Chapitre Un

<i>February 2018, Paris, France</i>

Bills. When we are children our greatest fears are the monsters under our bed or in nightmares; in adolescence it is the disappointment of wasting the few years of youth that we think we have; and when we grow up in a household where money is tight, our greatest fear is the bills we can't pay.

Asking Adelaide for help, again, is not an option, so I am alone this month.

I put the economic calculations sheet on the kitchen counter, while my eyes focus on the subpoena taped to the fridge with a magnet.

I have no more than two hundred euros in my possession and in just a week the landlord will knock on my door demanding his money, with such a fuss that he will shake the hinges. I also have no excuses left for a slight delay in the monthly payment, and trying to repeat a previous pretext is a risk that Alphonse will not appreciate at all.

Even with the threat of losing the house still latent, I smile when I see the note Adelaide has left, written in perfect calligraphy adorning the French greeting.

«Bonne nuit, Cannelle», is read on the paper, next to the letter that informs me of an artistic heritage waiting for me to claim it. Therefore, I assume that Adelaide has read it.

She lives in the third floor, a woman in her fifties whose path merged with mine two years ago. Since then, the nice lady who always had a smile on her face became a figure similar to a mother, always watching over me and ready to help.

When I open the fridge I discover that, next to a package of probably expired yoghurts, there is the dinner she brought from the restaurant for which she is the cook.

The sound of knuckles against the wooden door echoes off the walls of the small room. As soon as the door opens, I receive Adelaide's warm, motherly smile.

"Bonne nuit, Cannelle," she says cheerfully.

"Bonne nuit."

I turn away from her to let her in and close the door behind me.

"A very cold night, did you have a bad time getting here?" She asks me, taking off her coat.

"No, I was wearing two jackets." I take the soup plate with the restaurant's broth in my hands and sit on the sofa in the small living room. "And you? Weren't you home now?"

"No, no," she answers quickly. "I went to see him."

"How did it go?" I ask, turning on the television with the intention of distracting myself.

Yet what I see gives us both chills.

One month. That is the amount of time that has elapsed since Jacques passed away. And his funeral is shown on the news as if it were the event of the year. The owner of the Lemaire Art Galleries has left a fortune after a tragic death from pneumonia, but the identity of the person who inherited all his art pieces remains unknown to the public. The only fact the press managed to get out of the Lemaire family, which has been tormented for the past weeks, is that they do not know it either.

In front of me, covering Jacques's face on the television, an open envelope appears. I take it in my hand to discover that it is the summons to the court, received on the twenty-third of January.

"You should go," she whispers seconds later.

"No." I put the letter aside and continue eating dinner, but she lets out a heavy sigh of clear exasperation. "What am I supposed to do with all that? I don't have room here, Adelaide."

"You can sell it."

Ignoring what she just said, I concentrate on the faces of Jacques' three sons, who have been recorded leaving the court. All three of them are tall, handsome, dressed in expensive suits and ignorant. They are the example of what Jacques did not want to become: filthy rich without notion of the shortcoming and difficulties of others.

"They're unbearable," I said reluctantly.

"Have you even met them?"

Adelaide laughs, taking a seat next to me.

"No, but I don't need to." I wrinkle my nose. "Just look at them, exuding arrogance and petulance."

"Maybe you could go to court and put them in their place," she suggests, feigning innocence.

I continue saring at the images on the television screen.

We've had this conversation before, almost every day since the letter came in for all three of us, and it sounds so repetitive that I do not have the strength to responde with the same speech.

Adelaide seems to understand that I have no intention of repeating the discussion about what I should do with the subpoena, so it is her who speaks first.

"Leopold already went." I turn my head to look at her. "He took everything he could and fled to Belgium without saying goodbye."

I let out a small laugh along with her.

"I'm not surprised," I reply.

Silence quickly assembles around us once again.

This is how the last few weeks have passed, in silenc, keeping our thoughts to ourselves, because everything that had to do with Jacques's passing is too painful to talk about without the feeling of emptiness and sorrow.

The previous two years had been so thoroughly happy that the mere mention of what happened seems to eliminate every trace of a smile. The four neighbors of a modest building in the eighteenth district of Paris, whose lives were tangled together redeemlessly.

An artist in search of the inspiration that years of business and wealth had stolen from him; a kind woman without children who gave out kindness; a layer willing to take in his home a harmless painter from the Place du Tertre; and a desperate young woman trying to understand art while struggling to pay her rent.

We had witness the emotion with which Jacques painted his pictures in that square once the news about his disappearance calmed down. As he recovered his inspiration, his enthusiasm for art, he was able to give more meaning to his works.

That is the reason why the three of us, Adelaide, Léopold and I, thought Jacques left his artistic heritage to me, instead of his children.

"Sell it," Adelaide insist.

"No."

"Don't be stubborn, Cannelle," she murmurs tired of the conversation just begun. "You need it. Jacques would be the first to tell you. What's more, I think he left it for you to sell them. He knew how much you needed it."

My precariousness did not go easily unnoticed, that was clear, but Adelaide and I had very different perspectives on Jacques's motive to leave those painting to me.

"Sell his house in Marseille," I mumble slightly annoyed. "It is your now, right? Sell it and solve your financial problems."

"It's not the same."

"Why not?" I ask wrinkling my expression.

She hesitates for a few seconds before speaking, projecting a compassionate look against me.

"Don't you think you're being a bit too obstinate?" Adelaide gets up from the sofa, gesturing with the letter in her hands. "If anyone can get out of this place, it's you, Cannelle, so go and claim what he left for you. I'm sure he trust you to put it to good use."

During the past weeks I had found different reasons not to go to court and claim the inheritance. In the first place, I considered that they were too special to Jacques to pass into the hands of someone who would not care for them witht he same love and appreciation that he had for his own works. Second, I was terrified of facing a family who treated Adelaide as if she were much less when she went to accept the house he had given her, or who despised Léopold, who inherited thousands of euros. Finally, I did not want to assume that everything could be changing thanks to the death of someone I loved.

Jacques was a father to me, for at least two years, I was not prepared to confront his real family.

But sooner or later, I knew I would have to.