Paris by the Book(91)

I didn’t hear that I’d added from you until I saw it in his face. And once I did, I tried to blurt a retraction, but he waved it aside, not angry now, just exhausted. “I know,” he said. “I know it’s okay with the world.”

He took a breath, looked outside.

“I miss the picnic table. The trash barrel. The empty country road.” He looked back at me. “I miss Paris. Wisconsin.”

“Robert,” I said. “That was—”

“Years ago. But I went back once, one of my ‘writeaways.’ I never told you—I should have—but I shouldn’t have gone back. Table’s gone. Barrel’s gone. Corn’s gone.” He exhaled. “I wasn’t even sure I was in the right place, but the map said I was.”

I didn’t need the map to tell me. He had been there, was there now. I could see it in his face. And I could remember that night, that moon, those kisses, that heat.

“Ticket’s gone.” His voice was very quiet now.

“Tickets?” I asked.

“Ticket. I . . .” He stopped. “I’d bought you a ticket to Paris. To Paris, France. Way back when. Before that trip we took to Paris, Wisconsin. You’d never been to Paris, and I was going to give it to you there, that night, in that Paris. Between savings, what space I had on my credit card, I had only had enough for one round-trip, but I thought, that’s enough, for now, she’ll go, she’ll finally go, and then I thought—”

“Robert—”

“Then, that night, I looked at you and I thought, ‘don’t be stupid! Paris? She’ll never come back.’ And I stared at you and you stared at me and then you were talking nonstop about marriage, and I couldn’t believe my luck—this amazing, crazy woman—right here, she wants me to ask her to marry her? And I’m going to put her on a plane? Let her fly away? And we made love and we made our deal and you dozed and I tore up the ticket and threw it into the field, promising myself I would make it up to you somehow, someday, write or make something so incredible it would change our lives. That we’d get here.”

“Robert,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. For years.”

“Robert,” I said. “We’re here. We made it.”

He shook his head. “You did.”

My cell rang. He looked at the door.

“Stay,” I said.

He stared at me.

“Just tonight.”

“I have to go.”

“Listen to me.”

“Leah, I can’t—”

His voice was rising and so was mine. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” I said. “That you’re here. That you’re going to try to leave again after giving me—us—all of twenty minutes to work it out.”

The phone stopped ringing.

“I’ve had a long time to think—”

“I haven’t!” I said. “How about an hour? A week?”

I looked toward the door now, too. Why couldn’t the girls just walk in now?

He closed his eyes then, and I don’t know what he saw. Me or that picnic table or that field outside Paris, Wisconsin. Or if he saw Ellie or Daphne, or wherever it was he was headed next. I don’t know if he saw that he’d been a good father once, and might yet be again. I squinted hard. I wanted to see it.

“Leah,” he said. “Maybe we could—”

The phone rang again. Twice in two minutes?

Eleanor. The caller ID display dredged up a recent photo in case I’d forgotten who the unforgettable Eleanor was. I showed Robert. He managed a kind of smile.

“You know, she’s in France,” I said.

The smile fled.

Then Ellie’s number and face appeared on the phone’s screen alongside Eleanor’s. Robert rocked back.

I’m too technologically illiterate to do what I did next on purpose, but I somehow managed to answer the phone in such a way that I was speaking to both of them.

“Oui?” I said, lifting the phone to my ear.

“Peter—” Ellie said.

“Annabelle—” Eleanor said.

“Where are you?” I said. The panic in their voices made the phones disappear; it was as though they were standing right there with me. But they weren’t. Only Robert. “What’s going on?” I said.

“Mom!” Ellie said.

“They’re gone,” Eleanor said.





CHAPTER 17


Peter and Annabelle had it, whatever they call it—twintelligence, the special understanding that twin children seem to possess. This granted them special survival skills. Or so I prayed as the story was now recounted in detail. (Too much detail, but Eleanor and Ellie kept correcting and augmenting each other’s tales.)

After Eleanor had collected Ellie, Daphne, and the twins, she announced that they would make the most of the afternoon’s sunshine—our first in days—by stopping off at a small park. Peter, eyeing an opportunity in my absence, nominated the Square du Temple, a compact parc about a kilometer from the store, with a forbidden pond. Annabelle readily agreed.

None of this interested Ellie, who suggested Grenoble and stomped off, leaving Daphne to explain to Eleanor that this wasn’t the name of a park but a town in the French Alps, about eight hours away by bus (they’d once taken a class trip there) or three hours by high-speed rail, the TGV (an option I’d not paid for).