The Second Face

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The man in the expensive coat waited until Nico had both hands inside the engine before asking whether he was Laurent.

Nico kept hold of the loose bracket. The launch rocked against its fenders, lifting the November water into the gap beside his knee. One careless movement and the little brass washer would be gone, and Mrs. Sorel would miss another morning on the river.

"Depends who owes him money."

The stranger did not smile. Above them, on the quay, a gull worried a paper bag with the determination of a bailiff.

"Madame Laurent would like to speak to you."

That brought Nico's head up. His aunt had not called him herself in seven years. Apparently the intervening time had not taught her how.

"I'm working."

"She understands."

"Then tell her to try again when I'm not."

The stranger looked at the oil on Nico's wrists, the old burn across his left palm, the borrowed sweater with its unraveling cuff. Nico recognized the calculation. A man dressed like this could presumably be bought out of an afternoon.

But Celeste Laurent appeared at the top of the steps before the offer came. She wore flat shoes. That frightened him more than the car waiting behind her.

"Leave us, Martin. Please."

The driver withdrew. Celeste stood against the gray harbor, holding her handbag with both hands. For one terrible second, Nico saw his mother's funeral in the way she was standing.

He put the bracket down.

"Who?"

"We don't know that anyone is dead."

The engine ticked as it cooled. Somewhere along the quay, Sami was testing a horn, two short notes followed by an irritated shout.

"Celeste. Who?"

"Lucien hasn't come home."

Nico waited for the qualification. He had missed a meeting. His telephone had broken. He was on a yacht with someone whose name mattered to a newspaper. There had to be a version of this which explained the coat, the car, his aunt's careful voice.

"Since when?"

"Sunday evening."

It was Monday, a little after three. Yesterday felt close enough to touch and already impossibly far away.

"Have you called the police?"

"A missing-person report has been made. His usual security contact is checking the places he visits."

"His usual security contact isn't the police."

"I know."

She said it without correcting him. He wished she had been angry. Anger was something he knew how to receive from this family.

Nico climbed out of the launch. His right boot slipped on the top step; Celeste reached for him and then stopped herself. He wiped his hands on the rag hanging from his pocket.

They had been born eleven minutes apart. For their first nineteen years, strangers had needed their mother to say which one was which. Then Lucien had learned to hold his chin still, Nico had learned to keep moving, and the world had congratulated itself on being able to tell them apart.

"Did he leave a message?"

"Not for me."

Nico took his phone out before he could decide not to. There was the missed call, Sunday at seven forty-two. Lucien's name, the old number. No voicemail. At the time Nico had been halfway through dinner with Sami's family, listening to a six-year-old explain why the moon needed an engine.

He had watched the screen go dark.

"Nico?"

"He called me."

His aunt's face changed, not with accusation, which might have helped, but hope.

"Did you speak?"

He shook his head.

Celeste looked toward the water. The silence that followed contained a whole conversation neither of them could bear to start.

Sami came out of the workshop carrying the horn. He saw Celeste, saw Nico's phone and put the horn on the bench without saying anything. Nico introduced them. His aunt shook Sami's hand as if this might be a place with rules she needed to learn.

"I need to go," Nico told him.

"I gathered that. Mrs. Sorel's bracket?"

"Lined up, not tightened. Don't let her start it."

"And your afternoon?"

"I'll make it up."

Sami watched him for a moment. "Tell me tomorrow what's actually possible. Don't promise me a week because you're frightened now."

Nico nodded. It was such a small kindness, being allowed a limit.

In the car, Celeste did not mention his clothes. She did not mention his father's funeral either, although the last time they had sat this close had been outside the chapel two years earlier. Nico had left before the family photographs. Lucien had stayed.

The car climbed away from the working harbor toward the houses above the headland. Their windows caught a different light. Nico had forgotten how quickly the cranes disappeared behind those walls.

"There is something else," Celeste said.

Of course there was.

Laurent Maritime's directors were due to vote on an acquisition on Friday. Lucien had been reviewing the offer, asking awkward questions, delaying the reassuring statement everyone wanted. If news of his disappearance spread before they knew what had happened, people would make decisions in a panic.

"So tell them not to."

"It isn't that simple."

"It usually isn't, once money's involved."

She took the remark without flinching. That was when he understood that she had come prepared to accept worse.

"I want you to be seen at the house. Perhaps walk into the office tomorrow. Nothing involving a signature or a vote. Just enough time for us to find him."

Nico stared at the back of the driver's head. In the rearview mirror, his own eyes stared back.

"You want his face."

"I want your help."

"Those aren't the same thing."

"No," she said. "They aren't."

The admission robbed him of his next sentence. Outside, a schoolboy ran after a bus and missed it. Nico watched him stop running, hands on his knees, the ordinary disappointment of it almost unbearable.

He asked whether anyone had checked hospitals. Yes. Whether Lucien's passport was at home. They were checking. Whether there had been threats. Celeste hesitated before saying she knew of none.

"That wasn't the same answer."

"It was the only honest one I had."

At the house, the front steps were wet. The stone lion by the door still had the broken tooth Nico had given it with a skateboard. Someone had planted a white rose where his mother's pots used to stand.

In the hall, a woman carrying a stack of folders stopped so abruptly that one slid from her hand.

"Monsieur Laurent."

Nico bent and caught the folder before it opened. The woman had already begun to smile. Then she saw Celeste's face.

"This is my nephew Nico," his aunt said. "Lucien's brother. Ines Varo, his assistant."

Ines took the folder back carefully. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

But the little mistake remained between them. It had taken no performance at all.

Celeste led him into a dressing room where a suit lay across a chair. Not a new suit. One of Lucien's. The jacket was dark blue, the lining worn at one pocket. His aunt had thought through the journey before coming to the quay.

"No," Nico said.

"Try it before you decide."

"That is deciding."

She sat down. For the first time that afternoon, she looked old.

"He asked for you last week. I told him to leave the past alone. I thought I was helping."

Nico looked at her. "Helping whom?"

Celeste had no answer she wanted to give.

He went to the window. Below, a service road curved behind the house toward the sea. He and Lucien had once raced down it on bicycles, convinced speed could make their mother appear at the far end with her arms full of towels.

"I'll stay tonight," he said. "I want his room. His last movements. Whoever took the police report. Not a family version."

"Of course."

"And tomorrow isn't agreed. I don't sign anything in his name. I don't vote. I don't tell his employees he's safe when we don't know that."

Celeste nodded, too quickly.

"Look at me when you agree."

She did.

Only then did he put on the jacket. It settled against his shoulders without resistance. The sleeves ended exactly where they should.

In the mirror stood the brother who had stayed. Behind him, Nico's aunt covered her mouth with her hand.

He reached into the worn pocket and felt a folded square of paper.

On it, in Lucien's handwriting, were three words.

Call Nico first.