Find Me in Paris

Chapter 1

One

ISABELLE

Isabelle Laurent loved little more in this world than her daily walk to work. It wasn’t a short one, but it wasn’t too long, either. It was, like so many other things about Paris, perfect.

On rainy days, there were plenty of awnings under which she could duck for cover, and on clear, blue-skied mornings, such as this one, she was free to take her time, watching the vans throw open their back doors to unload flowers of every color to the local florists, and letting her eyes roam the narrow streets filled with cafés, shops, and bistros, until she reached the Quai des Grands Augustins and the entire city opened up, stretching as far as the eye could see. Many days she paused here to take in the limestone buildings with their ornate architecture, the bridges that crossed the sparkling river, and each time she saw something new, something that made her smile, and that she would always notice again, because who could ever forget Paris?

The apartment was another wonderful thing about her life here—a gift, really, left to her from her paternal grandmother last year, because her sister Camille would never have wanted it, and their half sister, Sophie, lived much too far away to ever put it to use. Isabelle had always assumed that the apartment would be passed down from her grandmother to her father, but by the time she died quietly in her sleep at the age of eighty-nine, Grand-mère was well aware of her only son’s restless spirit. He wouldn’t settle in one city for any longer than he would stay with one woman, something that aggrieved both of Isabelle’s sisters greatly.

Isabelle, however, had come to accept her father’s wanderlust and had even married a man with a similar urge, a man who, up until last year, she used to travel the world with—him overseeing hotel expansions and her collecting art, discovering new voices, and now, featuring them in her little gallery on ?le Saint-Louis, and it went without saying that while small, it was, well, perfect.

Each morning, Isabelle locked the door to her fifth-story apartment on a winding road in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and took the same path to her gallery, so she could first pop into her favorite café for a quick (by French standards) café au lait and croissant, where she liked to sit on the terrasse and watch passersby start their day. From there, she wandered up to the Seine, where the bouquinistes were just opening the stalls to sell books throughout the afternoon. She had been born in Paris and spent the first nine years of her life here, and even though she once again called this city her home, she’d never quite gotten comfortable enough to take it for granted. Maybe it was because its vastness was too overwhelming, its buildings too beautiful, or maybe, to hear her sister Camille tell it, it was because she’d learned at a young age that anything and everything could be snatched out from under you in the blink of an eye.

Especially something you loved. And oh, did Isabelle love Paris.

Sure, London, where she’d moved with her mother and sister when she was nine, was nice, but it didn’t inspire her the way her childhood city did. It didn’t make her slow down and appreciate the beauty of the buildings, the food, and the art. But it had led her to Hugh, her husband. Her best friend. Her soul mate.

Smiling, she checked her watch as she crossed the Pont de l’Archevêché, then raised her chin to admire the Notre-Dame, before hurrying toward the second bridge on her journey, the one connecting ?le de la Cité with the second, smaller island that sat in the middle of the Seine, this one offering a sweeping view of the right bank.

Her gallery was on a long cobblestoned street flanked with small boutiques, ice cream parlors, and the occasional musician who would roll out his upright piano on warm summer days near the sweet old man who would park himself outside of the cafés with his marionette puppets, delighting children while their parents relaxed at nearby tables under the shade of the tree branches.

It was still early. Shops were just opening for the day, and while Isabelle didn’t expect many visitors, she did have a show she was most excited about in only a few weeks, one that would require a fair bit of planning, not that she minded. She was her father’s daughter in that sense, and she wasn’t too proud to admit it. While Paul Laurent may not have been the most present father, and certainly not the most faithful husband, he was a true creative, filling his children’s young minds with an appreciation for the creative arts, and that was one gift she was forever grateful for.

Isabelle popped the second key on her chain into the lock of the tall glass door and pushed into the small space, which would be better lit this afternoon, giving new life to the colorful assortment of watercolors that currently graced the narrow walls of the gallery. Soon, they’d be replaced by the moody oils of an up-and-coming artist she was lucky enough to feature for his opening, but she couldn’t work on the arrangement of the paintings until she had the last one in her possession, something Gabriel Duvall promised to deliver here yesterday, and the day before that. Isabelle wasn’t worried—yet. Growing up with an artist for a parent had exposed her to the temperament that often accompanied a creative mindset, and she knew that the process couldn’t be rushed or forced, so she didn’t press the artist for his final piece, even though the collection would feel incomplete without it.

Besides, she had bigger, more personal concerns at the moment.

Isabelle walked straight to the back of the room, where an antique desk she’d moved from her grandmother’s apartment sat facing the windows, giving her a full view of the activity on the street and a vantage point to greet any guests. There were the occasional tourists, who were usually just browsing, or the locals, who had done their research and knew when she had something new and exciting to see, but most days were quiet, just her in these four walls. And even though she was alone, she never felt lonely. Not with all of Paris right there on the other side of the glass.

Today she certainly couldn’t feel alone. Hugh was returning from his latest business trip that had kept him away for the past three weeks. She would take her usual path home—different from her morning routine, so she could stop at her favorite boulangerie along the way to grab a baguette for dinner, unless they decided to go to their favorite bistro for goat cheese salads and roasted chicken. She wasn’t drinking wine at the moment—not until she knew for certain what the future held—but a sip wouldn’t hurt, and Hugh’s return was cause for a celebration.

She set a hand to her stomach and took a steadying breath. She’d gotten ahead of herself yesterday and started thinking of baby names, something that she wouldn’t dare share with Hugh because he didn’t even know that she might be pregnant. It wasn’t like they were trying. She was just…hoping. Longing, really. Whereas Hugh was content with waiting. His business was busier than ever, she knew, with over ten new luxury hotels opening across the globe this year, but she wasn’t getting any younger, either. And they were settled, after years of bouncing from city to city and hotel to hotel. The apartment was large with three bedrooms, a spacious living room, and plenty of light thanks to the tall windows. The way she saw it, there was no reason to wait. The way she saw it, she had waited long enough.

Her phone rang before she could settle into her desk, and she smiled when she saw her husband’s name appear on the screen.

“Hugh?” She pulled out her chair and powered up her laptop. “Don’t tell me you’ve already landed? I would have taken the day off from work.” As it was, she had scheduled two phone meetings with collectors this morning, and she still needed to go over the responses to the invitations for Gabriel’s opening.

“So sorry, darling.” Hugh’s familiar British accent couldn’t stop her heart from sinking. “Change of plans.”

“Again?” Isabelle sighed. How were they ever going to start a family if Hugh was always away?

But then she glanced at the baby furniture catalog she’d accidentally left on her desk yesterday and remembered that maybe they had already started one, and in due time, her life wouldn’t just be perfect, it would finally be complete.

“I need to stay in Tokyo for at least another few weeks,” Hugh continued. “I hope you didn’t make big plans.”

“No, not really,” Isabelle said distractedly. She had the Duvall opening to plan, and plenty of work to consume her until his return. “I hope you’ll still make it back in time for the show. It’s going to be the biggest one of the year.” Really, the biggest one of her career.

Several galleries had noticed Gabriel’s work thanks to a recent article in Paris Match , which featured one of his paintings in the apartment of a well-known fashion designer. After a little investigating, Isabelle had discovered that Gabriel was a professor at an art college, that he’d only painted the landscape as a gift to a friend, and that he was a fan of her father’s early work.

It was just the edge she needed, and she took it. Camille would grumble if she ever knew, but Isabelle didn’t talk to her sister much, and they talked about their father even less.

The opening was expected to be big. She’d hired a publicist to send out teasers, and she’d put out feelers with all of her collectors who were always on the lookout for a breakout artist.

It was an opportunity that wouldn’t present itself again, and one that she knew could help her make her mark among the more established galleries, maybe even land her in a guidebook.

But more than anything, she hoped that its success would finally convince Hugh—and maybe herself—that she’d made the right choice by staying here in Paris instead of continuing to travel.

“I’ll do my best,” Hugh said, but his tone didn’t hold any promises. “You know how these acquisitions can go.”

Yes, she did. And she also knew that her husband loved his job and that she wasn’t going to be one of those wives who told him to cut back or to stay home more, even though that’s exactly what he accused her of doing when she set up home in the Left Bank apartment and rented this gallery space.

He wasn’t happy about her decision to stop traveling so much with him, but he understood what made her happy, and so, somehow, they’d made it work. She’d agreed that twice a year she would accompany him somewhere she longed to visit, for vacation or to explore the local art scene, and once a month he would return to Paris, where he’d stay for a few days, sometimes even a week, always insisting he loved this city more than he remembered, before jetting off again.

“Well, don’t work too late,” Isabelle said, calculating the time difference.

“Just room service and an early night for me,” Hugh replied. “And—oh. My dinner is here.”

“You go eat and relax,” Isabelle told him. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She felt her shoulders sag as she listened to the sound of a food trolley being wheeled into Hugh’s room, the clanking of dishes drowning out the polite conversation in the background before suddenly, the phone was turned off.

Isabelle stared at the dark screen of her phone and then lifted her gaze to the window, watching the shop owners and early morning tourists stroll the narrow road, wondering why, if her husband was stuck in Tokyo, she could have sworn that the hotel worker she’d just heard had been speaking in French.

By the time Isabelle had collected her baguette from the boulangerie and rounded the corner to her apartment that evening, she had nearly convinced herself that she had misunderstood what she had heard. It was one of those funny things about being raised bilingual and then picking up bits of other languages from school and travel. Sometimes she dreamed in French when she was still living in England with her mother, and sometimes, especially at museums, she heard someone speak a line or two of a foreign language that she understood, only to later determine that it had been Italian or Spanish.

The hotel worker had probably been speaking English, which would make sense, considering that Hugh didn’t speak Japanese, and because Isabelle had lived in France for so long, and because she simply knew that she understood what was being said, her mind played tricks on her.

Yes, surely that was it.

Or maybe… Dare she even hope? Maybe it was baby brain.

A little flutter went up in her stomach as she collected her mail and then let herself into the tiny elevator that carried her up to the second to the top floor of the apartment building, and not because she was anxious that it would stall halfway up, or worse, drop to the bottom. Those were childhood fears, made worse because her father loved to thrill his daughters with wild stories, one of which involved a fictional account of the time that he nearly plunged to his death in this old contraption that could hardly fit more than two people at a time. For years, Camille would fight back tears at every creak and groan when they visited Grand-mère, and each time Isabelle could have sworn she saw a twinkle in her father’s eye.

Thinking of her sister and feeling the need to banish any lingering doubts about that strange conversation with Hugh from her mind, she dialed Camille the moment she slipped off her shoes and deposited the baguette in the small but tastefully decorated kitchen. As it often did, the call went to voicemail, and Isabelle knew that her sister never bothered to check those messages. She’d simply see that Isabelle had called and get back to her when she had a free moment, which was rare, but not rare enough for Isabelle to take it personally. Like herself, Camille had a busy career, but unlike herself, Camille also had a child to raise.

Fighting off a wave of self-pity and then another swell of hope, Isabelle riffled through the mail, smiling at the latest postcard from her father, this one from Portugal.

“Will be in Paris soon. Hope to see you all.”

She frowned at this. Her father was coming to Paris? And what exactly did he mean by wanting to see them all ?

Both implied herself and Camille. But all ? Did he mean their mother? She nearly laughed out loud at the thought of her stoic, self-possessed mother willingly being in the same room as her ex-husband—she’d only survived Isabelle’s wedding with the help of several ice-cold gin and tonics and the self-restraint that came with age and distance.

Unless he meant…Sophie? Isabelle dismissed that idea immediately. Her half sister lived in New York. The last time Isabelle had seen her had been five years ago, at her wedding, and their communication since had been limited to holiday and birthday texts and cards, most of which Isabelle sent from the far reaches of South America, Asia, or other European cities. Surely Papa wouldn’t think that Sophie would cross the Atlantic to have a family dinner—the first since he’d left Sophie’s mother when she was twelve and Isabelle and Camille had stopped visiting each summer.

There was only one way to find out, and only so much suspense that Isabelle’s nerves could handle. Waiting to find out whether or not she was finally going to have a reason to set up a nursery in the small corner bedroom with the lovely view of the neighboring park was one thing, but trying to decipher her father’s note was another.

She pulled his name up on her phone and dialed, and, unlike her sister, he answered on the very first ring.

“ Ma belle! ” My beauty . His term of endearment always made her feel better, even now, when she was well into her thirties.

“Hello, Papa,” she said warmly. “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner.”

“Nonsense! I always have time for you!”

Isabelle narrowed her eyes at that remark, knowing that Camille would have snorted over it. She pressed her lips together, refraining from stating the obvious, which was that Paul Laurent hadn’t made a habit of making time for his daughters any more than he had for their mothers.

“I see you’ll be in Paris soon,” she said, turning the postcard over in her hand to admire the scene of Lisbon at sunset.

“Yes, and I hope to be able to have dinner with all of you too.”

There it was again. And so was the skip of her heart.

She sat down on the nearest armchair, the one that lent a view of the buildings across the street, one that she preferred above all the other sitting areas in the apartment. When she was younger, she loved to try to look through the windows, wondering what other people were doing, what kept them busy, what made them laugh. Usually, it brought her comfort to know that in a city as big as Paris, she was never alone. Today, there was a fat chance of that.

“All of us?” she repeated weakly.

“You and your sisters!” He said it as if it should be obvious. Or easy. But that was Paul Laurent for you. He didn’t understand practicalities any more than he embraced responsibility.

Expecting to see his youngest daughter in Europe in a matter of weeks was about as far-fetched as spending time with his ex-wives.

And expecting to see Camille… Well!

“Camille is in London and Sophie is in New York,” Isabelle reminded him in case he had forgotten—which was entirely possible.

“Surely they’d all welcome a visit to Paris! Who wouldn’t?”

Camille, for starters , Isabelle thought wryly. She didn’t know what would convince her sister to make the rather short journey other than—

She felt the blood drain from her face.

“Papa,” she said nervously. “Is everything…okay?”

“Is it so preposterous for me to want to have dinner with all of my daughters?” he replied, sounding both amused and a little stung.

Oh, her father. That was his way. He didn’t understand that his behavior had consequences. That he’d hurt people. That maybe some of them wouldn’t want to see him.

Or that a dinner with his three daughters was preposterous. Not just because they all lived in different countries, but because they’d never once gathered with him as adults.

Or even with each other.

Which again begged the question: Why now?

Dread made her breathing turn heavy, but then Isabelle thought of the baby—or the possible baby—and tried her best to relax.

This was probably one of her father’s whims. One of his impulsive ideas, like the time he’d started making wire sculptures out of clothes hangers. Like the time he decided, after ten years of marriage to her mother, whom he claimed was his first true love, to run off and marry an American!

“A dinner all together sounds lovely,” Isabelle said honestly. “I’m just not sure how realistic it is.”

“ Ma belle ,” he said patiently. “Didn’t I teach you that in life, anything is possible?”

She smiled now, breathing easier. It was something he’d taught her, long ago, something that mattered much more than the birthday gifts he forgot to send, or the important school events he missed. He’d given her the passion to explore the world, to see beauty in things so many others simply overlooked.

And above all to believe that anything was possible.

She set a hand to her stomach. Anything.

“The thing is, Isabelle,” he said, his tone turning more grave, “I don’t speak to your sisters as often as I do to you.”

This was not new information, though Isabelle was mildly surprised that her father had even taken notice of this lack of contact. Or that he seemed, dare she say, embarrassed by it.

“Would you like me to suggest they visit?” she asked, fighting back a sigh. She was still picking up her father’s messes, just like she had when she was eight and he’d stayed out too late at the café around the corner from their apartment in Montmartre, drinking too much and with God only knew who else in retrospect.

“Don’t tell your mother,” he’d pleaded in a whisper when she’d emerged from her bedroom, her eyes heavy with sleep, confused by the request. “I’ll just curl up here for a bit,” he’d said as he stretched out on the sofa and plumped the throw pillow under his head. “It’s like I fell asleep watching television. She’ll never have to know.”

By then, Isabelle’s mother had taken to going to bed by eight, the same as her daughters, with the help of a sleeping pill, and Papa usually rolled in an hour or so later, having been working all day in various cafés or parks where he was always searching for inspiration.

Isabelle had kept her father’s secret that day, thinking that she was helping, just like she helped when he walked out the door for good twelve months later, and she had to bring her mother endless cups of tea and then pack up the beautiful Paris apartment so they could move back to her mother’s home country of England.

She was the good daughter. The helper.

And some roles never changed with time.

“Oh, thank you, Isabelle,” her father said now with obvious relief. “I knew I could count on you.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, Papa?” Isabelle asked again. “Something else I could…help you with?”

But instead of confiding a health crisis or some other personal disaster, her father just laughed and said, “Just organizing this soirée is all the help I need! Shall we say two weeks from today? All of you?”

Isabelle stared out the window, looking down onto the streets of Paris, the city she’d grown up in, the one she loved. The one that Camille loathed and Sophie had never had a reason to visit before now.

She knew she shouldn’t promise anything, but she also knew, like Papa always said, that in life, anything was possible. Even this.

“All of us,” she told her father.