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WHEN MATISSE BEGAN HIS LAST great work, The Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, he was seventy-eight years old, with a body that had been rocked many times by illness and storms of anxiety.

It all began with a design for a stained glass window shown to him by Sister Jacques-Marie. She had a dream of turning the leaking garage beside Foyer Lacordaire into a chapel for the nuns. Her drawing was crude and poorly executed. Naturally, Matisse could not resist taking over the design.

Soon he was imagining the interior of the chapel, white tile walls and marble floors that would reflect the light and colour from the windows in the same way that the surface of the sea reflected the sun. He imagined a roof of blue starbursts, an ornate black spire spiking the sky. He saw huge figures outlined in black on the white walls, a Dominican monk, a Madonna and child. The Moroccan curtains, which turned light and shadow into lace patterns, became the model for the exquisitely carved confessional doors.

It was madness to undertake such a huge project.

Almost everyone was against him. I bit my tongue and trembled for his health, even finding, briefly, an ally in Marguerite. The Mother Superior of the convent was scandalized by Matisse’s reputation and fiercely objected. Picasso was equally scandalized for entirely opposite reasons. He detested anything to do with religion. “Better to design bullfighter’s capes than vestments,” he declared.

But Patron had always wanted the chance to create some public piece of art, some monument or mural. The fact that no one had ever asked was a hurt that he carried deep inside himself. He wouldn’t let go of this chance. All resistance was swept away by his implacable will.

I was witness to his extraordinary effort.

He used gouache cutouts to design huge sheets of radiantly coloured windows. We traveled to Paris, to the best glassmakers, to find the exact shades of bottle green, cobalt blue, and lemon yellow. He called the double window behind the altar, The Tree of Life, and illustrated it with a cactus in bloom, a plant that thrives even in the most arid deserts.

The scale of the figures was so large, we were forced to leave our secluded Villa Rêve and move back to the Regina where the two floors of the studio could accommodate Matisse’s ambition. He climbed a stepladder and drew a Madonna with a nine-foot pole with a rag attached to the end that he would dip directly into black paint. In the end, he had to draw a bit of his Madonna on each ceramic tile and then fit her figure together like a jigsaw puzzle.

All the while, he fought the treachery of his body, fevers and chills, pain that bit his stomach and hands mercilessly.

In June of 1951, the chapel was finally completed. Four years of slavery to its beauty had drained Matisse of his remaining strength. He was too weak to attend the consecration ceremony.

Since Patron was unable on most days to rise from his bed, I put his bed on wheels and organized the household around him. When he put out his hand, my hand was there with a glass of water or a cup of tea before he even knew he wanted it. I brought him photographs and magazines of the latest gallery shows. I read to him, typed his letters, surrounded him with flowers. On rare days, we’d take a taxi down to the sea and he’d slumber in the back seat like a child coming home from a day at the beach.

He ended up sketching in his pajamas, quite literally sleeping with the work that had always consumed his life and had always been at the centre of our enduring love.

“What part of your head hurts?” Chloe asked, staring at the bandages that swathed Adam’s brow.

“The part above my shoulders.”

“Oh. The doctor says you were lucky. A cut on the forehead and a nasty gash in your side. Besides, you didn’t have to answer all of Julien’s questions. He was livid.”

“You call him Julien now?”

Chloe raised her chin defiantly. “That’s hardly the point. You might have been killed. You and Alain.”

“How is the old boy?”

“Cross with me for calling in Julien.”

“It was a bit disloyal of you.”

Chloe threw him a bitter look. “Not you, too. You might be a touch grateful that the gendarmes saved your life. Alain’s unbelievable. He says his friends could have handled Kirov by themselves, but the flics mucked everything up. Did you know I thought he was having a heart attack on the stairs?”

Adam nodded. “He takes nitroglycerin for his angina.”

“So why didn’t either of you tell me?”

“It must have slipped our minds,” Adam lied. “Where is he? I thought he’d have driven you to the hospital.”

“He told me he was going to the police station. A date with Julien.”

“Would you please stop calling him Julien?”

“Alain’s with the Commissaire. They’re tying up loose ends with the local gendarmes. He said to tell you he’d be along later to take us back to the villa. The doctor’s releasing you, on the condition that you’ll promise to rest.”

“What loose ends?”

“Ashkar’s gone. With Kirov dead, there’s no way to make a case against him. I’m sorry, Adam. I know you wanted to be sure about what happened to Jamie.”

Adam closed his eyes, turned his face away. Chloe noticed the bruised hollows beneath his eyes, the tightness in his jaw. She knew he was in more pain than he was admitting. She wanted to touch him, but suddenly felt shy.

“I’ve done my best for Jamie,” he said. “Proof or not, I believe Kirov, or one of Kirov’s men, killed him. And I’ve found out who Matteo was, though not why Jamie thought he was important.”

Chloe snapped to attention, hungry for information.

“I went to Place St-François, remember?” Adam continued. “I talked to an old man there, a fisherman at one of the stalls. He didn’t know Matteo, but he told me there was a terrible massacre in the Place during the war. The Nazis executed seven men, hung them from the balconies. So I went to the war memorial on the hill beside the port. There’s a list there: Martyrs of the Resistance. One of the names is Matteo Laurion.”

Chloe shuddered. She could never think of the cruelty of those times without feeling a sense of vertigo, of teetering on the edge of an abyss. She never forgot that Sylvie had blundered into the path of that savagery, yet had still managed to find love and escape with her husband. Had she known the unlucky Matteo?

Adam’s voice dragged her back to the present. “The tragedy is that the war was almost over. It happened in the summer of 1944.”

“At least Sylvie wouldn’t have witnessed the killings then. She and André were married in January, just before fleeing the country.”

“Your grandmother was married here, in Nice?”

Chloe stared at him, surprised by the urgency in his voice. Slowly, she nodded her head.

Adam tried to sit up, winced, and sagged back onto his pillows.

“What? What did I say?” Chloe demanded. She stood up and leaned over him.

“French bureaucracy, Chloe. All French marriages have to be registered with the civil authorities. The records are kept in the local mairies, town halls. You could look up Sylvie’s marriage.”

“But what would that tell me that I don’t already know?”

“Witnesses. The couple would need witnesses. French records are very thorough. The full names of the witnesses will be listed together with their occupation and place of birth. You might find the link to Saint-Jeannet.”

All the exhaustion and fear of the previous evening that had frayed Chloe’s nerves seemed to vanish at once. She felt energized again. She felt optimistic. Kirov and Ashkar were no longer lurking in the shadows behind her, following and watching and threatening. She was free to hunt for Sylvie’s painting in earnest.

She reached for her purse and whirled toward the door, calling back over her shoulder. “Tell Alain I took the Peugeot.”

“Hey, wait! That’s all the thanks I get?” Adam complained.

Chloe stopped in the doorway, turned around, crossed the room in a flash, and kissed him. Softly, on the lips, her hair brushing his cheek as she leaned over him.

When he opened his eyes, she was gone.

There was a map of Nice in the glove compartment of the Peugeot, standard tourist issue in all rental cars. The mairie was not difficult to find, located at five rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, l’hotel de ville being a French synonym for the town hall. It was only a few blocks from the western end of the Cours Saleya.

As usual, there was no place to park on the Promenade des Anglais. Chloe crossed her fingers and maneuvered the car down the steep ramp of a cavernous, subterranean parking lot beneath the market square. It was like entering Dante’s inferno, each labyrinthine turn leading to a lower level of darkness and dank, exhaust-heavy air. She managed to park without scraping the paint off the passenger door and struggled up several flights of concrete stairs.

Stepping into the open air was like stepping into another world, the damp grey stench of the garage instantly dispelled by bursts of colour, wafts of perfume. She was standing in the middle of Nice’s flower market, knee-deep in bouquets of daylilies, pansies, azaleas, and anemones. Roses climbed up trellises in curving lines of red, peach, pink, and yellow. She took in a deep lungful of the deliciously scented air, knowing that Sylvie must also have stood here, maybe on this very spot.

She reached the mairie at ten, giving thanks that it had Saturday hours. Like most government buildings she had ever been in, it was characterized by an air of icy formality, hushed but for the hum of air conditioners and ringing phones. She located the right sign, registres d’etat-civil, took her place at the end of the queue and waited.

At eleven o’clock, Chloe finally found herself looking into the face of a man with dark, silver-streaked hair, a silver moustache, and eyes like black olives. She gave him her best smile and made her request in her most grammatically correct French.

The man immediately switched to English. “Date of the marriage?” he asked.

“January second, 1944.”

He raised both hands to shoulder level, palms up, fingers spread. “Only records over a hundred years old can be viewed by the public. Desolé. Next.”

“No, wait! I’m the granddaughter of Sylvie Brionne and André Denoyer. They were married here in Nice, then moved to Canada.”

The olive eyes swept over her, softened a little. “Can you prove direct descent?” the man asked.

“I have my passport, but my surname isn’t the same. They were my maternal grandparents.”

“I’m afraid I need to see a birth certificate. The rules, you understand?” He watched the light go out in Chloe’s eyes and hesitated before moving on to the next person in line. “Mademoiselle,” he relented, “since you have come all the way from Canada, I would accept a facsimile. Perhaps you have someone at home who could fax a copy of your birth certificate here?”

The sparkle came back, as if he had lit a fuse inside her.

Chloe rummaged in her bag for her cell phone and prayed that it might be raining in Toronto so that Sammy would not be playing golf.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, Chloe held in her hands a copy of the record of the marriage of her grandparents in the Chapelle de la Miséricorde, just off the Cours Saleya.

Her fingers traced the loops of the signatures as if she could glean secrets from them. There was Sylvie’s name, small and slanting to the right. Bride. Born in Montreal, Canada. Occupation, cook and part-time caregiver. There was Lydia’s signature as witness, bold and slanting to the left. Friend of the bride. Born in Tomsk, Russia. Occupation, artist’s assistant and secretary.

Both women seemed to Chloe so modest, so humble, neither mentioning their attachment to Matisse, nor his to them.

Besides André’s name and information, there were two other signatures. Matteo Laurion, fisherman, and Lucie Laurion, nurse in training. Both were born in Nice. Man and wife, maybe, or brother and sister?

Why was Matteo so important to Jamie? Chloe held the proof in her hands that Matteo must have been close to both Sylvie and Lydia.

But no matter how often she ran her hands over the signatures, her imagination galloping, she could find no link to Saint-Jeannet. Except for the red arrow on Jamie’s map and her intuition that told her she must go there.

Chloe followed the route she’d travelled earlier in the week with Adam, this time passing through Vence high above the coastline. Just beyond Vence, the pine forest disappeared and the massive rock face of the Baou de Saint-Jeannet dominated the skyline. The view from the rocky mountain, across undulating valleys to the distant sea was breathtaking, but Chloe kept her eyes trained on the twisting, narrow road, trying to convince herself that she was not afraid of heights even as the Peugeot laboured up a seemingly vertical grade.

The hamlet of Saint-Jeannet sat on a ledge beneath the towering Baou, a haven for climbers and hikers. Chloe gratefully parked the car and walked into the village, its streets winding back among ancient stone houses and artisan’s shops. The afternoon was sleepy, still but for a chorus of cicadas. She wandered by an ancient church, read the names of the dead carved onto the war memorial. There was no one named Laurion.

She passed through a beautiful low-arched passageway and found herself on a terrace with a panoramic view sweeping across fields and farms, orchards and vines, villas and perched villages, all the way down to Nice. Beyond Nice, the sea travelled on forever. She found a bench, grateful for a breeze under the hot, white sky.

She didn’t know what she’d expected by coming here, but she felt happy being on her own, taking the time to drink in the peacefulness of Saint-Jeannet. Maybe Alain was right, maybe Portrait of a Bride had been destroyed or stolen years ago. She realized it was enough for her that it had existed, more than enough that she had followed the memories of her grandmother across time to the places she’d once loved. Despite its dangers and frustrations, the trip had been good for her, as if somehow it had been meant to happen. Maybe, she thought, it wasn’t the painting she was intended to find, but her own self.

Chloe sat on the bench for a long time, until the village around her began to wake up from its afternoon siesta. She heard voices raised in greeting, dogs barking, chairs scraping across a terrace. She followed the sounds to a little outdoor café just around the corner from the panoramic view. The menu, scrawled in chalk on a blackboard, was promising enough to tempt her to take a table. She knew it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, but at the very least she could order something to drink, maybe some bread and cheese.

A bored-looking young waitress in a white sun dress sauntered across the terrace, hips swaying. She had fine brown hair escaping from a braid that hung down her back. As she neared Chloe, a group of male hikers who’d gathered to drink and jostle with each other began whistling and hooting. Casually, the young woman flicked them her middle finger, then turned and grinned at Chloe. “The village idiots,” she shrugged, nodding her head in the direction of the teenaged boys.

The smile transformed her. It was a sunny grin, all the more charming for its suddenness. Her teeth were very white against her honey-tanned skin. Her eyelashes were impossibly long. “Don’t worry,” she added. “They’re harmless.”

Chloe smiled back at her. “I think I’ll have a citron pressé and whatever scraps of bread and cheese you can find in the kitchen. Join me, if you’re not too busy. I’ll buy you a drink.”

The grin flashed again.

The girl returned five minutes later with a laden tray. She placed a generous basket of baguette slices, a bowl of black and green olives, a circle of goat cheese and a thick slice of country pâté on the table. She handed Chloe her lemon drink, then settled down across from her with a glass of pastis.

“My name’s Rosa,” she said. “Rosa Clairmont. Thanks for the drink.”

Chloe introduced herself, asked a few polite questions about Saint-Jeannet, and settled into her late lunch and an amusing account of Rosa’s much more sophisticated life as a student in Aix-en-Provence.

“I work in the café to earn money for school,” she concluded, “and to visit my grandmother. She still lives on her own, but a nurse comes in mornings and evenings. Are you American?”

Chloe shook her head. “Canadian,” she said emphatically.

“Really? My grandfather always used to say a Canadian saved his life during the war.”

“I didn’t know Canadian soldiers fought this far south in France.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a soldier,” Rosa grinned. “It was a woman. Sylvie something.”

“Sylvie Brionne?” Chloe whispered, taut with excitement.

She felt as if lightning had struck their table, as if she were lit up, sending off electric sparks.

Rosa felt it too. “I can’t believe it. You know this Sylvie?”

“She’s my grandmother,” Chloe fumbled in her bag, handed Rosa the copy of the marriage register.

“But this is my grandmother!” Rosa exclaimed. “Lucie Laurion.”

“Would it be possible, Rosa, for me to meet your grandmother?”

Chloe tried for a moment to identify the sensation she felt—this breathless, unreal feeling inside—and eventually decided that all the words she knew were too cold and too pale.

Lucie Laurion Clairmont was a quiet, calm woman, eighty-five years old, with the kind of dark beauty that age could soften but never destroy. Her kitchen was bright and tidy, with a shelf of stone jugs above the sink and a long wooden table running down the centre of the room, like the one that Chloe had shared with Adam and Alain in the farmhouse near Aix. A giant black stove stood in one corner, and bunches of herbs hung from low beams above the chimney: rosemary, lavender, pennyroyal.

Rosa went to the pantry and fetched a bottle of fruit wine, pouring out glasses and watching Chloe and her grandmother with curious eyes.

Chloe took the glass that was handed to her. The pale yellow liquid had a pungent aroma of freshly cut grass and apples. She took a sip, happy to let it loosen her tongue. “Sylvie died when I was two, but she had a happy life with André. Their daughter, Louise, is my mother. I know they met here, in France, and that they both worked at one time with the painter, Matisse. I’d be grateful for anything you could tell me about them.”

They spoke in French, but whenever Chloe found herself at a loss for vocabulary, Rosa jumped in.

Lucie looked at her closely for a few minutes, wrapped herself in a shawl despite the warmth of the day, and smiled. Her voice, when she finally spoke, carried the Provencal accent. “You look a little like Sylvie, her dark eyes. But not her hair.”

“No,” Chloe laughed, twisting the dark red strands. “This comes from my father.”

“I knew Sylvie a little, but we knew André better. He and my brother grew up in the port. Little boat rats, we called them. But André loved cars, learned all about them. Matteo said he could take one apart and put it all back together again. We teased him mercilessly when he became a chauffeur, but André didn’t care. He liked the old man Matisse. Sylvie, he liked even better.”

“Tell Chloe about grand-père,” Rosa urged.

“Michel Clairmont, my husband, was a doctor,” Lucie stated proudly. “During the war, terrible things happened. So terrible Rosa should not hear of them.”

“Grand-maman, don’t be silly. I’m nineteen,” Rosa protested. “I know all about the war.”

“I hope not, ma petite.” Lucie’s face changed in an instant, suddenly looking old and ruined and forbidding.

But she rallied. She leaned towards Rosa, put her hands on either side of her face. “As old as nineteen?” She laughed silently. Then she folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes drifted to a space just above Chloe’s head, as if she were looking into a mirror, or some gateway into the past.

“Michel Clairmont helped people in trouble all his life. The war was no exception. He couldn’t turn his back just because the Milice or the Italians or Germans said so. He had a room in a building off Place Masséna where people who needed medical treatment could go, people who couldn’t go to hospitals or risk being reported to the authorities. One day, Sylvie was keeping watch for him in the square and she saw Milice approaching. She ran up the stairs to warn Clairmont. The girl he was helping slipped away with her friends, but there was no hope for Michel.”

Lucie’s voice had dropped almost to a whisper. She paused in her story, took a sip of her wine, and squeezed Rosa’s hand.

“Sylvie figured out a way to trick the Milice,” she revealed, her voice stronger now. “She and Clairmont dropped their clothes where they stood and jumped into bed.”

Like an experienced raconteur, Lucie waited for Chloe’s startled reaction before continuing. “It’s a good story, non? Michel loved it. He said the Milice looked like buffoons, bursting through the door, bumping into one another, not knowing where to look, but taking a good peek at Sylvie nonetheless. A funny story, but not so funny at the time. The Milice would’ve arrested them both, maybe shot them.”

“You see?” Rosa beamed. “Your grandmother was very brave.”

Chloe nodded and took another sip of the fruit wine. It tasted syrupy and tannic at the same time, smoothing away all her tensions. She felt she could stay here and listen to stories of Sylvie for the rest of the afternoon and long into the evening. “Your husband worked in the Resistance?”

“Yes and no. At first he only helped people who were hurt or injured. He didn’t report everything he should to the authorities. But then, after the raid on the port, he became more active. He took me away from Nice to hide. Saint-Jeannet was perfect. Among the country folk, the village has a reputation for witchcraft.” Lucie pointed to the bunches of herbs drying near the chimney.

“Turns out the witches just make fruit wine like the one you’re drinking, and potions to keep out germs. But the villagers made up some stories to scare the Germans—a potion to turn a man impotent, another to make him blind. The villagers were able to keep their stores of wine because the Germans were too spooked to steal from them. Of course the true motive behind the witch tales was to distract the soldiers from the real reason the Resistance came here—caves hidden in the rock face.”

“I’m sorry to ask,” Chloe began, “but did you leave Nice because of what happened to Matteo?”

The question hung in the air between them like smoke. Rosa’s eyes were like saucers moving silently from Chloe’s face to Lucie’s and back again.

“Yes.” Lucie’s voice cracked on the single word, whether with rage or grief, Chloe could not tell.

Rosa stood up, slid her arms around her grandmother protectively. “She doesn’t like to talk about Matteo. It upsets her.”

“Of course. Madame Clairmont, do you recognize this?” Chloe took the amethyst ring off her finger and dropped it into the old woman’s extended palm.

“Oh, yes,” she crooned, holding it up to the light. “Lydia’s wedding present to Sylvie. I never thought I’d see this again.”

“You knew Lydia?”

Lucie kept her head down, eyes fastened on the ring. “She was very kind, very strong. My brother loved her. But she was devoted to Matisse.” She handed back the ring, eyes still downcast.

“Yes,” Chloe replied softly, “I know.”

“Matisse couldn’t come to Sylvie’s wedding, but he painted a picture of her.”

Chloe kept very still. She felt she was in a dream, the kind of dream in which everything was on the brink of being explained, but could just as easily fall away into fragments.

“I saw it once, so beautiful. Matteo showed it to me.”

“Matteo had the painting?” Chloe whispered.

Lucie nodded. “Lydia asked him to hide it. He covered it up with a different picture. Matteo was very clever. He just covered up the Matisse and hung it right there on the wall in his bedroom right under the Germans’ noses.”

Chloe gathered up all her courage, breathed deeply, closed her eyes. “Was the painting destroyed in the raid on the Nice port?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Oh, no.”

Chloe’s eyes flew open. She stared at Lucie, afraid to believe what she’d just heard.

Lucie shook her head vigorously. “It’s true. My aunt saved it. She didn’t know what was hidden there, but she knew that Matteo was keeping it for Lydia. We owed Lydia, my aunt and me. She’d helped us once when no one else could…”

Lucie’s voice faltered. Chloe looked up at Rosa, who was still standing behind her grandmother. She shook her head, a warning not to press the old woman any further.

“That’s wonderful news. Thank you Madame Clairmont. I’m so glad my grandmother knew you.”

Chloe pressed her hands briefly over Lucie’s and stood up to leave.

“Auntie gave it to the nun.”

“What?” Chloe strained to hear the faint words.

“When the war was over, Auntie tried to find Lydia but she and Matisse had gone to Paris. So my aunt gave the painting to the little nun across the road from the villa. I explained all this to the young man.”

“What young man?” Rosa demanded, more surprised than Chloe.

“That lovely man, Jamie, with the big smile.”

Rosa shrugged her shoulders and walked Chloe to the doorway. When Chloe looked back to wave goodbye, Lucie Clairmont looked far away, wrapped up in memories.

Chloe knew who the little nun was. Sister Jacques-Marie was one of Matisse’s favourites towards the end of his life. Their friendship had been the impetus for the Matisse chapel in Vence, built for the sisters of a Dominican convent located almost across the road from Le Rêve. Chloe also remembered reading somewhere that Sister Jacques-Marie had died in a convent in a village on the Basque coast of France in 2005.

As the Peugeot twisted back down the narrow road to Vence, Chloe was tormented by questions. Why hadn’t the nun given the painting to Lydia? For surely, if Lydia had had it, she would have sent it on to Sylvie. At the very least, it would never have been hidden from the world. If Lydia had known that the painting came from Matteo’s aunt, she would not have been fooled by a different picture. She would easily have guessed that the Matisse lay hidden beneath.

Had the nun decided to keep the picture, thinking it was just some amateur drawing? Worse, had she decided to keep it, knowing it was a Matisse? Her head buzzed, but in the end, she thought a crooked nun, especially a famous crooked nun, was as unlikely as a Russian butler.

The search had come to another dead end, and Chloe’s disappointment flattened her. She’d conjured up so many possible paintings of Sylvie in her imagination—different colours, different poses, different perspectives. All of them seemed so fragile, so doomed. How likely was it that one small painting had survived in the midst of the savagery that had swallowed up Matteo and millions of others?

The road from Saint-Jeannet to Vence passed directly in front of the Matisse chapel and the old convent, now called Maison Lacordaire. Chloe slammed on her brakes and parked the car. She had one half-hour before the Rosary Chapel closed.

Here, at least, was a part of the past, still living, still vibrant. The building was small, two long sides, and a tall stained glass window at one end. At the opposite end, the fourteen Stations of the Cross were drawn in black paint, stark against white ceramic tile. Yet despite its dimensions, the space seemed to soar. Light spilled through the windows on the left side, softening the large, powerful drawings of Saint Dominic and the Virgin on the right side. Chloe walked through pools of colour—bottle-green, mauvy-blue, lemony-yellow. Matisse had designed everything—the crucifix, the altar cloth, the candlesticks, even the confessional door, eight panels of exquisitely carved wood that looked like eight panels of white lace.

She couldn’t begin to imagine the effort the Chapel must have demanded of Matisse. Four years of painstaking work, a thousand details to consider, when all the while his body must have been aching, crying out for rest. She took one long, last look at the serene, even joyful space, a triumphant negation of old age and pain, and turned to leave.

None of it would have been possible without Lydia. In place of the miracle of the Chapel, there would likely have been a leaky garage falling to ruin.

Chloe had been the last visitor of the day. A nun followed her up the steps to street level, locking the gate behind her.

“Excuse me,” Chloe said. “Can you point me in the direction of Le Rêve?”

The nun sighed, “It’s just a house you know. It’s not open to visitors. People rent it for weddings and conventions. Sometimes there are painting classes.”

“Please,” Chloe persisted.

The nun read Chloe’s pleading expression and smiled. “Most people think the house is east of the Chapel and walk halfway to Saint-Jeannet trying to find it,” she laughed. “It’s actually just to the west. There’s a tiny road, just behind the main one. It slants up sharply, dwindles into a country lane. You’ll find the house there.”

Chloe set off immediately on foot. The road could only be seen from one direction, and even walking she almost missed it. It took her uphill. She turned again onto a dirt road, and suddenly there was Le Rêve, screened by yuccas and cypresses, olive trees and overgrown pines, palm trees and pink laurels. Its huge front garden was enclosed by a wrought iron fence.

The villa looked a bit like an aging movie star, repainted and remodeled over the years. Even now the paint was peeling on the pale green shutters, the pink stucco looked patchy. Though the garden was groomed, the countryside around it was wild.

Chloe put her hand on the gate, but as the nun had warned her, it was firmly locked. She remembered seeing a photograph of Matisse walking through this very gate. He was wearing a fedora, a cape around his shoulders. He was leaning on a cane. His beard shone white in the sun.

She walked around the perimeter a bit, found a place to sit on the ground in the long, uncut grass. How many times had Lydia and Sylvie crossed that garden, opened that gate, perhaps sat dreaming where she sat now? Time may have weathered the villa, but the olive trees were still rooted there, the palm fronds still pressed against the windows. She felt close to Lydia and Sylvie, as if she were glimpsing moments of their lives, like scenes in a darkly-lit play.

By the time Chloe roused herself and wandered back to the car, it was almost dark. The sky was that luminous shade of deep blue that precedes full night, the horizon striated with a deep orange. She leaned against the tall iron fence that surrounded the connecting garden between the Chapel and Maison Lacordaire. It was a formal garden, with a beautiful view across the valley of the walls surrounding the old village of Vence. She looked up at the ornate, black spire of the Chapel, towering over the blue and white tiled roof. The blue tiles traced a zigzag pattern like the edges of stars. She heard the lilting sound of soft laughter coming from the open windows of the Maison, the nuns perhaps sharing an evening meal.

A jolt of recognition, a leap of intuition, galvanized Chloe.

Almost afraid to believe what she was seeing, she counted off the signs on her fingertips: the walls of Vence in the distance, the blue stars of the Chapel roof, the nuns inside, the brides of Christ, virgin brides.

Beyond the walls, beneath blue stars,

A tree blossoms and roses veil a virgin bride.

There was a pruned tree in the garden, a trellis of roses climbing up the white walls of the Maison.

Her hands gripped the black iron rails. She slowed her breathing, tried to settle down enough to think clearly. What would Alain and Adam do? What would be the next logical step? Drive calmly back to Cap Ferrat and form a reasonable plan?

None of that appealed to Chloe. She walked determinedly to the front gate of Maison Lacordaire and rang the old fashioned bell.

Nothing happened.

She rang again and again.

Finally, a round-faced woman, dressed in a dark blue habit and head scarf, peered through the double glass doors of the Maison. She pointed to her watch and made a shooing motion at Chloe.

Chloe shook her head and rang again.

Finally, the nun relented. She opened the doors and descended the short set of stairs that led to the gate. In the fading light, Chloe could see her skin was the colour of pale coffee, and her expression was stern.

Before the nun could speak, Chloe launched into an invented crisis involving a broken-down car, and a cell-phone without reception. “I’m all alone and saw your lights. I know it’s terribly rude, but I was schooled by nuns. I was sure you’d help me, perhaps guide me in the direction of a hotel?”

Chloe finished her explanation, trying to look worried and needy, but not so desperate as to seem frightening. The last thing she wanted was a hotel. The Maison Lacordaire rented out rooms.

The nun smiled, dimples that transformed her grave manner, and opened the gate, gesturing to Chloe to follow her. Beyond the tall glass doors, ornately decorated with swirls of the same wrought iron that fashioned the gate and the garden fence, the Maison was plain, even a bit shabby, but very clean.

The worn wood floor of a narrow hallway was highly polished, smelling faintly of lavender. Chloe passed a small table draped with a crocheted cotton tablecloth, on top of which were deposited slowly yellowing religious pamphlets. She saw a small sitting room to her right with comfortable-looking chairs and an old television set. The hallway ended at a makeshift office with a counter and a glass window that slid open.

The nun rattled a set of keys, lifted up a jointed part of the counter, and stepped into the cubbyhole office. She handed Chloe a reservation book of the sort she had only ever seen in 1940s movies.

“You’re welcome to stay here for the night, if you don’t mind leaving very early in the morning. The room is reserved for guests for tomorrow, you see, and we’ll need to change the linens. Normally, there’d be no rush, but Sunday is a busy day for us.”

“Of course,” Chloe answered. “I’m very grateful.”

“That’s all right. Just sign here.”

Chloe paid in cash and signed the register Sylvie Brionne. It was the first name that popped into her head. She felt her cheeks flush. It was different, somehow, lying to a nun.

The nun, however, seemed not to notice. She nodded and opened a door leading to a passageway and a staircase. She led Chloe up the stairs, down another hallway, past a faded watercolour of an orchard in springtime—a tree blossoms—and finally opened the door to a neat, cheerful bedroom.

“I hope you rest well,” the nun said.

Chloe, wide-eyed, her forehead damp, nodded and said nothing.

She lay on the bed in her black jeans and white T-shirt for a long time, then stood up. First, she listened at the door of her room. Very gently she turned the doorknob. Silence. The old house seemed to exhale, settling into the profound quiet of night.

She tipped her head forward, looked up and down the hallway. One shutter had been left slightly open. The moonlight shining through the window made everything look milky, her skin paler.

She pushed the door. A board beneath her bare foot cracked. She stopped mid-gesture, listened, heard only her own erratic breathing.

Slowly she eased down the hall, hugging the wall. She stopped at the painting and worked her fingers behind it, groping for the picture hook. She coaxed the painting away from the wall, taking the weight of the heavy frame into her arms.

She retraced her steps, locked her bedroom door, laid the painting on the bed, and studied it carefully.

Matteo’s hiding place was really very clever. Chloe knew that when an oil canvas is framed, there is usually a tiny gap between the edge of the frame and the surface of paint. A watercolour, on paper cut to the exact measurements, could slide into that gap quite snugly. Over time, a wood frame and an oil canvas would dry out and shrink a bit, widening the gap slightly.

She placed a thumb over the bottom left corner of the watercolour and pressed down, pushing up at the same time. The heavy paper moved. High quality Watercolour Block, cold-pressed, one hundred percent cotton. She’d used it herself dozens of times.

Inch by inch, her fingers worked around the edges until the watercolour was fully free of the frame. Then, hands trembling, she lifted up the watercolour and laid it on the floor.

Scarcely breathing, Chloe raised her eyes to the Matisse.

It was glorious, more than she’d hoped for, better than she’d dreamed. It was exactly as Alain had described it, and nothing like it at the same time. The spirit of her grandmother shone out at her through a delicate balance of line and luminous colour—iridescent oranges, a dozen shades of red and pink blended into a spray of rosebuds, the blush of a cheek, the curve of a chin, an ebony spiral of hair.

Chloe thought of her own copy—the demure bride with her doll-face, wearing the kind of meringue wedding dress that is carefully boxed and stored in an attic, clutching a stiff bouquet. She laughed out loud. Matisse had taken risks that were far beyond her. This was a portrait of a vibrant woman who would kick off her shoes and hoist the skirt of her frothy dress and dance across wet green grass at her wedding, her black hair tangled down her back. She was wild and sensual, a hundred inflections of light and shadow.

Chloe felt suspended in time, looking into the face of the long-ago girl who’d become her grandmother. The painting seemed to breathe, to pulse with yellow heat and drenching blues, capturing a moment in time like a bright scene glimpsed through a window at dusk. If she’d had one hundred years to look at it, she thought, that still wouldn’t have been enough.

Reluctantly, she turned the Matisse face-down on the bed, and studied the backing. First, she would have to trim away a covering of stiff paper to expose the frame. She scrambled in her purse for a nail file and unscrewed the hooks that held the thick, twisted picture wire. A razor would cut the paper cleanly, but she didn’t have one. She used the nail file again, painstakingly puncturing the paper where it met the edge of the wood frame. It was a maddeningly slow process. Her hands itched to rip the paper away, but she forced herself to be patient.

Finally, she lifted the backing away from the frame. There were smudges of paint on the back of the canvas, something that looked like a fingerprint. She smiled to herself. How many people in the world had touched this canvas? Matisse and Lydia certainly, maybe Sylvie, maybe some anonymous framer, and Matteo. And now her.

As she had hoped, the joints where the horizontal top of the frame met its two vertical sides were visible. She tapped and wiggled until the wood top came away in her hands.

The Matisse was released from its frame easily, miraculously, like a passionate letter sliding from a perfumed envelope.

Chloe set about reassembling the framed watercolour as best she could. The wood would need to be glued to hold properly. In the meantime, she used clear nail polish and band-aids and prayed that they might hold for a few days. She replaced the hooks and the picture wire. Without its sturdy backing of canvas, the image of the spring orchard wobbled a little, but it was the best she could do. She hoped it was true that a painting that had hung in the same place for a very long time became invisible to its owners.

She crept into the hallway and re-hung the watercolour, her hands slippery with sweat.

Back in her room, she rumpled the bed sheets, dumped all her makeshift tools and her sandals into her purse, and picked up the Matisse. It was slightly larger than her copy, but should fit easily into the Peugeot.

Her heart began to pound wildly.

Her footsteps on the stairs sounded unnaturally loud.

Finally she was standing in the entry hall of Maison Lacordaire.

She slid back the bolts and pushed through the heavy front doors, padded down the stairs to the front gate as softly as a cat.

Outside, the world seemed still and empty, save for the breeze whispering through pines and palm trees. Chloe glanced in the direction of Le Rêve. It was so close, Lydia. All that time, Sylvie’s painting was so close.

She stowed the painting in the back seat and started the car.

The stars edged the tops of trees with a thin, silver light, but the road ahead seemed a tunnel through darkness. As she began her twisting descent through the hills towards Nice, she remembered that Jamie had died on this very road. He’d been murdered. She could smell the danger.

Almost unconsciously, her foot pressed more heavily on the gas pedal and the little Peugeot picked up speed.