The Paris Key Read online

  Praise for The Paris Key

  “In her latest novel, Juliet Blackwell offers a compelling story line with a charming protagonist and a deep well of family secrets, all gorgeously set in the City of Lights. The sights and smells of Blackwell’s Paris lingered long after I turned the last page. The Paris Key is an absorbing homage to family, friendship, and, of course, the greatest city in the world.”

  —international bestselling author Michelle Gable

  “In this witty, warm, winsome novel, Blackwell draws back the curtain on Paris’s complex past while celebrating its vibrant present. Her generation-spanning tale combines intrigue and passion with a flawless ear for language and a gift for sensory detail. If The Paris Key doesn’t make a Francophile of you, nothing will!”

  —Sophie Littlefield

  “A gorgeously plotted novel woven with luminescent charm, The Paris Key gleams as brightly as the city herself.”

  —Rachael Herron

  Praise for New York Times Bestselling Author Juliet Blackwell

  “[Juliet Blackwell’s] writing style made me feel as though I was with each character, sharing emotions, actions, and anticipating the next moves. When I find an author who can provide this much reader involvement, I put her on my ‘must-read’ list.”

  —MyShelf.com

  “Juliet Blackwell sits firmly on my list of must-read authors!”

  —Victoria Laurie

  Also by Juliet Blackwell

  THE WITCHCRAFT MYSTERY SERIES

  Secondhand Spirits

  A Cast-off Coven

  Hexes and Hemlines

  In a Witch’s Wardrobe

  Tarnished and Torn

  A Vision in Velvet

  Spellcasting in Silk

  THE HAUNTED HOME RENOVATION MYSTERY SERIES

  If Walls Could Talk

  Dead Bolt

  Murder on the House

  Home for the Haunting

  Keeper of the Castle

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Julie Goodson-Lawes, 2015

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Random House, 2015

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  New American Library and the New American Library colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Blackwell, Juliet.

  The Paris key / Juliet Blackwell.

  pages cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-18603-3

  1. Women—France—Paris—Fiction. 2. Life change events—Fiction. 3. Family secrets—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.L32578P37 2015

  813’.6—dc23 2015009372

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by Juliet Blackwell

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraphs

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  To Sophie “Get ’er done.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks are due to my wonderful editor, Kerry Donovan, who shares my love of Paris and encouraged me to write a standalone novel set in that incomparable city. To my incredible agent, Jim McCarthy: Thank you for having my back and for your unstinting enthusiasm—I can’t wait to see where we go next!

  And most of all, to the incomparable City of Lights, and to those who make me feel so welcome in France: the staff of the charming Hôtel Saint-Paul le Marais, my home away from home. Merci beaucoup à Madame Michèle Stauffenegger; Marie-Louise, Marie-Pierre, et Jean Michel Dartevel; Philippe Berrard and Catherine Dargaud of Haut Bana Winery; Olivier Daridon et tout la famille; Remy and Genevieve Bonnet of Bonnet-Huteau Vignerons; Francis Unique and his beautiful family; Liliane and Corrine Garde of Château Haut-Goujon; Marie Claude and David Chauveau of the Domaine de Beausejour; and Daniel Hecquet of Le Logis des Ségur. Special thanks also to la famille LaCroix, and to Marc-Antoine Stauffenegger, his guitar, and his entire family for unforgettable summer nights of wine and song. And speaking of wine and song . . . thanks to Aux Trois Mailletz cabaret, which we never seem to manage to leave before the sun comes up, no matter how we try.

  To Carolyn Lawes, sister and friend, unfailing support, and muse. Words aren’t adequate to express what you mean to me, and to my writing. And what is a writer without a writer’s circle? Many, many thanks to Rachael Herron, Sophie Littlefield, Mysti Berry, Victoria Laurie, Gigi Pandian, Nicole Peeler, Adrienne Miller, Martha White, Lynn Coddington
, and Lisa Hughey. I can’t believe I get to rub shoulders with such talented, beautiful, funny, smart women.

  To Maddee James and Jen Forbus with Xuni Designs—thank you for the beauty, and the friendship. And to my chosen family: Bee Enos, Anna Cabrera, Mary Grae, Susan Baker, Kendall Moalem, Bruce Nikolai, Shay Demetrius, Suzanne Chan, Pamela Groves, Jan Strout, Wanda Klor, Cathy Romero, Chris Logan, and Brian Casey. And to the entire Mira Vista Social Club, especially Sara Paul, Dan Krewson, and Oscar and his crew. There could be no better neighbors.

  Thanks to Jordan H. for allowing me to follow him around while he picked locks. I’m still not much good at it, but I have a newfound appreciation for how hard it is! And to Glenview Lock and Key for their generosity to our elderly neighbors through the Rebuilding Together project—and to putting up with my incessant questions. To Karen Smyers, Jungian therapist and anthropologist extraordinaire, for the analysis of Fitcher’s Bird and discussions of sand tables and dream therapy. And to the Basque Library of the University of Nevada, Reno.

  Much gratitude to Amy Vaudreuil for tracking down the source of the Victor Hugo quote used in the epigraph, which was taken from his notes on the city of Paris rather than from one of his novels. It was driving me crazy!

  To Robert Lawes, whose strength and indomitable spirit continues to amaze and inspire me. This past year has been something of a rough road, but you’ve tackled it like the motorcycle-riding, downhill-skiing, jet-piloting former Marine you are. To my sister Susan Lawes, who taught me an early love of reading, and who remains a tireless cheerleader for my writing.

  To my son Sergio Roberto, who has become a loving, deeply thoughtful man who works hard for what he believes in. Thank you for making me, always and ever, an exceedingly proud mama.

  And finally, many special thanks to Eric Paul Stauffenegger, for his editing of the French in this book . . . and for so very much more than that: Thank you for welcoming me to your native country, and into your heart. Merci pour l’amour et la joie et la amitié. Et le vin! Encore et toujours . . .

  He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.

  —VICTOR HUGO

  Paris is always a good idea.

  —AUDREY HEPBURN IN Sabrina

  Chapter One

  Her uncle Dave always used to say, “Remember the locksmiths’ code, Genevieve. Never reveal the secrets you find behind locked doors, and never—ever!—abuse the power to open a lock.”

  Genevieve pondered this morsel of advice while Jason, her soon-to-be-ex-husband, spoke.

  Uncle Dave had been on her mind a lot lately. For one thing, she kept dreaming about kneeling before a locked door, hearing his ever-patient voice in her ear as she tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to pick the lock. For another, her uncle’s recent death had left her with a hollow feeling: sorrow mixed with regret.

  Dave’s passing also left his Parisian locksmith shop unattended.

  “I’ve never met a person as locked down as you are,” Jason was saying as he leaned back against the stainless-steel Sub-Zero refrigerator (wide enough for party platters) that cost as much as Genevieve made in a month. His stance was belligerent—hands on hips, gym-toned chest thrust forward—but his liquid blue eyes conveyed contrition mixed, annoyingly, with a touch of self-conscious pity. “How can you even think of moving to Paris while we’re in the middle of this? There are papers to sign, and lawyers to meet with.”

  “Sounds like the perfect time to leave the country,” she said, “you have to admit.”

  “Be reasonable, Genie.”

  She winced. Yet another reason to move to Paris: The French knew how to pronounce her name. Genevieve. Not Jenny or Genie or even Jen-a-veev, but Zhohn-vee-ev. Was it any wonder her marriage hadn’t worked out? That’s what she got for marrying a man who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say her name properly. But he wasn’t the only one; even her best friend, Mary, called her by her surname: Martin.

  All things considered, Genevieve decided, it was her mother’s fault. They weren’t French, after all. Her mother had spent a few weeks visiting her brother in Paris the year before Genevieve was born; a framed photo had rested on her bureau: Angela and Dave, him smiling and goateed, her with wind-whipped hair. The two of them were bookended by gargoyles high atop the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the city laid out in the background. But was that one trip abroad reason enough for her parents to saddle their daughter with such a hard-to-pronounce name?

  “It’s not as though I planned my uncle’s death,” Genevieve said, consciously trying to accede to Jason’s wishes, to be reasonable. “Someone needs to go tend to things.”

  “He has a daughter, doesn’t he? Let her take care of it.”

  “Catharine doesn’t know the first thing about locks.”

  “And you do, don’t you? Sometimes I think that’s all you care about.”

  Out of habit, she reached up to play with the rusty key that had hung on a copper chain around her neck ever since her mother’s untimely death, when Genevieve was fourteen. To modern eyes it looked nothing at all like a key. More like a hunk of rusted metal.

  Around here, often, this key put people in mind of the Oakland hills conflagration, the wildfire that ate through hundreds of splendid homes and claimed twenty-five souls. In the smoldering aftermath, heartbroken owners went back to sift through the rubble, collecting items from their former homes that they would later incorporate into shrines: twisted slabs of glass, slumped shards of metal, half-burned albums with a few miraculously intact photographs of Grandma.

  And keys: some twisted and charred, others still jingling in pockets, ready to open doors that no longer existed.

  Years later, having rebuilt with better, treeless views of San Francisco, homeowners displayed these fragments of their old lives in niches, or hung them by fishing line from pieces of gray driftwood. While sipping cocktails they would retell the story: the unseasonably warm day, the shifting winds, the panicked warnings to evacuate. They would speak of wrangling cats and grabbing heirlooms and locating passports; of fleeing down the snakelike turns of hillside roads, a wall of black smoke at their backs. They would think, but not say aloud, that it was unfair that their beautiful homes should have blazed in the inferno while the rest of Oakland—much of it due for a good burning—had remained intact.

  The key Genevieve wore around her neck had nothing at all to do with the Oakland hills fire, but she let her neighbors assume it did. It was easier that way. All she had to say was “the fire,” and people nodded and looked away. They treated her with hushed tones, allowed her to avoid their eyes.

  “Genie, are you even listening to me?”

  “Tell you what,” Genevieve said. “I’ll make this easy: All I want is a ticket to Paris and enough money to take over my uncle’s locksmith shop. You can keep the rest.”

  Suspicion clouded Jason’s beautiful eyes.

  Genevieve had always thought herself smarter than her husband, her mind able to make quick logical leaps that evaded him. Still, he was much more successful than she. Jason was in software sales. He wooed his clients with truffles made from organic free-trade cocoa, hand rolled in powdered sugar by single mothers at a women’s collective in Berkeley. Jason felt virtuous when he bought these chocolates, the clients felt good about eating them, and, fueled by sugar and caffeine, they placed software orders in record numbers. “It’s a win-win,” was one of Jason’s favorite phrases, and he lived by that credo. But then, fate had been kind to him: Tall and well built, with light brown hair and blue eyes, he worked out religiously, dressed fashionably, and had a knack for remembering names. Nothing in Jason’s experience had suggested that life was anything other than a series of mutually beneficial relationships. Win-win.

  What business had someone like Genevieve, she wondered for the hundredth time, had marrying a lighthearted optimist?r />
  A thick sludge covered the bottom of her coffee cup. A freebie from a fund-raiser luncheon, the mug was the perfect size and weight, and she relished the way the palm of her hand cradled it, telegraphing the warmth of its contents to her blood in the mornings. Because although their house was expensive, it was old and drafty and always cold, built in a stand of redwoods on a hill overlooking Oakland and the San Francisco Bay. On a clear day an astute viewer might catch a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, an earthy shade of Tuscan red gleaming in the sunshine. But clear days were rare. The house was engulfed by fog most mornings and by clouds most afternoons, and the soaring trees reached up into the haze and dripped dew onto the roof, the water tap-tap-tapping in a steady cadence that Genevieve found pleasant but Jason did not.

  Genevieve knew Jason would have preferred to toss her old chipped mug into the trash in favor of the creamy bisque coffee set he had bought in a tiny Italian boutique in San Francisco’s North Beach not long after they married and moved into the house with the blue door. “It’s called Bianco de Bianco,” Jason had said, showing off the ceramics to their guests as they lingered over after-dinner coffee. “You mean ‘white’?” Mary had asked in her signature dry tone. Genevieve had snorted; then, in penance, had remarked upon the set’s simple, refined beauty. That was back when she had been careful to protect her husband’s feelings, his pride. Not anymore.

  Clearly this marriage is no longer mutually beneficial. Genevieve wondered whether the woman Jason had been seeing, Quiana, found their affair a win-win.

  “Are you serious?” Jason asked, looking at Genevieve out of the corner of his eye. “All you want is a locksmith shop?”

  “Maybe I’ll take this cup, too.”

  She could almost make out the sound of wheels grinding as Jason considered her offer, searching for the catch. “How much are we talking? What’s a locksmith shop in Paris worth?”

  Priceless. “I’m not sure. I’ll need to speak with my cousin Catharine and figure out the details. For the moment, I just want the plane ticket.”