The train exhaled beneath a sky the color of dishwater and bone. Margot stepped down from the carriage into the half-lit air of Gare d'Austerlitz, the hem of her coat brushing grit and coal dust. It hadn't rained, but the platform smelled of it—sour and expectant. A thin man in a militia cap coughed beside her and shouldered past. He left a briefcase in his wake, and she stared at it a second too long.
Everything had the shape of a memory.
Margot shifted the canvas satchel higher on her shoulder and pulled her collar up. The wind came straight through the broken pane above track eleven. It touched her throat like a finger dipped in cold water. To her left, a boy—maybe ten—was selling violets from a chipped tin pail, staring past her at nothing. Behind him, a peeling poster of Marshal Pétain flapped against the wall, half torn and crosshatched with names in pencil: Marcel, Adrien, Paul, Étienne. Then the smudge of a palm, wiped away before it dried.
She walked.
Her boots clicked against the tile, soft but distinct. She was not hiding anymore, not technically, but the habit of quiet steps stayed with her. Near the luggage kiosk, a woman smoked with her gloves still on. The smoke was heavy and bitter. Not tobacco.
Margot's fingers gripped the satchel tighter.
Inside, in the bottom lining beneath a layer of forged bread coupons and two crumpled leaflets, lay the ledger. It was bound in navy cloth, the spine worn soft by being opened too many times in secret. The initials L.B. were faintly embossed in gold on the front. The pages were full of dead names, some real, some invented, and at least one that might still be alive—if he had kept moving.
She passed through the main gates, ignoring the old man muttering into his cup near the tram line. The city had not finished coming back to itself. You could still feel where it had cracked. Sandbags were gone, but the sand itself lingered in gutters and corners, in the creases of stone.
As she turned onto Rue de la Contrescarpe, Margot felt the presence of the building before she saw it—the weight of it, or maybe the absence of what had once been there. The windows on the second floor were boarded. The façade was grayer than she remembered. A child's bicycle leaned against the wall, its tires split, a daisy jammed through the bell hole. She paused at the corner. Her hand moved to her coat's inside pocket, tracing the edge of the folded page.
Just then, from the opposite corner, a figure appeared—dark coat, hat brim pulled low, moving fast against the current of a crowd coming out of the tobacco shop. He passed close enough to brush her sleeve.
She turned.
But the man was already gone, folding into the blur of damp coats and tired feet.
She stood there longer than she meant to. Then she stepped into the café at the corner—what used to be their rendezvous—where no one should know her name.
And across the cracked marble counter, someone did not look up.