Paris by the Book(74)

“Like I said,” I said quietly. “I need time.”

“Leah—” She reached toward me, and I reflexively withdrew. She stiffened, stung, and then put the pages away. “Leah, time is what I’m trying to give you.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“What?” I said.

“Ellie tells me you’ve had a gentleman caller.”

“I’ve—what? I’m sure she did not,” I said.

“She has eyes,” Eleanor said.

“If Ellie has eyes, then she saw that I’ve done something you told me to do—make friends. I’m up to four now. Five, if I can still count you.”

“Count me first,” Eleanor said.

“Well, number five is just a friend. His name is Declan. He is very sweet and handsome. But nothing more. That’s clear.”

“Is it? To all involved?” Eleanor said. “You deserve to get on with your life,” Eleanor said. “That is what I’m trying to help you with. I don’t want the police report to be true any more than you do. But realize, past the pain, what a gift the report is.”

“The UPS driver said he saw a man lurking about,” I said.

“Did he call the police?” Eleanor said.

“I don’t think it was like that,” I said, trying not to look at the folder.

“Did you call the police? In Paris, or Milwaukee?” Eleanor said, more gently now. “When you ‘saw’ Robert in the video? When Daphne ‘saw’ him on the bridge? When ‘he’ apologized to you by scribbling an unsigned ‘sorry’ in the pages of a book you randomly found?”

Just a PAUSE button. It’s all I want from the world’s scientists. A STOP button would be too much to ask for. But a pause, just a pause, when you don’t want to hear—

“He died, Leah,” Eleanor said. “It’s time to use the word, the actual word. And I know it’s like he just died, but it turns out he’s been dead for some time. Enough time that it’s now time to take some steps.”

How did she do it? With her voice, her eyes, the way she set her face? Take something I’d been certain of, just hours, just seconds ago—that I’d seen Robert on that video—and knock it askew? Life had no PAUSE button, but apparently, Eleanor had a button that launched you fast-forward, and I felt that now, a physical pull, past sad-eyed policemen, past lawyers, past Milwaukee friends nodding sorrow, past the girls keening. All of this, about to start.





CHAPTER 14


But everything started with me, with convincing me of what was true, what was fiction. The theory that he was dead had all the evidence, save Robert’s body. The theory that he was alive had no evidence, save Robert’s—what? I didn’t know how to categorize his brief cameo, nor what now seemed, in retrospect, like constant haunting.

I felt Eleanor watching me, measuring me. I just told Leah her husband is dead, and yet she seems unmoved. But I was moved, or had moved, from one belief to another.

Press PLAY.

“I’ll hear you out, Eleanor,” I said. “But will you hear me?” I wasn’t sure yet what I would say beyond this.

The store’s phone started ringing.

“Please answer that,” I said. It was the first thing I could think of. “That would help.”

Eleanor lifted the receiver. “Allo,” she said, and looked at me for my approval. I nodded. “Late Edition Bookshop,” she said.

She listened.

“Can you speak English?” Eleanor asked. She listened a moment more, then continued. “I don’t speak French. This is an English-language bookshop.”

She listened again, more briefly. “‘Lay-cole’? Is that the author?”

L’école. School. School was calling. “Allo, allo,” I said, taking the phone. The school intimidated me now even more than the girls. “Je suis désolée. Mon—assistante ne parle pas fran?ais. ?a va bien, les enfants?”

Les enfants, the children, mine, though it turned out they were talking about George’s.



* * *



—

When I got to their school, I immediately checked their foreheads—please, God, let us not go back to the hospital where they invented the stethoscope—but they were cool. The woman explained, in English, that their class was going to the park today, but the twins could not go along because they did not have their permission slips signed. I offered to sign right then. The woman shook her head slowly: I was not their mother.

But it was okay for me to pick them up at school?

We were already on the sidewalk outside, and she began closing the door. They didn’t have staff to watch the children without slips, she said. Je suis désolée.

George texted me that he was sorry, too. But Eleanor was not; the twins had charmed her. Why don’t we take them to a park ourselves? Would the Luxembourg Gardens suffice? The hotel had told her it had many diversions for kids.

But we didn’t have to go anywhere if I was expecting someone, she said.

Was I? I didn’t like the sound of those italics, but I didn’t want to stay cooped up in the store either, so I agreed to her plan. I called Shelley to see if she might mind the counter. She told me to close the store. I didn’t call Carl, because every time he’d given me his contact info, I’d deleted it. I finally called Molly; she said she’d be over as soon as spin class was over. When she arrived, Eleanor, impatient, already had her sunglasses on and acknowledged Molly with barely a nod.