Paris by the Book(58)

“Please don’t,” he said.

“Declan,” I said.

“Leah,” he said. “We—we’ve been spending a lot of time together. I’ve liked that. I like—you. I’d like to—not tonight, maybe it’s too late, or too fast, except it’s not—damn, why is this awkward? It’s like being in junior high again.”

“I didn’t have two daughters when I was in junior high,” I said, very intently, to my beer bottle.

“Is that what this is about?” he said. “Because—I mean, of course. But maybe some night, or day—unless daytime is weird—was weird—”

“No, this is weird,” I said.

It’s possible that men always told me not to joke because I wasn’t good at it. Because all they wanted, all Declan wanted—and Robert before him—was a straight answer. Leah, are we good?

Declan picked up my hand—my—left hand. His was dry and smooth and hard.

This was what Declan’s hand felt like. This was what it was like to be held again.

“This is weird,” he said, and gently tapped my ring with his thumb, once, twice. Then he let go. I felt like I was on one of those chained platforms from the club and it had just given way. “I mean, I get it,” he said, “or I got it, but something happened.”

“I told you what happened.”

I’d have thought I’d have gotten better at lying, given how much of it I was doing lately.

“No, something happened recently. Not tonight. Something before that. Something changed. We were hanging out, it was fun—”

“It was fun tonight.”

“You told me you ‘liked’ me.”

I took a short breath. “True.”

“And something happened. I want to say, something happened on that stupid Madeline tour.”

A longer breath. “Obviously.”

He waited, shook his head. “See?” he said. “Like right now, that look: you’re not—you’re not here.”

“I couldn’t be more here. I’m right here.”

“You’re distracted,” he said. A retreat, or so his eyes told me, but I ignored that. “I don’t—I don’t get it,” he said, softening further. It was awful to watch. It must have been worse to watch me. “Unless . . . is there someone else?” he asked. He looked at the ring again. “I don’t mean . . .”

What was so wonderful, and terrible, was that he didn’t mean Robert. And that I did. There was someone else. There were two words in a book, I’m sorry. There were one hundred pages of a manuscript, two daughters on a bridge, one husband who might have been there, too. It was easy enough to imagine, anyway. Easier, if somehow more painful.

I heard my phone ping in Declan’s pocket: and there it was, life, the kind of real life I led, as opposed to the fictional, carefree Paris life I assumed Declan led, returning. My phone pinged again, and again, a little anvil across which unease could be bent into anger.

What if it was Ellie? Or Daphne? Or Eleanor, with news.

Or, right on schedule, Robert himself?

Declan pulled out my phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “Shit,” he said. Even from across the table, I could see that it was crowded with messages and alerts. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “I must not have heard—or felt—”

He leaned toward me over the table and laid the phone gently between us. “I think you missed some calls,” he said.

The screen was more explicit than that: ten missed calls, six voice mails, and twelve texts, the most recent of which, from Ellie, was automatically displayed.

The doctors say they need 2 talk 2 the mother. . . .





CHAPTER 11


Declan offered to summon a “real” taxi, but I refused and got in an illegal cab that sidled up as we stood arguing.

Utter mistake. He wasn’t a criminal, my driver, but he didn’t speak French, or English, and he didn’t know Paris. I wasn’t much better beyond the Marais, and so wasn’t even aware how off course we were until Ellie—with whom I’d been texting frantically—told me to ask the driver what the hell was going on, because she’d tracked me (or rather, my phone) to Père Lachaise.

I looked out the window. C’est vrai, the cemetery. I got the driver to stop, and with the help of the map display on my cell phone and some shouting, I learned that he was taking me to the airport. Of course: it was the only thing he knew to do with hysterical Americans. I told him my daughter was ill, very ill, and got out and walked away. He didn’t even curse at me. Or if he did, I didn’t hear him. Two policemen, though, cruised up. Either they’d overheard me or there was a bulletin out for a madwoman, a cheat, the world’s worst mother, at large in Paris.

Although it took some doing for them to convince me that I wasn’t under arrest, I finally accepted their offer to speed me to the hospital—the H?pital Necker-Enfants Malades. The hospital for children sick.

Ellie met me at the end of the block, to walk me into the compound.

“Where have you been?” Ellie said.

“How is she?” I said.

“Like, the phone showed me where you were, but—”

“Ellie, Ellie, Ellie,” I said as the world flew by. It’s not that we were walking that fast—I’m not sure if we were walking at all; I felt like I was hovering, drifting, bodiless, and my vision reduced everything but Ellie to a blur. Where was Daphne? Where was my purse?