It was nearing ten by the time I reached my hotel. I needed to be getting to bed, but I couldn’t resist booting up my laptop and calling Aisha for a video chat.

Back in Phoenix, it was around three in the afternoon, and Aisha sat against a curtained window lit around the edges by mid-summer sunlight.

“Hey, you’re alive!” she said blithely. “How’s Paris?”

“So beautiful it hurts a little,” I said sadly. “I’m not looking forward to flying back tomorrow night.”

Assuming I even decided to fly back, of course.

“Where did you go? Did you visit the Centre Pompidou? Wander down the Avenue Montaigne during the violet hour?”

“Aisha, I’ve only been here for a day and a half,” I reminded her, “and I spent a good chunk of that at a funeral.”

“You should go back during Christmas. I hear it’s really gorgeous. As you walk along the Champs Elysées, the trees that line the avenue are lit up with Christmas lights, and the air has that wintry smell of freshly roasted chestnuts and almonds. You should take me with you!” she added in a characteristic burst of exuberance.

I had a feeling I could live here for a year and not know the city as well as Aisha did, despite her having never been here.

“I might just never leave,” I said, and I was only half-kidding. “If you wanted to come visit me, you’d have to fly out here.”

“I am booking my flight now,” said Aisha. “Where’d you go for dinner?”

“Some brasserie or something,” I said with a wave of my hand. “Is that the right word?”

“How perfectly romantic!”

“It really was.” Seeing that there was no way to avoid it, I told her all about the mix-up at dinner and how I had ended up seated with a total stranger. Aisha listened with joy and disbelief as I related how we had gotten to talking and how we had kissed on a bridge overlooking the river.

“Cassie, you should have taken him up on his offer,” she exclaimed when I got to the part of the story where we parted ways for the night. “What woman doesn’t dream of a fling in Paris? And when it was over, you’d never have had to see him again.”

I had a strange feeling that Aisha had accidentally given me a window into her own longings. “If it wasn’t already so late, I might have done it. The thing is, I have to get up very early in the morning, and you know how bad I am about waking up.” Recently, I’d bought an industrial-grade alarm clock because I could never be woken by the standard models.

“That sounds like an excuse, honestly,” said Aisha. “Why not do something you’re afraid of?”

“Oh, excuse me,” I said, flashing annoyance. “I’ve done plenty of things I was afraid of doing, and fear didn’t stop me. I think someone is just jealous.”

“I mean, yeah,” she replied with admirable frankness. “Not only do you go trotting off to Paris, but you also make out with a handsome stranger on your second night in the city—and then, for mysterious reasons, reject his offer of a one-night stand.”

“You’re being very naïve,” I pointed out. “I only just met this guy. He could be married, for all I know.”

“Did you ask him?”

“I mean, he said he was single, but he could have been lying. A man that handsome probably has a wife and five mistresses.”

“He could always have a fling,” Aisha added.

It felt weird hearing Aisha advocate for sex with a stranger—Aisha, who to my knowledge, had only slept with her college boyfriend after two years of being together. If I had gone to Prague instead of Paris, I wondered if she would have felt differently.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to live vicariously through me,” I said. “The next time I fall in love with a stranger, I’ll make sure we have sex on the first night.”

“Sorry. You’re totally right,” Aisha said, softening a little. By now the sun in Phoenix had reached its zenith, and she was becoming hard to see. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to do something you don’t feel comfortable doing. On a lighter note, how was the funeral?”

I couldn’t help but smile a little in response to her joke. “It was a funeral,” I said, relieved to have gotten off the subject of Salman. “He died, and we buried him. I know I was supposed to feel sad because he was my father, but is he really your father if he didn’t want to be?”

“Did you cry?”

“Only a little,” I said, embarrassed. “I don’t know what came over me, I just—”

“Cassie, you were burying your dad,” said Aisha. “It’s okay to cry.”

“I guess.” I lay back on my pillow and held the phone up to my face. “Maybe that’s why I was reluctant to get involved with this guy, because as much as my body wanted it—”

“You were worried that you were trying to run from your grief in an unhealthy way,” said Aisha. “Got it.”

“That was for sure part of it. I’ve always been cautious about entering relationships if I wasn’t in a healthy emotional place.”

“You’ve always been cautious about relationships in general,” Aisha pointed out.

“Says the girl who has been with exactly one man in her whole life.”

“Not for lack of trying,” she said, hiding her face in her hands. “I’ll make it to Paris one day, though.”

“Aisha, I feel like you have a very mistaken idea of what Paris is like. It’s not just rows and rows of couples smooching in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.”

“Says the girl who literally just spent an hour smooching with someone.”

“Fair enough, but I got lucky.”

“Yes, and you could have gotten luckier,” she said, and we both laughed.

* * *

The next morning, I woke with the sun and strolled toward a bakery at the end of a lovely avenue lined with stately trees. The day had that fresh, new feel about it and the early morning light shone softly on boulevards and boulangeries. There was only one other person in the café—an older man in a wool pullover, sitting and reading a newspaper while a Mastiff lay curled up at his feet. I ordered a latte and a chocolate croissant and sat down at a corner window near the back of the room.

As I sat in the window nibbling my croissant and watching the streets slowly fill, the events of the night before came back to me like a half-remembered dream. Perhaps it was a sign of how old I was getting that I had chosen a good night’s sleep over a few hours of sensual pleasure.

I hoped Salman didn’t feel too insulted, but even if he did, I would make it up to him tonight—provided that he was still willing. Having slept on it, he might already be feeling embarrassed about what we had done the night before, and what we had almost done.

If so, it was probably better to find out now than to meet up tonight and be disappointed. Pulling my phone and the number he had left me out of my purse, I sent him a quick text:

You still on for tonight?

A second later, my phone buzzed. Wondering how he could have possibly answered so quickly, I was surprised to see an email from my ghostwriter, Irene:

Hi Cassie, I just wanted to let you know that I got the article turned in right before the deadline. I don’t know how I did it, but I did. It was quite the doozy. I’ve attached it for you to look at; hopefully it’s to the standard you wanted. Best wishes, Irene.

I was in the middle of writing my reply when the phone buzzed again. This time, it was Salman.

I’m still on if you are. Did you manage to get your flight rescheduled?

I finished drafting my response to Irene and wrote Salman back:

Shoot, I had better do that. Thanks for the reminder!

To which Salman replied:

No problem. I would be disappointed if I texted you, only to find that you were already halfway home.

I texted back:

I’d have been very disappointed if I’d landed in Phoenix and gotten your text. I’d probably have been tempted to turn right around and come back. Anyway, when we meet up tonight, I’ll give you the best night you’ve ever had in Paris.

To which Salman said:

Ooh la la! Anyway, I’d better run. I’ll text you as soon as I leave work so we can arrange a plan.

I told him:

Sounds good. I’m off to the lawyer’s. Excited to see you tonight.

By now, it was raining lightly, and the streets were dotted with colorful umbrellas. I arrived at the lawyer’s office at nine sharp and was escorted into a large, walnut-paneled room with an imposing set of bookshelves on either side.

My insides squirmed with anticipation as I waited for the lawyer to arrive, wondering exactly what I was going to be inheriting.

Just as long as they let me have the book, I thought with a shiver. It was deathly cold in the room, and I was beginning to wish I had brought a sweater. If I manage to walk out of here with the book, I’ll consider it a win.

Though, when I thought about it, I realized I wasn’t even sure how that worked. Would they give me the book upon request or would there be forms I had to fill out? Would the book be mailed to my home address at a later date? Would my lawyer even be able to speak English?

Within a few minutes he entered the room, wearing a burgundy suit and an old-fashioned powdered wig that appeared to have been snagged from an amateur theatrical production of Amadeus. Seating himself on the other side of the long table, he said, “How are you doing this morning, Ms. Renault?”

“Good, thank you.”

“Good.” Shuffling through his papers importantly, he said, “My name is Charles Moreau, and I’m representing the estate of your late father, Raymond Renault. My secretary was supposed to be joining us, but she came down with the flu yesterday and will probably be bedridden for the foreseeable future. So, let’s just dive in, shall we?”

I nodded assent, feeling a curiously prickly lump in my throat.

“Now, I wish I had better news to give you,” said Mr. Moreau. “Under normal circumstances, you would be getting the estate, whole and entire. But your father also left you with sizable debts, nearly equaling the worth of the estate. I assume you don’t want to be responsible for paying those debts yourself, so what his creditors have proposed is that they just take the entire estate.”

“All of it?” I repeated weakly. Apparently, my earlier cynicism was about to be vindicated.

“Yes, all of it. This will fulfill his obligations to his debtors and absolve you of any responsibility for paying them. You’ll return home with no debts. The downside is that you won’t be returning home with anything else, either.”

“That’s…fine,” I said with an edge of anger in my voice. I couldn’t help wondering why a man should continue to be expected to pay debts after he was already dead. “There was only one thing from the estate that I really wanted.”

“And what thing was that?” asked Mr. Moreau, more out of curiosity than conviction. The look on his face said the meeting was already over.

“Just a book that belongs to me—The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. My mother used to read to me when I was little, and I can’t imagine it having much value to his creditors.”

But the uncomfortable look on Mr. Moreau’s face suggested otherwise. “Yes, about that,” he said gravely, and I felt like someone had just shoved ice down my throat. “I think that, perhaps, no one told you the worth of that book.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“Really, I can’t see how they didn’t inform you. What with it being a first edition and signed by the author himself, that book has a market value of over two hundred thousand dollars.”

“You’re joking.”

I barely managed to get the words out. I was so overcome with fury towards Mom and my father. Why had they never mentioned how valuable the book was? Why leave me in the dark about it?

“No, it’s true. And presumably, I don’t have to tell you what that means—”

I finished the sentence for him. “It means I’m never going to see that book again.”

Mr. Moreau nodded wearily, looking slightly exasperated.

Now that the initial shock had worn off, I could feel indignation welling up inside of me—the same zeal that had made me a terror to anyone who had gotten on the wrong end of my reporter’s pen. They couldn’t keep that book from me, surely. It was mine!

“Maybe if you just let me talk to them,” I said. “It has nothing to do with the money. It’s—”

“It’s a beloved childhood artifact,” said Mr. Moreau. “I understand.”

“Well, I need his creditors to understand,” I said in a combative tone. “I want to talk to them.”

“If you really think it would help…but I must warn you, they’re very set on keeping the book. If it would make you feel better—”

He rose from the table, mumbling to himself, and left the room. I watched him leave in surprise, wondering where he was going and thinking that perhaps he’d had enough of the conversation. With a mounting sense of frustration, I pulled out my phone and texted Aisha.

They won’t let me have the book. It was literally all I wanted out of this trip, and they won’t let me have this one thing.

Aisha didn’t respond right away, but it felt good just to have typed that. I set the phone on a corner of the table and was awaiting her response when the door opened again. Mr. Moreau reappeared, followed by the very last person I had expected to see.

I rose from the chair in surprise, wondering if my eyes were playing some sort of trick on me. “You!”

“Good morning to you, too, Ms. Renault,” Salman said.