The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(2)

We slipped our arms around each other, and set out on a stroll through the most romantic city in the world.

Paris was truly amazing and so incredibly different from my hometown of New York City. There were no skyscrapers. The buildings were old and grand, and a glorious river ran through the city under a clear, wide-open sky.

Could anyone ask for a better place for a reunion?

Not me. I was over the moon and the stars and even the sun.

We stopped at Depot Nicolas, a wine shop where James bought a bottle of Bordeaux wrapped in white paper. The next stop was 38 Saint Louis, where he chose a big wedge of Brie, then the Boulangerie des Deux Ponts for a long, skinny bag of warm baguettes.

We lunched on a bench under shade trees fronting the quai, a concrete embankment that slopes gently down to the River Seine. Bikers and lovers and laughing children with small dogs made an endless parade, and boats sailed by just below our feet.

We hugged and kissed, again and again, and talked over each other and laughed enough to make up for our six months of despair and total blackout. Then we went quiet.

James lifted strands of my long dark hair and wound them around his fingers. He did this reverently, as if he’d never seen my hair before. He touched the top button on my pin-tucked white shirt and traced the flouncy hem of my skirt. He kissed my temples and my mouth and the palms of my hands.

It was as if every place he touched burst into flames. I pressed my cheek to his, burrowed under his arm, and fitted myself perfectly against his strong, lean body. I ran my hand under his leather jacket and covered his fast-beating heart.

If there was ever a case of spontaneous combustion, this was it. We were on fire.

To tell the truth, I was so elated, I was a little afraid.

“I have something to show you,” James said. “Want to take a little walk?”

He didn’t have to ask me twice.





Walking hand in hand with James was like being wide-awake inside the most delicious of dreams.

He had a mischievous look on his face as he led me across the Pont des Arts, a footbridge that arched gracefully over the Seine. A low chain-link fence lined the walk, and it was festooned with padlocks—thousands of them.

James said, “Look what I have, Tandoori.”

I watched eagerly as he took something out of his jacket pocket. It was an old brass padlock, as worn and dinged up as our journey to this moment. James handed the lock to me, and when I turned it over, I saw our initials etched into the back.

James did that.

I looked up at his face. His cheeks were colored with emotion, and I understood why he had brought me here. With a shaking hand, I hooked the lock into the fence between other locks that had been placed there by lovers over the years. When I closed the hasp, it made a solid and permanent sound.

James separated two keys from a ring. He gave one to me and clenched his fist around the other.

“We have to do this together,” he said.

I followed his lead but turned to face him. Then he said, “On the count of three.”

We smiled at each other as we counted down. At three, we heaved the little keys over each other’s shoulders, beyond the sides of the bridge. They disappeared into the rushing water far below.

The moment was both joyous and solemn, as if we were taking vows that could never be broken: James Rampling and Tandy Angel together in perpetuity. Tears welled up, but I didn’t want them. No more tears. I’d already shed enough tears for a sixteen-year-old girl.

James squeezed my hand, and I saw tears in his eyes, too.

It just couldn’t get better than this—but it did.

We wandered the city for hours, just reveling in the happiness of finally being together and carefully avoiding any negative talk that could kill our buzz. When the sky turned cobalt blue, we dined alfresco on steak frites and café au lait at the Café du Trocadero. From our tiny marble table under the awnings, we had a magnificent view of the Eiffel Tower, which sparkled madly with silver lights.

Our knees touched and our feelings arced between us like lightning.

“I wrote to you,” James said. “When you didn’t write back, I thought you blamed me for what happened. I thought you hated me.”

Of course, I hadn’t known that James had written to me. At the time, I didn’t even remember his name.

I told him what had happened to me since I’d last seen him: about my horrid abduction and wretched incarceration in a high-class nuthouse, the treatments that had erased him from my mind. And I told him about my parents’ savage deaths. They had done everything they could to keep James and me apart, but that obstacle was gone now.

“I didn’t know you had written to me until I found your cards in my mother’s desk.”

He covered my hands with both of his and told me about his own lockdown in a superstrict Swiss school without phones or Internet.

“My father, your parents. They did what they could to keep us apart. But this was meant to be,” he said.

We left the bistro and went underground to the Métro, getting off at the St-Paul stop. We walked under warmly illuminated arches and came upon musicians playing cello and violin under the stars.

James dropped coins into the musicians’ cup, and they called after us, “Merci, monsieur et mademoiselle. Bonne chance.”

Yes, it was phenomenal good luck that James and I were together at last.