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The drugs in Marie’s system made it difficult to jump after she escaped from captivity, she tells me. She had to play dead until they’d shoveled dirt over her, wondering all the while if she’d suffocate before they were done.

It's a horrible story, one that makes clear how terrible things must have been on the inside. But she remembers the building they left from, near Sacré-Coeur, so that’s where we head the next afternoon.

I wear my best clothes, my father’s expensive watch, and tell Marie to do the same. She’s so pale and thin it’s hard to demand anything of her, but for Sarah’s sake this needs to be done, and done right.

“Dress up?” she asks, her words still slightly slurred. “Whatever for?”

“Because wealthy people breaking down a door can say they are inspecting it. The rest of us are merely intruders.”

“I don’t know what it is you’re hoping to find,” she whispers. “If Amelie is still there, she’d be damaged beyond anything you or I can imagine. And she isn’t there. No one could have survived it that long.”

“I just need to know.”

“Know what?” she asks, staring at the table. “Shall we pull the cement slab aside and look for her corpse?”

I flinch. “Marie, I need to do something. Don’t you understand that? I have to. So yes, if all that is left is to pull the slab aside and look for her, I’ll do it.”

“She’ll be wearing the necklace,” Marie rasps, and then begins to weep again.

“What are you talking about?”

“I found a necklace that belonged to Maman in the pocket of my dress. I thought it would bring me good luck. I gave it to her before I left. Maybe it wasn’t good luck at all. Maybe it was the worst luck and I handed it off to her.”

I don’t believe in luck. I don’t think the necklace changed a thing. But it takes everything in my power not to ask Marie why she couldn’t just have left it all alone. Why she couldn’t have left Sarah alone, left the one good thing in my life with me instead of ripping it away.

Marie is tense beside me as we drive toward Paris, but not as tense as me. What will I do if I find Amelie today? Who will she be after twenty years of captivity?

I suppose the truth is that I pray I do not find her today at all. Because if her bones aren’t there, it might mean that sometime between 1918 and now, she escaped.

It’s just past dusk when we arrive in the city. Marie stares out the window as we pass landmarks I wish I didn’t need to make her face. Sacré-Coeur, Parc de la Turlure. She’s too frail for this right now, mentally and physically. If anything less were at stake, I’d never put her through this.

“She kept asking me not to run ahead that day,” Marie says, still staring blankly outside. “I can’t believe it was three months ago. It seems like a handful of days. She was so tired and I—” Her voice breaks.

I hunger for more information. I want to feed on these memories of hers, poor substitute for Sarah that they are. Except every word out of her mouth makes it too easy to picture Sarah, forcing her limbs to move despite the fatigue. That edge of worry in her voice as she cautioned Marie. I’m glad my sister has returned. I don’t want to blame her for what happened, but it grows more difficult with each story she tells.

We turn left and then right. The area is run-down. Two decades after the war, and parts of Paris are only beginning to recover.

“There,” whispers Marie. I stop the car and we both stare at the crumbling building, half of it blackened by fire and caving in.

No one could be alive inside it, but I’m going in anyway, because I have to know. “You don’t have to come,” I tell Marie.

“I’m going in,” she replies. I grab the pickaxe from the trunk and walk to the door. She follows, holding the lantern I brought along, looking so sick I’m not sure how she’s staying upright.

The lock breaks easily, worn by time, and we enter. My fist is tight around the axe, ready to fight if necessary, but the building is absent of life aside from the rats scurrying underfoot. Marie’s hands shake as she points me toward the room where Amelie showed her the hole.

We both stare at the cement slab on the floor. My stomach spins. Please God, don’t let me find her there. It takes all my strength to lift the slab and the smell that rises up makes both of us retch.

As terrible as it’s been, not knowing what happened to her…knowing could prove worse. I brace myself and look beneath me.

There are bodies. So many bodies, most of their clothes decayed away and what’s left looks as if it was burned, probably by the same fire that scarred the building’s exterior. Some are skeletons, and some retain skin, though dried and blackened. I tell Marie to hold up the lantern, and I peer more closely.

It’s only a moment before a glint of metal catches my eye. I grip the side of the hole. That glint is a knife to the gut, pure terror. A piece of me wants to walk away right now, continue to hope.

I take the lantern from Marie, though, and jump in. My knees give way as I land, and I crawl until I’m beside her, ignoring the crunch of bones beneath me. I raise the lantern.

My mother’s necklace glimmers in the light, nestled against the collarbone of a girl who was almost mine.

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