Chapter Nine
Henry was surprised to realize that it was already ten in the morning when he awoke in his granddaughter’s guest room.
“Melanie, I didn’t mean to sleep so late,” he said a moment later, shuffling into the kitchen and finding Melanie there, her back to him, as she tinkered with her Nespresso machine.
“It’s the time difference,” she said without turning around. “You’ll adjust in a couple of days, Grandpa Henry.”
Henry squinted at her. She still hadn’t turned, and her voice sounded thick and strange. “Melanie, my dear? Are you all right?”
She finally looked over her shoulder at him, and he could see instantly that her eyes were bloodshot and her smile was fake. “Oh, sure, I’m fine.”
He gritted his teeth, hurting for her. “You haven’t told me what happened with Gilles.”
She turned back to the Nespresso. “Would you like a latte, Grandpa?”
“Just black coffee for me, dear. Now, what happened?”
Melanie pushed a few buttons on the Nespresso maker, and like some kind of miracle, it spewed out a rich-smelling dark brew into a white mug, which Melanie passed across the counter without answering his question. “Why don’t you tell me about your visit to Celeste?”
He took a small sip of the hot coffee and raised an eyebrow at Melanie. “Not until you tell me about Gilles.”
“He said he’d made a mistake,” Melanie said quietly. “That he’d never meant to hurt me.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I think,” she said slowly, “that what he actually meant was that he never intended for me to find out.”
Henry nodded as Melanie turned back to the Nespresso machine and made herself a drink.
Melanie was a smart girl, and for this he was glad, for it meant she would land on her feet, no matter what.
But sometimes, the smartest among us were the most foolish at love.
A mind and a heart weren’t always on the same page.
He made a mental note to think about that sentiment later for a song lyric.
“Do you believe he was genuinely sorry?”
Melanie turned back around, a steaming espresso in hand. “I really do.”
“And do you think you can ever trust him again?” Henry asked carefully.
Her eyes flitted to his and then dropped. “I don’t know.”
Henry gritted his teeth, his dislike of his grandson-in-law multiplying by the second. How he wished Melanie would wake up and see her own value. “You know you’re under no obligation to accept his apology.”
“Aren’t I?” she asked, raising her eyes to meet his. “I can’t just throw away two decades of marriage, though, can I, Grandpa Henry?”
“It strikes me,” Henry replied, “that you would not be the one throwing those decades away.”
“Affairs are the norm here in France, though,” Melanie said. “Maybe it’s not fair of me to—”
“To what?” Henry interrupted. “To expect a husband who is faithful to you? It seems to me that regardless of what other people are doing, that’s the very least you should expect in a marriage.”
Melanie wiped at her eyes. “Maybe you’re right. But enough about me. What about Celeste?”
Henry looked into his coffee like it might hold the secrets to the universe. “She did not know me.”
Melanie frowned. “Oh, Grandpa Henry…”
“But there was something there, Melanie. She switched to speaking English when she saw me, as if it was second nature for her. Her laugh was the same; her smile was the same. She was still in there. I just couldn’t reach her.”
“I’m so sorry. What are you going to do?”
He gave her a shaky smile. “I’m going to return every day until she remembers. I always promised I’d come back for her, you see. I’ve failed her. My whole life, I’ve failed her.”
“But you didn’t know she’d lived.”
“And now I do. Now I have to keep that promise every single day.”
Melanie looked down. “Everybody deserves to be loved like that, I think.”
He waited until she looked up and met his eyes. “Yes, my dear,” he said, holding her gaze. “Everybody does.”
Melanie’s grandfather left thirty minutes after their conversation in the kitchen, saying he was heading back to Celeste’s assisted-living facility in hopes that she might be more lucid earlier in the day. Melanie’s heart ached for him; it was clear that he loved the woman deeply.
Melanie had felt like that about Gilles at the beginning, too. She’d been swept away in the romance of it all, and she’d felt loved and cherished.
But had she deceived herself? After all, they’d married quickly, after less than a year of dating.
We’re not getting any younger, Gilles had said when he’d proposed—admittedly not the most romantic line.
But Melanie had agreed, because at the time, she’d thought that turning thirty had meant she was already inching toward old age.
In retrospect, though, she’d still been so young and so impressionable, and she’d wanted so badly to believe in a magical love story with a handsome French man that she’d forgotten to ask herself what she wanted.
And even though she knew the spark was mostly gone from their marriage, the love wasn’t—at least on her end. Gilles was her family, and up until she’d found the text from Amandine, she’d assumed he always would be. Now she didn’t know what she believed.
She was putting away dishes in the kitchen, humming sadly to herself, when she heard Gilles’s key in the lock. She turned just as he walked through the front door.
“Mon amour,” he said, crossing to her immediately and trying to kiss her. She turned her head so that his lips landed on her cheek. He pulled back. “Ah, you are still angry.”
Melanie stared at him in disbelief, his words reigniting her fury. “Of course I’m still angry. What, you thought you’d go out for a few hours, and I’d magically be over the fact that you had an affair?”
“N’en fais pas tout un fromage,” he said, the French equivalent of accusing someone of making a mountain out of a molehill. His eyes were pleading. “It was a mistake. I told you.”
“No, a mistake is tripping on the sidewalk or misspelling a word in a corporate report. This was deliberate, Gilles. You chose to betray me.”
As he stared at her, she felt a surge of strength. She had never talked to him like this before.
“Well, I broke things off with Amandine,” he said after a long pause, his eyes downcast as he said his mistress’s name. “That’s where I went this morning. I wanted to finish things as soon as possible.”
“Excuse me, what? You went to see your mistress?”
“To end things!”
“And you couldn’t do that on the phone?”
“I needed her to understand. You can’t be upset about that, can you? I felt that I owed it to her to have that conversation in person.”
“Oh, you owed it to her? How gentlemanly of you.” Melanie choked out a laugh. “Why break it off, anyhow?”
“Why?” He looked up, his expression incredulous. “Because you are my wife! Because I don’t want to lose you! Because you are the one I love!”
Melanie held his gaze and dared herself to be honest for once. “But what if that isn’t enough?”
“Pardon?” He looked confused.
“What if that isn’t enough for me? What if I want more, Gilles? What if I want someone who’s really in this marriage, not someone who would cheat on me the moment things feel a little dull?”
Gilles raked a hand through his thinning hair. “Melanie, the affair was an error in judgment. A failing. I love you. You must know that.”
Melanie looked at him for a long time. “I love you, too, Gilles. But I’m not sure how much that really matters anymore.”
She felt defeated, deflated. She didn’t know what she wanted. She did know, however, that she couldn’t stand the sight of him right now.
“Melanie—” he began.
“I need some time to think. You should go stay in a hotel for a few days.”
His mouth fell open. “A hotel?”
She wanted to laugh—how could he be so surprised at being asked to leave?—but there was nothing funny about this. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk.” And with that, she put down the dish towel, grabbed her purse from the counter, and headed out the door of the apartment without looking back.
Sunshine was streaming in through Russ’s bedroom windows when he awoke, tangled up in sheets, just past 10 a.m. As he squinted into the too-bright daylight, he had two sudden realizations: One, he’d had far too much whiskey last night, and two, he wasn’t alone.
Shelby. The American girl slept beside him, her face turned toward him, one of her arms draped over his torso. God, she was beautiful.
He sat up in bed and surveyed the damage around the room. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s sat nearly empty on the nightstand, two rocks glasses beside it, one of them lying on its side. He put a hand to his aching head, the events of the evening filtering back in.
Leaving the bar with Shelby. His arm around her shoulder as he’d led her back to his apartment.
The way she’d deflated when he’d told her she was beautiful.
The bottle of Jack, which had been full when he’d grabbed it from his cupboard.
The first shot they’d taken, toasting to the future.
A second shot, toasting good riddance to those who’d hurt them.
A third shot, toasting to chance meetings.
And a fourth, toasting to… well, now he couldn’t remember.
He remembered laughing with her, and he remembered her curled up in a ball, sobbing.
He remembered kissing her deeply and also realizing, as their kisses grew more frantic, that he couldn’t do this, not while she was drunk and still possibly in love with her ex-husband.
That’s when he’d stopped, carrying her to bed and holding her until she fell asleep.
This was not what Benji would have done.
Benji would have screwed her and sent her on her way.
Maybe life would be easier if he could be a bit more like Benji, but that wasn’t who he was.
Never had been, never would be. And as Shelby opened her blue eyes and blinked at him first in confusion and then in realization, he was glad he hadn’t taken advantage of the situation.
It was very clear that this girl was broken.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling down at her.