The Light of Paris(57)

“Maybe she changed.”

“Maybe,” I said slowly, closing the notebook and running my finger along the edge, as if to seal the words inside. And then she must have changed again, because the grandmother I knew hadn’t been like this at all. My grandmother had been like my mother—stiff and formal, judgmental and proper. What had happened to her? Why had she come back from Paris? And how had she turned from this fun-loving girl who drank with Surrealists and loved books and writing and couldn’t bear committee meetings into . . . well, into my mother?

“It’s been funny reading these, getting this look inside her. I mean, I’m sure she was different when she was younger. And these were her journals, so she was pretty unguarded. You don’t get to see that kind of honesty often.”

“Or ever,” Henry said. “Does it make you feel guilty? Reading her private thoughts?”

“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. Now I do feel guilty. Thanks a lot.”

Henry laughed. “I don’t think you have to. Is she still alive? Your grandmother?”

“Oh, no. She died when I was in junior high—I didn’t really know her well.”

“So this is a way of connecting with her.”

“I guess. It is changing the way I think about her. It feels like a novel, reading it. Living in those times. Going to Paris, for heaven’s sake. In 1924! Who does that?”

“Well, the aforementioned Hemingway, for one.” Leaning back, Henry clasped his fingers together behind his neck. His arms were broad, with wide tendons that flexed when he moved, and I had to pull my eyes away.

“Not Hemingway people. Real people.”

“She was lucky. I would love to have been in Paris then. I’d love to be in Paris now.”

“You and me both, my friend. Anyway, she’s met this artist who sounds really charming.”

“Maybe she’ll have a wild affair. That would be romantic.”

“I guess so. I don’t know how that would work out—she married my grandfather in 1924, and my mother was born in 1925. So something happened.”

“1925, huh? You must have been a late baby.”

“I was. My mother was forty when I was born, which was crazy uncommon back then. My parents had given up on having kids and then”—I shot my hands in the air and wiggled my fingers like a magician—“ta-da!”

“I was a surprise too,” Henry said. “At the opposite end. My parents were in high school. Ta-da!” He waved his hands back at me and I had to laugh.

“Still, you seem to have turned out all right.”

He shrugged. “They were lucky. They had a lot of support from their parents, and they happened to stay in love. I’ve got five younger siblings.”

“I’m jealous. I always wanted brothers and sisters. Well, sisters, mostly. But I would have taken either.”

“They’re pretty great. But there were times being an only child would have been great.”

“Ugh. Why do people with brothers and sisters always say that? Being an only child is boring. And lonely.”

“Being one of six has its own issues, trust me. Grass is always greener,” Henry said, and then looked up as Ava arrived at the table. She set a wide, shallow bowl in front of me with the promised dessert, and I could feel the rush of warm, chocolate-scented steam rise up toward me. It was beautiful, a perfect tiny cake with fluted edges and a dark pool of melted chocolate, a shade darker, in the center. The ice cream, flecked with specks of vanilla beans, sat off to the side, melting daintily around the edges of the cake.

“Oh. My. God. I just want to go face-first into this thing.”

“Exactly the compliment a chef likes to hear,” Henry said.

“And this is for you.” Ava put a large and impolitely full glass of red wine down in front of Henry.

“Bless you, my child,” he said, lifting the glass carefully to avoid spilling it, and taking a sip while she refilled my water.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“That’s it. Thank you. As you were.”

She nodded and walked back toward the kitchen while I stared at the cake, mesmerized. Taking the first bite, I closed my eyes and moaned in pleasure. The cake was sweet, the center ever so slightly bitter, and together they melted luxuriously on my tongue.

“Good?” Henry asked, smiling behind his wine glass.

“Amazing. Has anyone ever said you should do this for a living?”

“Once or twice. But you can tell me again.”

I sighed, took another bite of cake, scooping up some of the ice cream on the tip of the spoon and swallowing, closing my eyes again to enjoy it. I was going to have a terrible sugar hangover the next day, and it was going to be worth every second. “You should do this for a living.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Pausing between bites, I put the head of the spoon into the cake and looked up at Henry. He looked tired, like he’d been working since the crack of dawn, which he probably had. I’d never worked in a restaurant, but I had always thought it would be so exhausting—the physical back and forth, the bending and lifting, juggling orders, constantly making and remaking schedules, prioritizing and reprioritizing, remembering drink and dish instructions, birthday wishes, and special requests.