“What did your mother do before that?” he asked her.
“She was a book editor. Eventually, she only edited one very famous author.” She looked out the window, thinking about George, and their cowardice at not telling her the truth before he died so she could speak to him about it, and his selfishness in taking over her mother’s life, stealing her youth, and feeding her addiction to him. She didn’t mention any of it to Joachim. He could sense there was more to the story. They each had their secrets. But they weren’t friends, or just a man and a woman. She was his employer, so different rules applied, and there were only certain questions one could ask. He had very careful boundaries, and never crossed them.
* * *
—
For the rest of the week, deliveries arrived. Her new bed came, they sent the old one to the owner’s storage and threw away the old mattress. Alphonsine cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen until they shone. She scrubbed the floors after the deliveries and used a special leather cream on the four vintage chairs. The new Ikea dining chairs improved the dining room, and made the existing table look better. And the coffee table from the flea market looked handsome in the living room. The Ikea cupboards they’d bought turned the second bedroom into an efficient dressing room and storage space.
Joachim hung the three new paintings she had bought, and spent a whole day installing light fixtures. He was good with his hands and was undaunted by anything they needed to do. And Olivia was thinking about shipping the few pieces she’d kept of her mother’s furniture to Paris from the storage facility where she had sent them. She didn’t need them in New York, and she thought they’d look well in the new apartment. She gave Joachim the relevant information to research the shipping. There was nothing he couldn’t do.
Within two weeks the apartment was well set up, and livable. She began packing what she had at the apartment on the quai Voltaire, and Joachim moved it all to the new place, and she gave up the temporary apartment a week early.
She bought fresh flowers and set them around the new apartment and unpacked all her things. Joachim asked her if she wanted a safe, and she hadn’t thought of it, and told him it was a good idea. He arranged to have one installed, but they were booked solid for two weeks. They said there had been a number of burglaries in the sixteenth recently, and the demand for home safes had increased. Olivia didn’t own any major jewelry, just a few pieces that had been her mother’s, and she was going to use the safe for them, and whatever documents she brought with her.
She’d been sleeping at the new apartment for a week when she decided to get out of her work clothes and put on a decent outfit for a change. She put on black slacks, a white cashmere sweater, and high heels. Joachim noticed it but didn’t comment. It wasn’t his place. She was a strikingly pretty woman, and close to his age, which made it all the more inappropriate for him to remark on her looks. He knew his place and he always respected the limits. He saw her walk into her bedroom and come back with a strange look on her face, as though puzzled by something.
“Is everything all right?” he asked her in a businesslike tone. It was his job to notice what went on around him, and he had a sharp eye and a keen awareness of people’s moods and reactions. He could see that Olivia was upset about something.
She had gone into her bedroom to put on a pair of pearl earrings and the diamond band her mother had worn as her pseudo wedding ring from George. It was the first time Olivia had wanted to wear it, but when she opened the small jewel case where she’d been keeping them, it was empty, and neither the ring nor the earrings were there. She’d been keeping the jewel case in her underwear drawer until the installation of the safe. She opened the case several times, as though her mother’s jewelry would materialize, and it didn’t. Alphonsine was busy scrubbing the bathroom, and she didn’t want to accuse her of anything. There had been many workmen in the house, and deliveries, and she hadn’t checked the jewel box since she’d moved. If someone had stolen her mother’s jewelry, she had no idea who it could be, and she didn’t want to accuse anyone unfairly.