Chapter 59

A20 MOTORWAY, FRANCE

In law school they teach you that there are several definitions of legal insanity or “non compos mentis,” the Latin phrase Ryan’s criminal law professor favored. There’s the M’Naghten rule, the Irresistible Impulse test, the Durham rule, and the Model Penal Code test. But the true definition of insanity is driving more than twelve hours from London to the south of France when you’re six-four in a Mini Cooper. Ryan looks out at the dark road ahead. He’s through the most brutal part of the drive, the traffic and check-in at the Eurotunnel terminal—driving under the English Channel—and past the stop-and-go traffic near Paris. His phone tells him he’ll arrive at his destination in six more hours.

Ryan understood the moment he decoded the note: Find me in the clouds. Ali’s family descends from a small town in the south of France that, when she was little, she called the Place in the Clouds. Its real name is Cordes-sur-Ciel—which means “Cordes in the sky”—named because on a misty day the hilltop town looks like it’s floating under a pillow of clouds. Ali spent spring breaks there when she was a girl. She told Ryan about those magical trips and how her family owned an apartment in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. Her grandfather would take her to the city for the weekend. She loved France and everything French because of it. She would describe with vivid detail the smell of sugar and flour on Pastry Street. Sitting in wicker chairs at cafés, people-watching. Eating baguettes, cheese, and grapes, picnicking on the grass at the Champ de Mars in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Browsing her favorite bookstore on the Left Bank.

The sketch Ryan keeps in his wallet is of her grandparents’ home in Cordes-sur-Ciel. She planned to be married in their garden someday.

The note instructed him to find her in the clouds. Maybe, just maybe, that means she’s alive. That she was taken but somehow escaped. That she knew someone might come for her. There would be no other reason to write that note.

Was her father, the mysterious man who scared the crap out of Ryan back then, involved in something that made them targets? They were affluent, Ryan knew. Ali didn’t act like she was from money and downplayed it. But it was clear from their home, their cars, everything, that they were wealthy. He’d once asked her what her father did for a living and she said he was retired after spending time in the military, then as an accountant. He seemed young for retirement, so Ryan always assumed that maybe there had been life insurance or an inheritance after Ali’s mother’s death. He occasionally fished for clues, but she always shut it down. And honestly, it never mattered. He loved her. Even if there were things she didn’t want to share with him.

Is he crazy? Thinking she’s alive? He’s had little sleep and it seems semi-insane. But he’ll never forget the look on Peter Jones’s face when Ryan asked if Ali was alive. Jones didn’t need to answer the question. Ryan has considered calling his parents again, maybe his lawyer, talking it through. But each time he imagines the call, how he’ll sound, and he decides against it.

He pulls into a petrol station off the A20. There’s nothing more mysterious than how to pump gas in a foreign country. Just when he figured out Italy and its weird diesel pumps, France poses another enigma. After he muddles through and fills the tank, he stretches his back before climbing into the torture device called a Mini Cooper. He checks his phone’s battery. He’s about 50 percent.

It’s after midnight. Nora and the gang will probably still be out and about in Rome. If she didn’t think he’d lost his mind before… He opens FaceTime on his phone, calls.

Nora’s face appears on the screen. “For fuck’s sake, where are you? Are you okay?” There’s flashing lights and pulsing music in the background. They’re probably at a club—the 3Ds love clubbing. Ryan needs to stop thinking of Dena, Diana, and Divya as if they’re a unit. They’re not.

“I’m fine. I’m in France.”

“You’re in where?” she says. “Hold on. Do not hang up.”

The screen goes dark, but he hears the sound of Nora pushing through the club, stopping, saying something to someone. Then the music fades and there’s the sound of street noise.

Nora’s face appears on the screen. Behind her are Dena, Divya, and Diana, whose faces loom in and out of the frame.

“Where are you exactly?” Nora says.

“We’re coming,” one of them says. Aiden and Jake now appear partially on the screen and it’s apparent what’s happened: Nora’s told them who he really is.

“You told them,” he says to Nora. It comes out more tired than angry.

“You weren’t answering your texts. I was worried.”

This time Eddie appears in the frame. “I’ve known since first semester… about you, about Alison.”

This surprises Ryan. Eddie’s never let on.

“I saw a package from your mom. Your parents have a different last name, you’re so guarded. It only took me a half hour on Google.”

Ryan feels something rush through him like a chemical. Relief.

Before he gets one word out, Jake says, “Bro, we don’t think you did it—” He stops himself. “We want to help. We got you.”

“Where are you?” Nora repeats.

Ryan tries to gather his thoughts. He’s tired, emotionally hungover from the last few days, and now his chest fills with—what is it?—then he gets it: gratitude.

“You don’t need to come,” he says.

There’s some grumbling until he adds, “But there is something you can do to help.”

With his friends on the sidewalk outside a club in Rome and Ryan on the side of a dark road in rural France, he tells them everything. He starts at the beginning in case Nora has held back. He describes the night at Lovers’ Lane, explains his new identity. He watches their faces turn from sympathy to shock when he tells them about finding The Monster and his wife dead in England. But it’s the note Ali left for him—“Find me in the clouds”—that makes them understand. He thinks she may be alive, in hiding from something, from someone, for the past five years.

It’s hard to see everyone in the small FaceTime screen, but he can’t escape Nora’s expression. Concern, but sadness at the same time. Like she knows that anything that could’ve been between them may never be.

But because she’s the woman she is, she says, “So what can we do to help?”

Ryan snaps a photo of Ali’s sketch of her grandparents’ home he’s kept in his wallet all these years. As he gives them time to study the sketch, Ryan wonders if they would have gotten married at her family home in the south of France. Or would they have moved on, realized it for what it was: Young love?

“I need help finding this house.”

It takes only a few minutes for his friends to develop a plan. Eddie will use his video game developing skills, years spent world building, to create a digital image of the house. Aiden and Dena will use their coding skills, a variant of a facial recognition model, to make a structure-recognition program.

Nora is fluent in French and she’ll help Jake scour any public land records. Ryan doesn’t remember Ali’s family name, but the name on the plaque at the Louvre—her great-great-great-grandfather who helped save the museum—his last name was Morand.

“You said she’s an artist,” Divya says.

“That’s right,” Ryan says, remembering Divya was an art history major in college.

“Well, maybe that’s her job now,” Divya says. “I can search the local galleries online for her or her work. Even if she’s using a different name, I think I can identify her style from the sketch.”

Maybe they’ll find the house or her name or her artwork.

It might be that he’s so tired, but Ryan is genuinely moved that they didn’t hesitate to help him, even if it means staying up all night. They didn’t hesitate to jump in knowing who he really is.

“I’ll text you when I’m close to the town. It’ll be a few more hours. And I’ll understand if you get tired and you—”

More grumbling cuts him off.

Before tears spill from his eyes, he says, “I’m lucky to have you as my friends.” He kills the line.