Chapter 35 – GRANT
GRANT
Tanya's text arrived at six in the morning, three weeks before the date.
Don't screw this up, intern.
Followed by a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Column headers in bold. Guest names, dietary restrictions, preferred drinks, arrival windows. The woman ran a surprise party like a military campaign, and I had never been more grateful for someone who openly despised me.
I called her from the car.
"I got your file."
"It's not a file, it's a lifeline. Left to your own devices you'd book a private room at some Michelin place with a tasting menu and a sommelier who calls everyone 'monsieur' and Noelle would spend the whole night making sure everyone else was comfortable."
"That's—" I stopped. Because that was exactly what I'd been planning. "Fine. What do you suggest?"
"Her flat. The courtyard behind the building. Fairy lights, long table, food people can actually reach across each other to grab. She doesn't want to be hosted, Grant. She wants to be in it."
I wrote everything down.
Celeste arrived at the house Saturday morning with a box of vintage glass lanterns she'd found at the Marché aux Puces. She spread them across the dining table and sorted them by height while I reviewed Tanya's spreadsheet for the fourth time.
"Stop reading it like a contract."
"There are forty-three line items."
"Because Tanya's insane and thorough, which is why Noelle loves her." Celeste held a blue lantern up to the window. "This one. For the center."
My mother came at noon with her own list, shorter, written in the looping cursive she'd used on every birthday card since I was born. She set it beside the spreadsheet and tapped one item.
"The garden. You're doing flowers yourself, yes?"
"Tanya's handling the courtyard."
"Tanya's handling the structure. You're handling the flowers. Noelle will know the difference." She looked at me over her reading glasses. "White ranunculus. She carried them at the wedding and you didn't notice, but I did."
I ordered the ranunculus that afternoon.
Henri had some suggestions of his own as the planning progressed.
His voice still carried the wheeze from recovery, but his physiotherapist had cleared him for short outings two weeks prior, and the old man had been using his freedom to walk to the boulangerie every morning like a man released from prison.
"Gateau Basque."
"Sorry?"
"For the cake. Her mother made it every year.
Cherry filling, not custard. Noelle stopped asking for it after her mother died because nobody else could get the pastry right.
" He paused. Something shifted in his breathing—not medical, something older.
"I should have kept making it. I should have learned. "
I wrote down the recipe he dictated. His memory was precise—two hundred and fifty grams of flour, one hundred and forty of butter, the egg yolks separated, almond extract not vanilla, cherry preserves from the jar with the blue label, and the crust scored with a fork in crosshatch lines because that was how his late wife did it.
"The oven runs hot. Ten degrees lower than you think."
"I'll manage."
"You'll burn it. Have your mother supervise."
I burned the first one.
My mother stood at the counter with her arms folded and said nothing while I scraped blackened pastry into the bin. Celeste sat on the kitchen stool eating cherries from the jar.
"Henri said ten degrees lower."
"I did ten degrees lower."
"Your oven's been recalibrated since the renovation. Try fifteen." My mother tied her apron tighter and rolled up her sleeves. "Start the dough again. I'll watch the temperature."
The second attempt came closer. The crust held its shape, golden-brown, and the crosshatch pattern showed clean against the surface. But the cherry filling had thinned, leaking through a crack near the edge.
Celeste leaned over and examined it. "Needs more cornstarch in the preserves. Mom, do you have?—"
"Bottom shelf, behind the sugar."
The third cake came out at half past nine on Wednesday evening. The crust was firm and buttery. The crosshatch lines held. The filling stayed where it belonged, dark and sweet beneath the surface. My mother pressed a finger to the top, nodded once, and Celeste took a photograph.
"Don't send that to Noelle."
"I'm sending it to Tanya so she knows you're not completely useless."
Tanya's reply came in eleven seconds: Acceptable. Don't let him frost it.
There was no frosting. Gateau Basque doesn't take frosting. Tanya knew that. She just wanted the last word.
The courtyard behind Noelle's building held thirty people in a space designed for twenty.
Tanya had strung lights between the fire escape and the old trellis.
The long table ran nearly wall to wall, covered in mismatched linen that Celeste had pressed that morning.
Glass lanterns threw warm pools across the plates.
White ranunculus in mason jars, because Tanya had vetoed crystal vases as "aggressively Calvelli. "
Noelle walked through the back gate at seven and stopped.
Thirty faces turned. Tanya raised her glass from the far end of the table. Celeste shouted something indecent. Henri sat in a cushioned chair near the wall, wrapped in his coat despite the mild evening, and when Noelle's gaze found him he lifted one hand and held it there, trembling and deliberate.
Noelle pressed both palms over her mouth.
I stayed where I was, behind the table, beside the cake. Let her come to me or not. Her choice, as everything would be from now on.
She went to Henri first. Kissed his forehead. He cupped her face in both hands and said something I couldn't hear. Whatever it was made her close her eyes.
Then Tanya. Then Celeste and Charles. Then my mother, who held her for a long time.
Then me.
She stood in front of me. Her eyes were wet and bright. She looked at the cake.
"Is that?—"
"Your father gave me the recipe. Cherry, not custard. Crosshatch with a fork."
Her hand covered mine on the table. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
The party was loud and warm and imperfect.
Charles knocked over a lantern. Tanya and Celeste argued about soil drainage over dessert.
Henri fell asleep in his chair by nine and my mother draped a blanket over his knees without waking him.
Someone brought a speaker, and music drifted across the courtyard—old French songs that made the older guests hum along.
Noelle sat in the center of the table, not at its head. She laughed at Tanya's stories. She leaned into my shoulder when Celeste made a toast. She ate two slices of cake and closed her eyes on the first bite.
Nobody mentioned Camille. Last anyone heard, she'd landed in London with a new fiancé, some young financier barely out of school. Henri had grumbled about it once during physiotherapy—"The boy's twenty-four, for God's sake"—then let it go. We all let it go.
At half past ten the courtyard emptied. Tanya left last, squeezing Noelle's hand in the doorway.
"Happy birthday, Ellie."
"Thank you. For all of it."
Tanya shot me a look over Noelle's shoulder. Not warmth, exactly. Provisional tolerance. I'd take it.
We climbed the stairs to her flat. Noelle unlocked the door and set the leftover cake on the counter. I waited in the hallway, the unspoken boundary still intact—I slept on the sofa when I stayed, and I didn't always stay.
She turned back. Held out her hand.
"Come to bed."
I took her hand, and she led me through the narrow hall, past the guest room, past the bathroom, to the bedroom door at the end. She pushed it open. Moonlight fell across the white duvet. Her drafting table stood beneath the window, covered in plans, the silver Rotring resting in its groove.
She pulled me inside and closed the door behind us.