Find Me in Paris

Chapter 21

Twenty-One

SOPHIE

“Let’s go back to the apartment,” Sophie suggested after Isabelle finally sat down, and Hugh disappeared, and enough silence had passed that it was clear even Camille wasn’t going to chase him down and cause a public scene. She was wet and sad for what had transpired this morning, and she didn’t think that any of them needed to see anything more, especially Isabelle.

Isabelle barely nodded, but Camille’s jaw set defiantly.

“I’m hoping to run into my dear brother-in-law and have a few choice words with him,” she said angrily.

Sophie rather wished she would. He certainly deserved it—and then some. She saw the fire in her middle sister’s eyes—and the hurt in her eldest’s—and she understood more than she ever had before. Camille might be a fighter, but she also fought for what she believed in, and for whom she loved.

“Please don’t,” Isabelle said wearily. “I’ll…deal with Hugh.”

“Will you, though?” Camille asked as they approached the metro stop.

Isabelle paused at the top of the stairs. She looked so pale and small in her navy raincoat and stylish floral scarf tied at the side of her neck that Sophie felt like the roles were reversed, and that for the first time, she was the big sister, the one whose life was established and in order, which was almost comical considering that Sophie’s life was a complete mess.

But compared to Isabelle’s, she supposed that it was…safe. Secure. Everything that her mother wanted for her.

As they descended the stairs in silence and then rode the metro back to their stop, Sophie watched her sisters and contemplated this, wondering what was worse: having and losing a life you loved or never having one at all?

She’d thought that Isabelle and Hugh were the ideal couple.

But then, she’d once thought the same about her parents, and look how that turned out.

Maybe, she thought, matching Isabelle’s frown, there really was no such thing as lasting love. But did that mean it was any less real?

Isabelle’s mood, however, shifted when they arrived back at the apartment. “Antoine!” she said to a handsome man standing near the mailboxes. “Have you met my sister Sophie?”

But before Antoine could reply, a woman who had been standing with her back to the door turned. A woman with shoulder-length brown hair, a no-nonsense beige jacket, and sensible sneakers stood stiffly clutching the handle of a large suitcase.

“Mom?” Sophie felt her heart lock up in her chest as she ground to a halt, causing Camille to crash into her back.

She stared at the woman who had raised her, mostly on her own. The person whom she spoke to daily and saw weekly, but who now seemed like a stranger, completely out of place in this marble lobby.

Her mother’s voice lacked its usual warmth when she said, “Hello, Sophie.”

Camille edged closer to Isabelle. Sophie edged closer to Isabelle. Antoine gave a little smile to Isabelle and then a bow to the ladies before making his excuses and quickly exiting through the front door, leaving Sophie to wish that she could join him.

Sophie stared at her mother, whose steely gaze never left her, and then glanced at her sisters, who no longer seemed to be so worried about Hugh or his whereabouts or that woman he was with earlier.

“Mom, you remember Isabelle. And Camille,” Sophie said.

Her mother adjusted her features and managed a polite smile. “Of course. You’re all grown up. Such lovely young women.” She gave each of them a brief hug, but stood back before she reached Sophie.

“Are you staying long, Patricia?” Isabelle asked diplomatically. “I can take your luggage upstairs and get you settled?”

“I’m staying in a hotel just down the road,” Sophie’s mother replied. “But this was my first stop after arriving. I wanted to check on my daughter and make sure she was okay.”

“Of course she’s okay,” Isabelle said with a small laugh, sounding surprised.

Sophie closed her eyes briefly. She didn’t know how her mother had found her. Or why she had come. She didn’t even know why she should be in trouble, other than the fact that she hadn’t been honest. But she clearly was.

“Mom, why don’t we get some air now that the rain has stopped,” she suggested. “There’s a great café around the corner. I think you’ll love it.”

“You know I don’t drink coffee.” Her mother sounded put out by the suggestion.

“They have tea,” Sophie said, feeling suddenly as exhausted as Isabelle looked. “Or hot chocolate. The most delicious hot chocolate you can ever imagine!”

Her mother pursed her lips and glanced at Isabelle and Camille, as if weighing the lesser of two evils. Eventually she gave the slightest nod. “Fine.”

“Your luggage will be safe here,” Isabelle assured her. She gave Sophie a sympathetic look as she moved toward the elevator, and Camille toward the staircase.

Outside, Sophie knew she could speak freely, but when could she ever really speak freely to her mother?

She stopped just outside the door. The rain had subsided for now, and she had no real interest in going to that charming café that had come to feel like a second home and tainting it with a negative experience. Her time in Paris—even this morning’s strange experience with her sisters—had brought out a side of her that she didn’t want to deny anymore. She didn’t want to go back to being the person who hid from her passions, or her true self.

She didn’t want to go back to her old life at all.

“How did you know where I was?” she asked. That seemed like a fair question, all things considered.

“I have a tracker on your phone,” her mother answered, as if that were an obvious answer. “When you stopped replying to my texts, I checked it.”

Sophie gaped at her mother. Seconds seemed to pass as a woman on a bicycle rode past, spraying water onto Sophie’s legs, not that she minded. No, what she minded was that she was nearly thirty years old, she had come to Paris with her own money, on her own vacation time, and that somehow, once again, she was being denied the experience.

“You track my whereabouts?”

“You’re my child!” her mother said indignantly.

“But that’s just the thing, Mom,” Sophie cried as her heart started to pound. It was the first time she had dared to speak up for herself, and she was outside of her comfort zone, but maybe this was long overdue. “I’m not a child. And I haven’t been one for some time.”

Her mother didn’t seem to hear her as she shook her head.

“You lied to me,” she accused, her eyes narrowing. “Telling me you were in London.”

“Because I knew how you would react if I told you the truth,” Sophie said with a sigh. “I knew how you would react if I told you I was going to Paris.”

“Yet you went, anyway! You didn’t care one bit about my feelings!”

Sophie stared at her mother, officially silenced, because she knew that there was nothing she could say at that moment that could ever make her mother understand.

“And what about my feelings?” she tried, hoping to get through to her mother once and for all, but suspecting from the look on her face that she wouldn’t succeed. “What about when I got into the Sorbonne? What about how hard I worked all through high school to get that scholarship? Did you ever think of how I felt then? I was so excited, Mom! It was my passion . It was my dream! And it came true. Until you took it away. And you didn’t even care.”

“I did what was best for you,” her mother said with a lift of her chin. “Look what passion and dreams got me. Trouble, that’s what.”

“No.” Sophie was shaking now, from head to toe. In all these years, they had never once discussed what had happened. Sophie had just been forced to accept it, knowing that nothing could change the outcome, that it was easier to just forget her dreams and to accept reality. But she couldn’t do that anymore. “You did what was best for you , Mom.”

She took a step back toward the apartment building and her sisters. Her mother took a step toward her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked in a tone better served for a misbehaving four-year-old.

Sophie stopped and sighed. “I’m going to get your suitcase, Mom. And then I’m going to get you a cab. And then I’m going inside to be with my sisters. Isabelle needs me, and…I think Camille does, too.”

She smiled a little, but her mother only scowled deeper.

“But I flew all the way to this godforsaken place!”

“Then I suggest that you make the most of it,” Sophie said lightly, even though her entire body was so tense she felt like her veins were on fire. She’d never liked the way her mother spoke to her, and she’d always known that it was different than how her friends’ mothers treated them, that it had grown worse in time, starting when Papa left, and escalating with each passing year, until now. The breaking point.

She’d finally set herself free. Found the life she wanted to live. And nothing and no one could make her give it up.

“Paris is a beautiful city,” she said. “It’s everything I dreamed it would be and more. Take a walk. Eat the food. See the sights. Just wander.”

“Wander?” Her mother looked appalled. “You plan to abandon me when I crossed an ocean for you?”

“I’m not abandoning you, Mom,” Sophie said, forcing herself to stay strong. “But I have plans for the day, and I didn’t know you were coming.”

She didn’t have any concrete plans, and she knew that her sisters wouldn’t mind if she spent the afternoon with her mother—but she minded. She couldn’t imagine compromising this vacation by sharing it with someone who didn’t support it.

Or her.

“Well!” her mother huffed. “At least you’ll be back in New York where you belong next week and all this nonsense will be over.”

New York. Where she belonged.

But was it? It was home. It was where she grew up. But it wasn’t where her heart was. And it wasn’t where she was happy.

Her mother seemed to collect herself for a moment, her expression softening as much as possible. It wasn’t an apology; her mother didn’t do those. It was, perhaps, a concession. “We’ll just…forget it ever happened.”

A wave of fresh anger surged, and this time, Sophie knew that she couldn’t forget. Not the present. Not the past. Not the future she’d always wanted.

“Like my scholarship?” Sophie saw the flash in her mother’s eyes and had the courage to say, “We never talked about you did.”

“I did what was best for you,” her mother said firmly.

“Best for me or best for you?” Sophie dared to ask.

Her mother looked startled before quickly recovering. She waved a hand through the air, giving a dismissive smile. “What are we even talking about this? That was years ago, Sophie! And everything turned out for the better. You went to a great school. Got a great job. Met a great guy. I can’t believe you even remember that.” She shook her head, still smiling, giving a hint of an eye roll.

The feelings that Sophie had buried rose to the surface, along with her dreams and her deepest desires, the ones that she’d been forced to neglect, to tell herself didn’t matter. She pictured herself a week from now, back in New York, sitting at her desk, clocking a day that was too long to leave time for little else other than a nightly call with her mother, maybe a meal with a man she didn’t know if she loved, and a book that would never get written.

And then she thought of her sisters, upstairs right now, and of Papa, who was somewhere in this city, no doubt wondering if they would welcome him into their lives or turn their backs, the way he had done so many times to them.

And she thought of Paris. And all its possibilities. And how she felt every morning when she woke up here. And how she wanted to feel like that every day. Or at least for as long as she could.

She played out the scenario as she grabbed her mother’s luggage and pulled it back onto the street, then hailed the nearest taxi.

She’d rewritten her own story once. She wouldn’t do it again.

“Actually, Mom,” she said, “I’m not going back to New York.”

Her heart began to pound just as it did when she made the decision to come to Paris. When she’d made the leap, taken the chance, and believed in herself enough to think that somehow a dream could still come true.

“What?” Her mother went pale. “What are you talking about? Of course you’re coming back to New York. You have to come back!”

“But that’s just the thing. I don’t,” Sophie replied, standing a little taller, forcing herself not to lose her nerve, because it would be so easy just to give in, be the good daughter, do the right thing, and pretend that this conversation never happened, which is what could happen if she let it. “I’m an adult. And I have my entire life ahead of me. The life that I want to live. And I’m half-French, so I should have no problem getting dual citizenship.”

Her mother’s mouth fell open, and for the first time in a very long time, she was at a loss for words.

“I can’t believe you would do this to me, Sophie,” she finally scolded, narrowing her eyes.

“Oh, Mom,” Sophie said sadly, because a part of her genuinely did feel sorry for what her mother had become—not just for what her father had done to them, but for what her mother had let him do. He’d stolen her spirit and broken her down. Instead of reclaiming the life she wanted, she’d chosen to spend her time in bitterness and negativity, keeping her world small and expecting Sophie to do the same. “I’m not doing anything to you. I’m doing it for me. I just wish that you could see that this is what makes me happy. And I hope that someday, somehow, you can be happy, too.”

She walked over to her mother, kissed her on the cheek, and then walked back inside the building.

And toward her future.