Chapter 5
Five
SOPHIE
The plane touched down with a bump early Saturday morning, Paris time, rousing most passengers from their sleep, but Sophie had been up for the past hour, and not only because it hadn’t been easy to get comfortable at the back of the crowded plane. She had booked a window seat, and she craned her neck for the first sight of land. Of France! It seemed ordinary at first, countryside, really, but how could it be ordinary when she had traveled across the globe, overnight, and was now looking down on a completely different continent?
Only mildly disappointed that she had not been able to spot the Eiffel Tower or any of Paris from her view, Sophie wasted no time in hurrying through customs to get her baggage from the carousel.
With Jack staying at his brother’s apartment in Brooklyn, she’d been using her evenings to brush up on her French, and she felt almost confident as she approached the taxi stand, hoping that her accent was acceptable and that her understanding of the spoken language was better than it had been while binge-watching French-dubbed Netflix shows for the past week, all the while wondering why she hadn’t thought to do this sooner until she’d remembered that she’d let that part of her die off—or so she’d thought. But all it took was a few minutes of watching some online language tutorials, and half an hour in front of the television to revive that part of her that she’d thought was gone forever. Her heart beat a little faster all week. She smiled a little more. She didn’t even mind listening to her mother remind her to schedule her biannual dentist appointment or question her about her upcoming performance review because all she could think about was…France!
“ Bonjour !” Sophie greeted the driver when she reached the front of the taxi line. He wasted no time in grabbing her two suitcases and tossing them in the trunk. She handed him the address she’d written down as she settled into the back seat. “ Saint-Germain-des-Prés, s’il vous pla?t. ”
The 6th arrondissement! The Left Bank! She couldn’t believe it! She was on her way, nearly there! There had been a time when that neighborhood was all she could think of, somewhere she hoped to live, to study. She imagined long afternoons in cafés, sipping coffee or cocktails and scribbling in a notebook. She had thought the words would just flow from her fingers, and they once had. But not in a very long time.
As the driver pulled away from the airport, she fired off a text, replying to one of the many her mother had sent since she’d departed New York. She’d told her mother she was in London, at a publishing conference. It was the first lie she’d ever told her mother, but she’d done it to spare them both.
The taxi pushed forward on the highway, and the traffic was surprisingly light. Sophie knew from her research that it wouldn’t take much more than thirty minutes to get into Paris, maybe less, and she stared out the window, looking for a glimpse of the world she’d only dared to dream about. The highway seemed to drag on, soon replaced by industrial-looking buildings, until the car suddenly exited, took a turn, and there, right in front of her was—
“The Arc de Triomphe!” Oops. She’d squealed that. She caught the driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror, too excited to be embarrassed, and shamelessly rolled down her window, hanging her arms out so she could get a good picture.
But before she could soak in the magic of the moment, the car continued down a wide road flanked by trees and large storefronts.
Blinking quickly to gather herself, Sophie realized that this wasn’t just any street. This was the Champs-élysées! The very street she’d imagined strolling as a teenager. And now it was right in front of her, not just a picture she could stare at in a guidebook but a real place that she was seeing with her own eyes. It was just a quick plane ride away all this time, all these years. She’d woken up and here she was, not just on a different continent but in Paris. And she wasn’t still dreaming.
“ Regardez ,” the driver said, pointing to the right. “ La tour Eiffel .”
And there it was, standing even taller than she imagined it would. The Eiffel Tower! She gazed in the distance as the car drew closer to the river, the firm reminder that she was here. That she’d made it. Or more like she’d done it. Past disappointments couldn’t hold her back anymore.
Maybe nothing could.
She sat back against the seat, staring out the window, taking it all in, the architecture, the buildings that were even bigger and more beautiful than she’d imagined, the people bustling on the sidewalks and walking across the bridge as the taxi crossed the Seine, where boats passed lazily underneath and locals picnicked on the riverbank. Here, on the other side of the city, the streets were tighter, the shops charming and inviting, and the driver wound through a maze of buildings, past cafés and delicious-looking pastry shops and art galleries, until he finally came to a stop.
“ Voilà ,” he said and promptly exited the car.
Sophie had been in such a trance watching the city pass her by that she felt startled and had to rouse herself. She’d been so excited about finally being in Paris that she’d nearly forgotten the other part of this trip. Seeing her sister, her favorite sister, after so many years.
A flutter of nerves swept through her stomach as she pushed out into the warm spring morning and looked up at the building where Isabelle lived.
It was classic Parisian, Sophie noted with satisfaction. The building was a light gray stone, six stories tall like its neighboring ones, with a wrought-iron balcony running across the third and fifth floors. Tall windows cased in ornate frames lined the entire facade, with dormer windows at the very top, tucked into the roof. She stared up at the building, wondering which set belonged to Isabelle, when the front door opened and a woman with dark shoulder-length hair, wearing a navy linen shirtdress, walked onto the sidewalk.
Sophie watched as the woman’s pretty face broke into a huge smile. “Isabelle? Isabelle!” she exclaimed, forgetting her bags as she rushed to hug her oldest sister.
Isabelle laughed as they embraced and then finally pulled back. “Let me get a good look at you!”
But it was Sophie who was staring at her sister, who seemed to have only grown more elegant with time. There were fine lines around her bright blue eyes, the only thing that gave away her age. Her makeup was minimal, and her face was nearly as familiar as it was foreign.
“It’s been so long,” Sophie breathed, daring to think back on the last time they’d all been together. It had been five years, and before that was the summer before Papa left Sophie’s mother—and her—when she was twelve and Isabelle was a grown-up already at twenty-one. A college girl studying at Oxford, so worldly and sophisticated, embodying everything that Sophie ever hoped to be.
“ Too long. The last time you saw me I was in a wedding dress,” Isabelle said with a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “And it certainly wasn’t here in Paris.”
She didn’t seem to want to dwell on the memory as she quickly paid the driver before Sophie could protest, and promptly whisked one of the bags through the doorway into a tasteful vestibule containing brass mailboxes. There was a small marble table with a bouquet of flowers and a stand for umbrellas, and, farther into the lobby area, an elegant—yet positively ancient-looking—elevator with a retractable iron door.
“Are we going to take that?” Sophie asked a little nervously, calculating if they could even both fit along with her two large luggage pieces.
“It’s this or the stairs!” Isabelle motioned to the winding staircase that seemed to climb all the way to the roof. “I’m on the fourth floor. That’s the fifth for you Americans since we call this level le rez de chaussé .”
You Americans . Sophie knew that Isabelle meant no harm, but the point was clear. Isabelle was European, and Sophie was not. And though they were sisters, their differences were clear.
“The elevator it is, then,” Sophie said, all too happy for the full Parisian experience. Once they were crammed inside and the car started to screech as it carried them slowly up, she tried to hide her doubts.
“Camille is scared to death of this thing,” Isabelle said with a laugh. “Just you watch. She’ll be carrying her luggage up the stairs on her own when she arrives.”
For a moment, Sophie forgot all about the rickety elevator. She even momentarily forgot that she was in Paris.
She stared at her sister, replaying the last words, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard and hoping that she was mistaken.
“Camille is coming?” she asked breathlessly.
Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “I’m as surprised as you are, given how much she despises Paris. But yes, she’s arriving tomorrow afternoon. Like you, she seemed willing to spend a little extra time here before the opening, not that I’m complaining about an extra week with my sisters. It will be a long overdue reunion. Just us girls.”
Just us girls .
Once, this would have thrilled Sophie, and a part of it still did, if only because she never stopped longing for a relationship with these women. Only Sophie couldn’t shake the discomfort she felt at how Camille would feel about this.
Or if she even knew that Sophie was here at all.
The apartment was exactly as Sophie imagined it would be—only better. She resisted the urge to take out her phone and start snapping photos to send back to Erin, knowing that there would be plenty of time for that later. The living room was spacious, with faded rugs covering the herringbone wooden floors and a marble fireplace anchoring one of the walls. Sun filled the space from the tall windows that looked out onto the street below. The furniture was a mix of old and new, leading Sophie to believe that her sister had kept much of it the same from when their grandmother lived here.
Sophie took in the polished and long dining room table at the far end of the room, the cluster of chairs that were grouped near the hearth, and imagined what it might have been like to spend time here as a child the way her sisters had done. She tried to imagine her father’s mother opening the door and welcoming her inside, into a world that she had never been a part of—until now.
Isabelle walked over and opened one set of windows, and the noise from the street filled the silence.
“This is beautiful,” Sophie said, meaning it sincerely.
“I can’t take any credit for it,” Isabelle said. “It is beautiful, and I’m grateful for it every day. I used to love visiting Grand-mère here when I was a little girl.”
Sophie could only nod. She’d never met her father’s mother and had certainly never visited this apartment. It was an experience that Isabelle shared with Camille alone, another link in their chain, bonding them together, reminding her that she was still an outsider, and not just because of her American accent.
“Is this her picture?” she asked, crossing the room to the fireplace where several gilded frames were artfully arranged on the mantel.
Isabelle came to stand beside her, smiling sadly at the photo. “She was a beauty, wasn’t she?”
Sophie picked up the black-and-white photo of her grandmother in her younger days, wearing a chic, formfitting satin dress and holding a glass of champagne. She was laughing in the photo, a candid, Sophie’s favorite kind because they captured who the person really was, instead of making her guess what lingered behind the smile.
“She enjoyed life,” Sophie remarked, smiling back at the still image of the woman she’d never known.
Isabelle gave a nod and then her smile turned rueful. “Papa learned it somewhere.”
There was a brief silence while Sophie returned the frame to its original setting. She didn’t want to talk about Papa right now any more than she wanted to think about her mother and all the texts she’d sent since Sophie had let her know she’d landed safe and sound, not when it could spoil this moment. She already had Camille to worry about without inquiring if Isabelle had any updates on their father.
Instead, she picked up the wedding photo of Isabelle and Hugh. The couple were hand in hand, running down the aisle through the garden where they’d been married, laughing as the guests showered them with rose petals.
“What a happy moment,” Sophie said fondly, searching for herself in the crowd.
“Mm,” Isabelle said noncommittally.
Sophie frowned a little, giving her sister a longer look, but Isabelle had moved on to the luggage now, her smile reappearing when she pointed down a long hallway.
“There are three bedrooms here. Mine is at the end. I thought I’d put you right next to me.”
Sophie couldn’t help but feel special at the gesture. Maybe Isabelle really did want her here, maybe she did view her just as much a sister as Camille. Maybe this time, now that they were all adults, it would be different than when they were kids and their age gap made them sisters only, not friends.
Sophie took one last look at the wedding photo. She’d been a bridesmaid, along with Camille, only Camille had stood beside Isabelle on that day, just like Camille had been the one to fluff her dress and help pin her veil, while Sophie stood awkwardly to the side. At the reception, Camille barely spoke more than two words to Sophie, focusing on her daughter and her daughter’s father, her date even though she’d made it clear that they were not romantically involved, giving the briefest of introductions, referring to Sophie by name only, not by any sort of relation.
Papa had been there. It was the last time that Sophie had seen him, and the first time since he’d moved out and, more upsetting, moved on.
And when he’d crossed the tent and held out a hand, flashed that devilish smile of his that made his blue eyes twinkle, and gallantly asked her to dance, she wanted to say no. But she couldn’t.
She could never resist her father. Few women could. She just never thought she’d be one of the many he left with a broken heart.
“Let’s get you settled in your room,” Isabelle said, rousing Sophie from her memory. “And then we’ll go for lunch at this great little café around the corner.”
Lunch at a Paris café? Sophie almost pinched herself, not wanting to wake up from this dream.
Until she remembered that it might all come to a premature end tomorrow when Camille arrived.