Page 5 of The Good Girl Effect

I quickly shove the letter, envelope, and photo into the pocket of my jacket before I answer, “J’arrive!” Then I dash up to the front of the store, and Marguerite hands me a list of tedious tasks.

For the rest of my shift, I think about the letter and the couple. How did the envelope end up in a book in our small used bookstore? Who still writes love letters anyway?

The temptation to read it is almost too much to resist. And every free moment I have, I pull it from my pocket and glimpse another line.

I miss you so much.

I never expected to fall in love with you.

Please come back.

On my lunch break, I walk down to the bakery to buy a quiche. My rude roommate, Ingrid, is working, and she barely acknowledges me as she tosses me my lunch.

I don’t reply as I take it and walk out the door. On the table outside, I pull out the letter. Instead of inspecting the message, I look at the address listed on the envelope.

The woman, Emmaline Rochefort, must have lived here in Giverny.

The man, Jack St. Claire, has an address in Paris.

How did an English-speaking man in Paris end up writing a love letter to a French woman in a small village? The answers might be in the letter itself, but for some reason, it feels forbidden to read it. It’s so personal. So intimate. Whatever hewrote on that paper is meant for her eyes only, even if it did somehow end up in the bookstore where I work.

Maybe it never made it to Emmaline. Maybe someone else found it and opened it, using it as a bookmark and discarding it between the pages when they lost interest in reading it.

Maybe Emmaline did read it and has been looking for it all this time. If that book has been on our shelf for years, then what became of the couple in the photo?

Since I can’t bring myself to read the letter in its entirety, I decide to pull out my phone and look up their names instead.

David Bowie croons “Starman” into my ears as I typeEmmaline Rochefortinto the Google search bar first.

Of course, she’s not the only Emmaline Rochefort. So I scroll through the results page, finding old women and teenage girls in various locations around the globe. But eventually, a social media page pops up, so I click on it.

The image at the top of her page is of her and a little girl. Immediately, I can tell the woman on the screen—with the pearly white teeth and warm, congenial smile—is the same woman in the photo. It’s eerie, really. Finding some stranger online from one small photo and a name.

From there, I scroll, and my heart sinks.

I miss you, Emma.

You’re in our thoughts forever.

Gone too soon. Prayers for your family.

Comment after comment after comment of some random person online sending messages to an account as if they can speak to this person beyond the grave. I’m hit by a twinge of grief.

Not for this woman I don’t even know, of course. But seeing this immediately brings back memories of my father’s restaurant’s social media page. One day, it was filled with photosof his famous pan-seared fish, and the next, it was flooded with messages like these.

Gone too soon.

Prayers for your family.

We’ll miss you, Laurent.

Messages he’ll never read but words of sorrow that just needed to be expressed.

I glance down at the photo on the table. The happy couple stares back up at me.

The woman in my photo is dead.

Judging by the comments on her page, it happened only two years ago.