The Paper Girl of Paris Read online

  Dedication

  For Tim

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Alice

  Chapter 2: Alice

  Chapter 3: Adalyn

  Chapter 4: Adalyn

  Chapter 5: Alice

  Chapter 6: Adalyn

  Chapter 7: Alice

  Chapter 8: Adalyn

  Chapter 9: Alice

  Chapter 10: Adalyn

  Chapter 11: Alice

  Chapter 12: Adalyn

  Chapter 13: Alice

  Chapter 14: Adalyn

  Chapter 15: Alice

  Chapter 16: Adalyn

  Chapter 17: Alice

  Chapter 18: Adalyn

  Chapter 19: Alice

  Chapter 20: Alice

  Chapter 21: Alice

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Jordyn Taylor

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Alice

  My family’s first language is small talk. It’s a fact I learned a long time ago, when I started going over to friends’ houses by myself. At home, other people slip into banter like they’re pulling on an old pair of sweatpants, but at the Prewitt residence, we make polite conversation like we’re permanently trussed up in our Sunday best. In some ways, it’s a blessing. It means we hardly ever fight, which isn’t something most teenagers can say about their parents. But it can also be a curse—like right now, as we sit shoulder to shoulder in the back seat of this sweltering cab.

  “So—what brings you to Paris?”

  The taxi driver smiles at us in the rearview mirror. He must think we didn’t hear him the first time around. But we heard him all right, loud and clear. This I know, because when he asked the question, I noticed all three of our bodies go rigid.

  The ride was going well, though, given the circumstances. Dad and I listened like star pupils as the guy gave us a history lesson on Sacré-Coeur, the famous hilltop basilica off in the distance. We nodded our heads in all the right places and made empty promises to go up and watch the sunset when we could. The whole time, we kept our hands resting on Mom’s legs, like she was a package meant to be handled with care.

  The driver is still looking at us expectantly. He’s probably wondering why the well-mannered family from New Jersey has gone silent all of a sudden. We’re stuck in traffic on the boulevard Haussmann, where construction barriers are forcing all the cars into one lane. The light just doesn’t want to change, so I make a point of staring down the intersection at the three white domes towering over Paris. The driver said there’s only one point higher than Sacré-Coeur in the whole city, and it’s the top of the Eiffel Tower. I’d give anything to be in either place right now—or really anywhere that isn’t here, having to tell a stranger the bizarre reason why the three of us are in Paris for the summer.

  Dad clears his throat.

  “Family,” he says quickly.

  Mom shifts in her seat.

  The light finally turns green, and we trundle on in silence.

  We turn off the sunny boulevard and begin weaving through shadowy streets that zigzag in unexpected directions. It seems absurd that none of us has any idea where we’re headed, but then again, Gram always liked surprises and had a flare for the dramatic. She was the anomaly in our family. I reach into the pocket of my denim shorts and touch the strange brass key, wondering what in the world my grandmother was thinking before she died.

  With every bump in the road, the questions rattle around my head like metal screws in a glass jar. After all these years, why did Gram still own an apartment in Paris? She left France to marry Gramps at the end of the Second World War, and she never went back. She never even talked about it. In the sixteen years I was lucky enough to have with her, I never once heard her mention her childhood. There were no old photographs in her condo, no keepsakes—nothing. Only after she died did I realize how strange it was, this massive gap in her history. Gram never held back in telling me about the times she cut work to join civil rights marches, or how she and Gramps once smoked weed on the roof of their apartment building, so it never occurred to me that she would be hiding something else. For some reason, my brain just accepted that Gram’s life began when she first set foot on American soil.

  We drive along a one-way street nestled between rows of uniform cream-colored apartment buildings with white shutters and tiny Juliet balconies. There are restaurants and coffee shops wedged beneath them at street level, full of people enjoying a peaceful Saturday morning. At a cross street, I spot the sign on the wall that says Rue de Marquis, 9e Arr. Earlier in the ride, our driver explained that the “Arr” stood for “arrondissement,” which is the name for the districts that divide Paris. There are twenty of them in total, and Gram’s apartment is in the ninth. We’re here. My heart pounds in my chest. If Mom and Dad see the street sign, they don’t say anything.

  The taxi driver makes the turn. We’re at the mouth of a crescent-shaped street that twists sharply to the left, so you can’t see where it ends. There are no shops here, only residential buildings with concave faces, keeping with the curve of the road. They aren’t identical like the others we passed; there’s a wide one with black shutters followed by a skinny one with no shutters at all. Finally, the driver comes to a stop in front of an ancient-looking building with a yellowing façade, stuffed between its neighbors like a snaggletooth.

  “Numéro trente-six,” he says.

  Dad pays the fare with the euros he got from the bank, and the three of us climb out onto the sidewalk in front of number thirty-six. Surveying the building through my round tortoiseshell glasses, I note that it looks like the oldest on the block. There are cracks in the plaster and chips of paint missing from the emerald-green double doors. Dad goes to inspect the electronic keypad next to the entrance, while I hang back at the curb next to Mom. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and notice how bony they feel under her baggy gray cardigan, which she’s somehow wearing despite the heat. She’d normally be in a sundress, something showing off the legs toned from hiking in the hills behind our house, but then again, she hasn’t done that in a while either.

  “You never know, Mom. This might be kind of fun.”

  She wraps her sweater tighter around her body and gazes up at an unspecific spot on the building. She could be smiling or wincing. It’s tough to tell.

  “We’ll see, Alice.”

  Poor Mom. First she lost Gram, which was hard enough on its own, but then we read the will, and Mom learned there were things she never knew about her own mother. Big things. Mom has been a mess for the past two months, barely able to pull herself out of bed and get dressed for work. Dad had to remind her the fifth graders wouldn’t have an English teacher if she didn’t get moving. I always did what I could to make her happy when we both got home from our respective schools, like baking cookies or finding something stupid to watch on Netflix—anything to take her mind off Gram. None of it seemed to have much of an effect . . . but I’m going to keep on trying. It seems like the least I can do, given that I’m the one who ended up with this apartment.

  “We’re in,” Dad says triumphantly, holding open the door. It’s a good thing Gram’s lawyer left a note about the code in the will.

  The lobby looks as old as the outside of the building, with peeling wallpaper, a dusty chandelier, and a tile floor that might have been white once, decades ago. It’s mostly quiet, save for the faint sounds of footsteps coming from the floors above. Any minute now, I feel like Gram is going to jump out and yell, “Surprise!”

  “Who remembers which apartment we’re going to?” Dad a
sks. He’s using the upbeat voice he typically reserves for prospective home buyers. I guess we both have our own ways of trying to cheer Mom up.

  “It’s number five,” I volunteer.

  The wooden stairs creak and groan under our feet. Mom doesn’t respond to any of Dad’s cheerful observations about the banisters and the crown moldings, and I wonder if he’s having second guesses about relocating us to Paris for the next six weeks.

  The trip was supposed to help us unwind after a difficult few months. “You two are off for the summer, and Todd’s practically forcing me to take a good, long vacation now that the Willow Street mansion is out of the way,” Dad said over dinner one night. (This was after we read the will.) “We can all go check out the apartment, and I’ll work on settling Gram’s estate while you gals explore a new city. What do you say?”

  My heart thumps harder the higher we climb, until I’m sure everyone can hear it reverberating off the walls. I’m still in shock that Gram left the apartment to me instead of Mom, although it’s true that we were very close, and I saw her a lot more than Mom did, because her condo was close to the high school; I could see it from the windows in the third-floor science lab. I would stop in to visit her all the time on my walk home; she would put out coffee and banana bread and we’d talk about whatever was on our minds, from my nonexistent love life to the latest drama in her Saturday-afternoon bridge club. And then, of course, there was that stretch of time in the first grade, back when Mom had all those doctor’s appointments, that Gram would pick me up from school and make me dinner every night. We had a special bond from the start.

  I remember a cold, rainy day back in February, when I was sitting at her dining room table and tracing my finger around the rim of the polka-dot coffee mug she always reserved for me. “Gram,” I asked sullenly, “what does it mean if I still don’t have a date for the spring semiformal?”

  Gram raised one of her wispy white eyebrows. “What does it mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  She snorted. “It means you haven’t gotten around to asking anybody yet.”

  My neck and forehead are damp by the time we reach the door with the rusty number five on it. There doesn’t seem to be any air-conditioning in the building, and it’s late June. Dad comes up next, with Mom bringing up the rear. We all take a moment to catch our breath. And then it’s time.

  “Do you want to do it?” I offer to Mom. I want her to feel like the apartment belongs to both of us.

  “No thanks,” she says. “You go ahead.”

  With trembling fingers, I take out the key. It fits into the hole and turns with a satisfying click, and I gently push open the door.

  My first impression is that it smells like an old book: moldy and musty but nevertheless inviting, like it’s happy that someone has finally cracked its spine. We’re standing on the threshold of a foyer with paneled walls and high ceilings, but it’s too dark to get a sense of any of the rooms beyond.

  “H-hello?”

  I don’t know why I just said that. It’s clear that no one is here, and that no one has been here for quite some time. When I step into the room, the floor feels strangely soft underfoot, and I look down to find a thick layer of dust creeping up over the laces of the purple Converse sneakers I bought with my tutoring money. The dust is everywhere: on the wooden bench next to the door, on the coatrack in the corner, probably in the stale air I’m breathing.

  Mom coughs into the sleeve of her cardigan.

  “I think I’ll stay outside, you guys.”

  “You don’t want to explore just a little bit?” I gesture brightly into the shadows.

  “We can stay here while you go look around,” says Dad, taking Mom by the hand. Mom doesn’t object to this plan, so the only thing left for me to do is press deeper into the darkness.

  “It’s hard to see where— Ow.”

  After feeling my way through an archway, I bang my knee into something sturdy. A table. Carefully, I feel my way around it, until a thin strip of light tells me I’ve made it to a window. The curtains are stiff, but with a little effort, I manage to pull them aside, and the bright summer sunlight floods into the apartment like a tidal wave. I hear Dad gasp, and not in a fake-enthusiastic Realtor way. I turn around, and my jaw drops.

  “Oh . . . my . . . god.”

  There’s only one way to put it: We’ve traveled back in time. We’re standing in the middle of a fully furnished apartment that hasn’t been touched in . . . in who knows how long. I’m in the dining room, staring down the length of an elegant wooden table. To my right, there’s a buffet with silver candlesticks and serving ware on top. Large paintings in ornate gilded frames cover the walls from end to end. The place reminds me of a movie set, only it’s real—and it must have been pretty fancy back in its day, which makes me wonder how Gram could have ever lived here. She always said she was penniless when she arrived in America with Gramps, the two of them making do on one square meal a day.

  Over at the door, Dad convinces Mom to venture into the apartment. On her first step, she slips on the dust and nearly falls over, but Dad steadies her just in time.

  “Look at the dining room, Diane!”

  “I see it, Mark.”

  “This isn’t so bad, right?”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  I wish there were something I could say to make it better, but I know there isn’t, so I open a set of double doors and walk through to another darkened room. I follow a second strip of light to a set of curtains, drag them open, and take in the sight of a lavish living room. There’s even more expensive-looking artwork in here, and an upright wooden piano that must be extremely out of key by now. I take a lap of the room, marveling at the massive fireplace and the mirror resting on the mantel. I poke one of the upholstered armchairs by the window, and a cloud of dust dances into the air. The apartment is definitely pleased to see me.

  Careful not to disturb the carpet of dust on every surface, I tiptoe from room to room, wishing my eyes could look in ten different directions at once. My parents are moving at a fraction of the pace, still peering around the foyer. I explore the kitchen and a small square room with a desk and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In the hallway branching off from the other side of the foyer, I open a closet door to find an eerie sight: a dozen coats still hanging neatly from the racks, like ghosts standing in single file. The back of my neck prickles. The apartment isn’t just ancient furniture anymore; now there’s something human about it. What would make a family abandon this luxurious apartment without taking any of their stuff? And could it really have been Gram’s family?

  “Hey, Alice, come take a look at this!” It’s Dad.

  They’re still near the door, standing by a table against the wall. There are framed photos lined up all along it, and Dad is almost done using the bottom of his T-shirt to clean the dust off them. Mom stares at the ones he’s cleaned already. Her face could be made of stone, if not for the muscle twitching in her jaw.

  “D-did you guys find something cool?”

  “I don’t get it,” Mom says.

  The photos are all in black and white. The one farthest to the left shows a young girl sitting on a boardwalk. She’s gripping the edge of the bench and twisting slightly in her seat, like she wants you to know she’d rather be on the sand than posing in a dress for the camera. She has shiny blond hair and freckles on her nose, and she looks incredibly familiar.

  “Mom, is that you?”

  But it can’t be. This was taken decades before she was born. In the background of the photo, there are men in high-waisted swimsuits and women in structured one-pieces that look like dresses. People are carrying parasols, for god’s sake. So that means—

  “It’s Gram,” Dad says.

  It hits me out of nowhere: the tightening in my throat, the tears welling in my eyes and fogging up my glasses. I busy myself with wiping them off so Mom doesn’t see me like this. I want to be strong for her right now, but I miss Gram, too. I miss coffee and banana b
read. I miss laughing at Gram’s stories about Ethel from bridge club, who always fell asleep in the middle of the game. I miss showing Gram photos of my crushes on Instagram and having her rate them without mercy. But most of all, I miss having a family member I could open up to. I talk and laugh and get along with my parents, but I never talk about feelings with them. They’re too reserved—I needed Gram for that. I swallow hard. I feel guilty every time I have those kinds of thoughts, because I know how much Mom is suffering, and I love her. I love Dad, too. By the time I put my glasses back on, the tears are gone.

  I turn back to the photographs. Little Gram is in all of them. There she is sitting cross-legged in the grass beside a picnic spread, and there she is in knee socks and a tunic, posing in front of a school.

  “So do you think this apartment is . . .”

  The next photo answers my question. It’s Gram again, sitting at what is unmistakably the long wooden table in the other room. I recognize the paintings on the wall behind her. Gram lived here. This was her childhood home—her very fancy childhood home. I don’t know what else I expected it to be, but the truth is so bizarre, I can hardly wrap my head around it. Maybe the family abandoned it to escape the war. But if that was the case, why didn’t they ever come back? What happened to them?

  I’m mulling over dozens of new questions when I notice the girl. In the photo from the picnic, she’s lying on her stomach and flipping through a book. In the one by the school, she’s posing next to Gram in a matching outfit. She doesn’t look familiar to me, but she has dark eyes and dark curls just like mine, only she’s much more beautiful. It’s an objective fact. She looks like a movie star; I look like a dork who’s maybe kind of cute, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head to the left.

  “Mom,” I ask gently, “did Gram ever say she had a sister?”

  “No,” she says. “Apparently there’s a lot your grandmother never told me.”

  But there’s no doubt about it. They have to be sisters. Farther on down the line, there’s a professional portrait of Gram, the girl, and two people who must be their parents. The woman looks immaculate in diamond earrings and a necklace with a big gemstone hanging at the base of her neck. The man is rougher around the edges, his suit a few sizes too big for his thin frame, and I notice that he’s missing the last three fingers on his left hand.