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writer?”
    This amazes Anna—that even a footman would have heard of Edith. Is her fame now so widespread? True, Anna has helped Edith with nearly everything she has ever written from the time she was in braids. She answers her mail. Reads notes from the publisher out loud when Edith’s eyes are burning with allergy. She corrects her spelling. She picks up the pile of pages outside her bedroom door every morning to type and tells her when characters don’t seem believable or things don’t make sense to her. She offhandedly mentioned to Edith when she first read
The House of Mirth
that it struck her as ironic that Selden seemed to spend a great deal of his time with just the sort of people he disdained, and the next time Anna typed the pages, Lily Bart was telling Selden exactly that. But Edith famous?
    “I wish my mistress was famous,” Louise says. “Anyone can have money. Talent is something few have.”
    “That’s so,” the seamstress says.
    “You’re Mrs. Wharton’s secretary, are you not?” Louise says, sitting forward in her chair, her eyes suddenly bright.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, you must read everything, then. You must know every word of her famous books, maybe even put a word or two of your own in there?”
    Anna nods.
    “Well,
ma petite
! I’d say that makes you famous too!”
    Anna feels herself blush. She’s never wanted the spotlight herself. Unlike Edith, who has always expected great things for herself, as though a fairy whispered in her ear at birth, “You are somebody.” Anna finds herself smiling as she darns, thinking about the stories she has typed from Edith’s scribbled and often indecipherable notes being read by kings and commoners everywhere. And those words that Anna suggested right there with Edith’s own. The scope of it, the impact of it makes her dizzy. I am nearly famous, she tells herself with a silvery dart of satisfaction.

    Anna is very pleased to be in Paris this year. The cobbled streets remind her of her childhood visits to her grandmother in Germany. Orphaned at the age of two, she was raised by her eldest brother, William, who was only fifteen, and by her Aunt Charlotte, who had a family of her own and little time for her. But with her grandmother, Anna experienced the warmth and sweetness of primary love. Now, in Paris, the smells of pastry, the blue-wet cold of European winter bring visions of those three important visits to Frankfurt. Oh, when her grandmother hugged her, how special she felt! How beloved. Her grandmother would braid her hair and tell her all about her mother’s childhood. She taught Anna German songs that they would sing together. On her last visit, it was as though Anna’s grandmother knew they’d never see each other again.
    “Memories will keep you warm,
mein Hase
,” she whispered in her ear. My little rabbit. She sent Anna back to America with a satchel stitched from her mother’s favorite childhood plaid blanket. Inside were photos of her mother as a little girl, the mother she never really knew, four pairs of hand-knit socks and, in a velvet case, a silver bracelet engraved with a tiny perfect rabbit. Her grandmother died the following year.
    Sometimes on the streets of Paris, when Anna hears tourists speaking German, she can’t help but feel a soaring in her chest. Perhaps she will turn and spot her cousins Liesel and Lotte, who used to come to dinner at her grandmother’s house every Sunday. But of course, the streets are merely filled with strangers. And though her French is almost fluent, she can’t yet express herself as well as she can in English or German.
    Many things weigh on her lately. Her bad knee protests when she climbs the three flights to her room; her heels are so tight in the morning, she can do no more than tiptoe. She must start taking walks when Edith is out to tea, to keep her legs strong. She will turn fifty-eight in a month, and the last thing she wants is to feel like an old, crumbling woman, growing more