiling. “What’s done is done.”

“Too bad.” Cupping my face in his, I kissed him twice, fully on the mouth. Salman returned kiss for kiss as a flock of pigeons flew past us.

“Have you ever wanted someone so much,” he asked, “that you could have happily thrown off your clothes and done it right there, in public?”

“Hmmm, I can’t say that I have,” I said, teasing. “I’ve never been much of an exhibitionist.”

“No, and I don’t like to get arrested. But as long as we have a room to ourselves—or a boat…” I could sense where the conversation was drifting. A feeling like a hundred butterflies bloomed in my stomach as he nuzzled my ear and said, “Would you like to? Here, on our last night?”

“I suppose the occasion does need to be commemorated…” I said coyly. “And I can’t say I’ve ever made love on a river…”

“Then, this will be a new adventure for both of us.”

The initial wave of nerves and excitement gave way to a settled feeling. Somehow, this felt right. It felt like us.

“But, of course, it won’t be our last night,” I said aloud.

“Pardon?”

“A minute ago, you said it was our last night.”

“I meant our last night in Paris. For now, at least.”

“Good, because I don’t have any intention of letting you go.” I reached for his arm shyly. “As long as you feel the same way.”

“I do.” Smoothly tracing the side of my face with one finger, Salman said, “I love you, Cassie.”

The words startled me. Once more, I had that dizzy feeling, like I was standing on the edge of the canyon looking out over the water.

“I love you, too,” I said finally, so faintly it was almost a whisper.

Looking elated, Salman took me by the hand and was leading me downstairs into the cabin when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Glowering, he pulled it out. “It’s Asar.”

“What could he possibly want at this hour?”

Salman scanned the text. “He sent me a link to a video. He said, ‘You have to see this! It will make your whole night.’”

I stood close to him in the glow of the phone while he opened the link. There was a video of David Icarus wearing orange scrubs and being marched into a courtroom, in handcuffs, by a phalanx of policemen.

“What did he do?” I asked, eyes wide. “What is he charged with?”

“Three counts of intimidation, looks like,” said Salman, not sounding at all sorry. “I guess he just couldn’t keep his hands off people.”

I rested my head on his shoulder, watching Icarus scowl into the camera with a feeling of immense delight.

Salman returned his phone to his pocket, setting it on silent. “Guess he won’t be interrupting us tonight. Now, my love. You and I are the only two people on this boat, and personally, I think it’s time we took advantage of that fact.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Offering him my hand with a decorous flourish, I said, “Lead on, good sir!”

Salman took my hand in his, and together, we descended the stairs to the bedroom, ready to finally take the next big step in our relationship. We had a whole future, a whole lifetime together, and I couldn’t wait to continue on our incredible adventure.

No longer did I want to click my heels together three times and return home. I’d found Oz, and it was even better than I could have imagined.