Sarah's Key Read Free Page A

never find him. Never.
    The policeman came back. He shrugged, shook his head.
    “There is no one here,” he said.
    The man in the raincoat pushed the mother toward the door. He asked for the keys to the apartment. She handed them over, silently. They filed down the stairs, their progress slowed by the bags and bundles the mother carried. The girl was thinking fast, how could she get the key to her father? Where could she leave it? With the concierge? Would she be awake at this hour?
    Strangely, the concierge was already awake and waiting behind her door. The girl noticed she had an odd, gloating expression on her face. Why did she look like that, the girl wondered, why did she not glance at her mother, or at her, but only at the men, as if she did not want to see her or her mother, as if she had never seen them. And yet her mother had always been kind to this woman. She had looked after the concierge’s baby from time to time, little Suzanne, who often fretted because of stomach pains, and her mother had been so patient, had sung to Suzanne in her native tongue, endlessly, and the baby had loved it, had fallen asleep peacefully.
    “Do you know where the father and the son are?” asked the policeman. He gave her the keys to the apartment.
    The concierge shrugged. She still did not look at the girl, at her mother. She pocketed the keys with a swift, hungry movement the girl didn’t like.
    “No,” she said to the policeman. “I haven’t seen much of the husband lately. Maybe he’s gone into hiding with the boy. You could look through the cellars or the service rooms on the top floor. I can show you.”
    The baby in the small loge began to whimper. The concierge looked back over her shoulder.
    “We don’t have time,” said the man wearing the raincoat. “We need to move on. We’ll come back later if we have to.”
    The concierge went to get the wailing baby and held it to her chest. She said she knew there were other families in the building next door. She pronounced their names with an expression of distaste, thought the girl, as if she was saying a swearword, one of those dirty words you were never supposed to utter.
     
     

     
     
    BERTRAND POCKETED HIS PHONE at last and turned his attention to me. He gave me one of his irresistible grins. Why did I have such an impossibly attractive husband? I wondered for the umpteenth time. When I first met him all those years ago, skiing at Courchevel in the French Alps, he had been the slim, boyish type. Now, at forty-seven, heavier, stronger, he exuded manliness, “Frenchiness,” and class. He was like good wine, maturing with grace and power, whereas I felt certain I had lost my youth somewhere between the Charles River and the Seine and was certainly not blossoming in middle age. If silver hair and wrinkles seemed to highlight Bertrand’s beauty, I felt sure they diminished mine.
    “Well?” he said, cupping my ass with a careless, possessive hand, despite his associate and our daughter looking on. “Well, isn’t this great?”
    “Great,” echoed Zoë. “Antoine has just told us everything needs to be redone, which means we probably won’t move in for another year.”
    Bertrand laughed. An amazingly infectious laugh, a cross between a hyena and a saxophone. That was the problem with my husband. Intoxicating charm. And he loved turning it on full blast. I wondered whom he had inherited it from. His parents, Colette and Edouard? Wildly intelligent, refined, knowledgeable. But not charming. His sisters, Cécile and Laure? Well-bred, brilliant, perfect manners. But they only laughed when they felt they were obliged to. I guessed he probably got it from Mamé. Rebellious, belligerent Mamé.
    “Antoine is such a pessimist,” laughed Bertrand. “We’ll be here soon enough. It will be a lot of work, but we’ll get the best teams on it.”
    We followed him down the long corridor with creaking floorboards, visiting the bedrooms that gave onto the street.
    “This