Read Until I Die for Free Online

in the Mouzaia neighborhood of Belleville.
As we climbed out of the car, I looked around in amazement. Although we were still within the Paris city limits, the streets were lined with little two-story brick houses complete with tiny front yards—instead of the typical multi-floor Paris apartment blocks. We walked through a white picket fence and across a tree-shaded yard to the front porch, where Geneviève waited, leaning on the door frame as if she couldn’t stand without its support.
As Jules and Vincent approached, she fell into their arms. “He died in his sleep. I was reading when he went, and didn’t even notice,” she confessed in a dazed voice. Her pale blue eyes were shiny with tears and fatigue.
“It’s going to be okay,” Vincent soothed, handing Geneviève over to Jules. We followed them down the hall and into a bright, spacious living room. Jules seated her on a white couch as carefully as if she were made of spun glass and then settled in next to her. She cuddled up to him and dabbed at her swollen eyes with a tissue as Vincent and I sat on the floor at their feet.
“What needs doing?” Vincent asked softly.
“Legally? Nothing. Philippe and I have been preparing for this for a while. The house and money is mine—you took care of that paperwork for me a while ago,” she said, nodding tearfully to Vincent.
“A law degree does come in handy when you have to register property and a bank account in a dead woman’s name.” He smiled grimly.
“Philippe had already decided on his own funeral arrangements. No church service, no announcement, just a small ceremony among our own at Père Lachaise.”
Only the most famous cemetery in Paris , I thought with awe, remembering a tour my mother and I had gone on that included the graves of Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Jim Morrison, among others. Philippe—or more likely Geneviève—must have some powerful contacts to have secured a gravesite for him there.
“I would love a cup of tea,” Geneviève said to no one in particular.
“I’ll get it!” I popped to my feet, grateful to be given a task. “Just point me to the kitchen.”
Once there, I lit the gas burner under a kettle and rummaged through the cupboards until I found a teapot, some cups, and a box of tea bags. Framed photos hung on the kitchen wall, and I wandered from one to the next as I waited for the water to boil.
The first was an old black-and-white photo of Geneviève in a wedding dress, being carried in the arms of a tuxedoed man through the front gate of this house. Geneviève’s dress and crimped hairstyle dated the picture from around World War II. They were both laughing in the photo, and looked like any other blissful couple on their wedding day.
The next picture showed the same man outside a garage, wearing a light-colored jumpsuit with grease stains on it. He leaned over a car and gave a thumbs-up, holding a wrench in one hand. His face didn’t look any different than in the wedding photo—still 1940s or ’50s, I was guessing.
I moved to the next photo, which must have been taken in the 1960s—I could tell from Geneviève’s Jackie O hairdo. She looked exactly the same, but her husband was graying and his face was that of a man in his forties. Still … they could pass for a middle-aged man and his much younger wife.
But not in the following images. The color photographs made their difference in age increasingly obvious. I leaned in to see an inscription written across the bottom of the most recent portrait: “60 years on the millennium. My love for you will last forever. Philippe.” In the photo the man was sitting in a club chair with one of those metal walkers standing beside it. Geneviève was perched on the arm, leaning over and kissing his cheek as he grinned directly into the camera lens. He looked ancient. She looked twenty. And they looked as in love as they had on their wedding day.
I jumped as the kettle began whistling on the stove behind me. I