Find Me in Paris

Chapter 4

Four

ISABELLE

It wasn’t until a few days later, when Isabelle was sitting with her usual breakfast of a croissant and café au lait at her favorite café near the gallery, that she realized it was her five-year wedding anniversary.

Five years. It seemed impossible for Isabelle to believe that she’d been married to Hugh for so long; almost more impossible to believe that somewhere in all those years they hadn’t found the time to start a family. They’d been too busy traveling, enjoying their freedom and their youth, until suddenly she realized that she wasn’t so young anymore. She’d been thirty-six when she inherited the apartment, and that had seemed like a good age to settle down.

Hugh was still in Tokyo, of course. They’d talked last night, briefly, but long enough for Isabelle to rule out all her suspicions as a trick of the mind. There were no familiar sounds in the background, no sounds at all, actually. Hugh had been tucked into his hotel room, and she had absolutely nothing to worry about.

The thing was, that up until that strange call the other day, she hadn’t ever worried about Hugh. Sure, he traveled a lot, but that didn’t mean he had a wandering eye. She knew that her sister thought otherwise, even if she was too polite to say anything. But Camille didn’t trust any men, well, other than Rupert, but not enough to marry him.

Hugh had always been attentive and loyal, and as much as he didn’t like being tied to one place, he’d never insinuated that he didn’t want to be tied to one woman. He’d proposed, after all, after just a year of dating. They’d had a big wedding near London, with all their friends at the time, friends who had by now gone off on the domestic path, something that she and Hugh used to shudder over while they fastened their seat belts for landing in yet another new destination.

Until Isabelle started craving that life, too.

She felt her stomach flutter as she stood and finished her walk to the gallery. Today was her wedding anniversary. It seemed like a sign.

Today was the day she would take a pregnancy test. She just had to get through the workday first.

Two dozen pink peonies were waiting for her outside her apartment door when she arrived home an hour earlier than usual, hurrying in the early spring drizzle that had started midafternoon. She would have jogged home if she wasn’t worried about slipping or catching one of her heels in the cobblestoned roads or, worse, looking like a tourist.

She picked up the enormous bouquet wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine and inhaled the sweet aroma. Her favorite. Hugh had remembered, not just that it was their anniversary but that these were the very flowers she’d had in her bouquet all those years ago.

A door across the hall opened and her neighbor’s friendly face appeared.

“I signed for you,” the man, Antoine, said. At least she thought that was his name. They’d only briefly exchanged pleasantries and that had been when she first moved in and then a few times afterward when they both happened to be collecting mail in the small vestibule near the front door. “They just arrived about twenty minutes ago, so they are still fresh.”

His English was excellent, accented heavily by French.

She smiled. “ Merci beaucoup .”

“ Très jolie ,” Antoine said, giving her a slow smile. Very pretty.

She frowned a little, wondering if he even knew she was married, but then realized that of course he was talking about the flowers. “ Oui. They are.” And they were also her favorite.

She thanked him again and slipped inside, eager to get the bouquet into water. She found a vase on a high shelf in the kitchen and soon had the arrangement centered on the coffee table in the living room where she could admire them all weekend, mentally scratching one item off her endless to-do list before her sisters arrived. Preparing the apartment for their earlier-than-expected arrival had kept her nearly as busy as her gallery all week—and now she wouldn’t have to worry about buying fresh flowers, not that she ever minded that task, or any that kept her mind off the possible life growing inside her. The sun was still shining bright in the sky, but she knew that it would be several hours ahead in Tokyo. Hugh had a dinner meeting tonight, meaning that she might still have a chance to order a surprise for him before he returned.

But first…

Isabelle inhaled sharply and then, feeling as nervous as she had as a schoolgirl about to deliver a valentine to her childhood crush, she forced herself down the hallway to the bathroom. She rummaged under the sink for the test she’d bought weeks back, hidden in its plain white paper pharmacy bag, even though she was the only one here these days.

She took it out and read the instructions carefully, and then read them again, to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything to interfere with the accuracy of the results. With shaking hands, she opened the box, said a silent prayer, and took the test.

She decided to fill the wait time by preparing for her sisters’ visit. Sophie would be arriving tomorrow morning, and Camille the day after. With her mind still spinning with the realization that her entire life might be about to change in a matter of minutes, she forced herself to make sure that both guest rooms were ready for her sisters, pulling stacks of towels from the linen closet and setting them on the antique chests of drawers, still half in disbelief that not just one but both of them had actually agreed to visit.

She glanced at the bathroom, then checked her watch, deciding that she would give it an extra minute, just to be sure.

Her stomach swooped as she walked into the living room, dropped into her favorite chair, and called Hugh’s office here in Paris before they closed for the day.

His assistant answered in a professional tone; it wasn’t often that Isabelle called his direct line when she could try his cell instead.

“Hello, Celine. I’m trying to reach Hugh.”

“You weren’t able to reach him on his cell?” Celine replied, naturally.

“I was hoping to surprise him,” Isabelle confided. “I just realized that I don’t have the name of the hotel he’s staying at in Tokyo.” The hotel chain owned many properties in each city, and in one as big as Tokyo, it could have taken her twenty minutes to find the correct one.

And she couldn’t wait that long to find out the results of her test.

“Tokyo?” Celine sounded dumbfounded. “There must be some confusion. Hugh isn’t in Tokyo.”

“He’s not?” Isabelle wondered if Hugh had a last-minute request to fly into another city. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been asked to put out a fire. Unless… Had he left today? As a surprise? For their anniversary? Was he about to walk through the door at any moment, in time to read the test together, in time to celebrate?

“Hugh hasn’t been to Tokyo since last summer,” Celine replied in a tone that said Isabelle should know this.

And she should. She should absolutely know where her husband was—if he was in Tokyo or if he was not.

Just like she should know when he was lying to her.

A dozen questions ran through her mind, but she settled on the one that would bring her the most pertinent information. Isabelle stood, clutching the phone close to her ear.

“I’m sorry, I must have gotten the cities mixed up,” Isabelle managed to say in an eerily calm voice. She started to pace. “Then…where is he?”

“ Paris, madame .” The woman sounded sincerely confused.

Isabelle stopped walking and stared out the tall windows of her living room, onto the rooftops of the very city where her husband currently was. Where he might have been all this time, while she was unaware.

While others, like Celine, knew.

“Paris?” Isabelle managed to whisper.

“ Oui, madame . He’s been staying at our premier property while overseeing the new acquisition. Would you like me to connect you to his room?”

Isabelle opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out. Hugh had been in Paris all this time? All those calls, all those conversations, and he’d never been in Tokyo at all! There was no extended business keeping him somewhere he’d never been in the first place. No excuse to skip their anniversary. No reason to miss her upcoming opening that he knew would be the biggest of her career.

All this time, he’s been right across the Seine. Lying to her.

“ Madame ?” the woman asked again.

“ Non ,” Isabelle said quickly. “ Non, merci .”

She hung up without another word. Maybe the woman would say something to Hugh in passing, or maybe she’d forget all about this conversation, and not say a word.

Maybe Hugh would never know that she knew. And what would he do then? Keep up this ruse? Eventually stop by the apartment for a few nights, feigning jet lag, talking about his next trip—a trip that might not even exist?

A trip that was just a walk across the Seine?

Isabelle stood up, grabbed the vase with the two dozen pink peonies, marched into the kitchen, and slammed the flowers into the trash. Then she walked into her bedroom and opened the closet. She didn’t know what she was looking for, exactly. A trace of lipstick on one of Hugh’s collars? A receipt for a lingerie store or a restaurant that she’d never dined in before?

She didn’t need more evidence, not when she already had it. Hugh had been lying to her. And there could be only one reason. He’d met someone. Maybe he intended to keep it on the side, or maybe he planned to leave her. In time, she’d know how this all ended, because that’s the only outcome there could be. It would end. Her marriage. The life she was living.

She brushed away a hot tear before it slipped, wishing that there was someone she could talk to, but Hugh was the one she preferred to talk to, and that was no longer an option. And that, perhaps more than his lies, hurt the most. There would be no more long conversations over lazy dinners at the bistro on the corner. From now on it would just be her.

Alone.

She blinked, suddenly remembering the pregnancy test waiting for her in the bathroom, and hope felt all at once restored. There was still that wonderful possibility, still the chance to have a child, even if it wasn’t under ideal circumstances, maybe somehow something good still came from all of this.

Maybe all was not lost.

Barely able to breathe, she moved slowly to the bathroom. She’d left the door open and the light on, but she couldn’t make out the indicator strip from a distance. She closed her eyes just as she approached the room, pausing to inhale deeply, and then looked.

She registered the results before her eyes even seemed to understand what they were seeing. Her emotions swirled from hope to shock to complete disbelief.

Denial.

And then, despair.

It was negative. As clear and sure as the woman on the other end of the phone had just been.

There was no baby. There was no marriage.

There was nothing but this apartment in Paris. A little gallery on ?le Saint-Louis.

And two sisters who were soon going to descend on her. And who could never find out about any of this.