Chapter Thirteen
Instead, he let his feet carry him from the metro back to Melanie’s apartment, where he let himself in with the key she’d given him yesterday.
The floral smell assaulted him first. When he reached over to flip on the light switch to the right of the door, he gasped. The parlor was filled with at least two hundred red roses, probably more, some of them in vases, some of them in pitchers, some of them in mixing bowls.
“I ran out of places to put them.” Melanie’s voice wafted in from the kitchen. “Gilles sent two hundred forty roses, Grandpa Henry, but no vases.”
Henry crossed the flower-filled room and entered the kitchen where, unbelievably, there were even more flowers.
The sink itself was filled with water and held at least fifty of them, and there were several bouquets on the counter still wrapped in wax paper and plastic.
Melanie was seated at the kitchen counter, her eyes bloodshot. “Two hundred forty?”
“A dozen for every year we’ve been married,” she said flatly. “His attempt at being romantic, I think.”
“Have you just been sitting here in the dark?” he asked her carefully.
“I guess so.”
“And where is Gilles?”
“I told him to go stay in a hotel.”
Henry looked around the room. “Before or after the flowers arrived?”
“Before,” she said dully. “This morning. He told me he’d broken things off with Amandine.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
Melanie shrugged. “I suppose. But he only did it because he was caught, don’t you think? Besides, does he think a few flowers are going to change things?”
“Well, it appears that’s exactly his hope,” Henry said, giving the room another sweeping look of disbelief. “What else did he say?”
Melanie shrugged. “That he loves me.”
“And how do you feel?”
She looked defeated. “Honestly? I don’t know anymore.”
“I see.” Henry fought the urge to tell her that perhaps that was the best thing that could have happened to her.
Melanie wiped her eyes and smiled at her grandfather. “Anyhow, how did it go with Celeste today?”
“Not well, I’m afraid. But I had an idea. What do you think about coming with me to the Jackson Quick concert this Friday?”
“Jackson Quick?” Of course Melanie knew that her grandfather had written Jackson Quick’s biggest hit, but still she looked perplexed.
“ ‘City of Light’ is about Celeste,” he explained.
“I wrote the first version of it for her when we were together in Paris during the war. Before I met your grandmother,” he added hastily.
“I updated and modernized it over the years, so it’s not quite the same as it was back then, but I thought perhaps if she hears the same words I sang to her, the same melody… ”
“Oh, Grandpa Henry,” Melanie said. “What if it doesn’t make her remember?”
“I don’t know, Melanie,” Henry said. “But what if it does? I have to try, don’t I?”
“I guess you do,” she agreed. “It’s amazing that you still love her so much, Grandpa Henry.”
“I’d do anything for her,” Henry said. As Melanie walked away to tend to the rest of the flowers, he found himself wishing fervently that whether it was with Gilles or with someone entirely different in the future, Melanie would know what it felt like to be loved that way, too.
Julia was propped up in bed, reading a book, when Piper came in just past seven, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining. It didn’t take a mind reader to ascertain the reason.
“How did it go with Nicolas?” Julia asked with a smile before Piper had even said hello.
“He’s kind of amazing.”
Julia closed her book. “I want to hear all about it at dinner.”
“You’re sure you’re up to going out?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
While Piper ducked into the bathroom with a change of clothes to freshen up, Julia stood, too, and slipped on the sleek black dress that she’d left hanging on the hook near the bathroom.
It was just her and her daughter tonight, but this was still Paris, and she wanted to feel like someone attractive, not someone ill.
She touched up her mascara, swiped on some French-red lipstick, and nodded approvingly at her reflection in the mirror beside the door.
She sat back down on the bed, and as she waited for Piper, she pulled out the napkin with Sam’s number and stared at it again.
The truth was, she’d barely made it through ten pages of the book she’d been reading in the past two hours; every time she skimmed a few sentences, her mind wandered back to Sam and what on earth she’d been thinking when she’d turned him down.
Well of course she knew what she’d been thinking. She’d been thinking that she was dying and she didn’t want to lead him on. It would be irresponsible to form another human connection now; she already felt guilty enough.
But isolating herself—cutting everyone off so that she left minimum wreckage in her wake—was lonelier than she’d anticipated.
Maybe she was overthinking this. Sam was a nice man who happened to be in Paris at the same time she was, but less than a week from now, they would both go back to where they came from.
She didn’t even know where he lived or what he did for a living.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she could learn to live in the present for once.
Maybe she could allow herself to spend time with a man with a kind smile and a deep voice that made her shiver, and the most magnetic honey-colored eyes she’d ever seen.
Maybe there was no harm in that as long as he wasn’t expecting anything, either.
“Mom?” Piper had emerged from the bathroom at some point, all dressed for dinner in dark jeans and a sheer black shirt over a lacy cami. “You okay?”
Julia realized she’d been standing in the middle of the room, clutching Sam’s napkin and staring off into space. She shoved the napkin back into her purse and forced a blank look of innocence. “Sorry, yes. Just thinking about something funny.”
Piper gave her a suspicious look but seemed to accept the explanation. “I love that dress, Mom. You look really pretty.”
“Thanks, hon. So do you.” The thought that Sam might like her in the dress, too, flickered through Julia’s mind, and she pushed it away. She was acting like a teenager with a crush. “Should we go? I don’t want to miss our reservation.”
Thirty minutes later, Piper and Julia were being shown to terrace seats at Chez Francis on the Right Bank, overlooking the Eiffel Tower just across the Seine.
“I can’t believe how magical this is,” Julia said as she and Piper ignored their menus and stared out at the monument, glowing against the darkening sky.
“It’s unreal,” Piper agreed. She reached across the table and squeezed Julia’s hands. “I’m really glad we’re here together, Mom.”
Julia turned her attention from the tower to her daughter, who looked delicate and beautiful in the pale lighting of the terrace. “I’m so glad, too, honey. So how did you leave it with Nicolas?”
“He asked for my number and said he’d call me tonight after he finishes work.”
“You should see him tomorrow,” Julia said.
“I mean… maybe.” But the smile Piper seemed to be trying to suppress belied the casual words. Julia had to turn away to hide a smile of her own. Her daughter was smitten, and she’d never seen her like that before. It was a beautiful thing to witness.
Their waiter arrived and they ordered glasses of champagne and bowls of French onion soup to start, and for dinner, Piper chose a filet au poivre while Julia ordered steak tartare, which came with matchstick fries.
When they’d finished with their meals, they were both completely full, but the waiter talked them each into a second glass of champagne, along with an order of Camembert cheese with Isigny Sainte-Mère cream, served with grilled bread.
“They’re going to have to roll me out of here,” Piper said with a groan as the waiter cleared their empty plates and the Eiffel Tower’s lights began to sparkle for the second time since they’d sat down, a dazzling five-minute show that began at the top of each hour.
“Me too,” Julia agreed. “But it was worth every bite. And every pound that I probably added to my hips tonight.”
Piper smiled a wobbly smile, but then suddenly, she was crying, and Julia didn’t know what she’d said wrong.
“What is it, honey?” she asked, reaching across the table to wipe a tear from her daughter’s cheek.
“It’s that… you say things like that… and it reminds me how little time there is,” Piper managed to say through sobs. “I mean, you don’t have to think about adding pounds because…”
She trailed off, and Julia sucked in a sharp breath. “Honey…”
“I just forget sometimes, you know?” Piper said. “I didn’t think of it once during dinner. But now…”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Piper said, sniffling as she grabbed the napkin from her lap to dab at her damp eyes. “I am, too.”
After they’d paid the bill, they strolled across the Pont de l’Alma, the Eiffel Tower illuminating the Left Bank like a magical nightlight just off to the right, piercing the blanket of sky. Halfway across the bridge, Piper looped her arm through Julia’s and put her head on her mother’s shoulder.
“I wish we could make this week last forever,” she said.
“In a way, it will,” Julia said after a moment, leaning her head into her daughter’s as they strolled. “You can choose, Piper. You can decide that you’ll never, ever forget these moments. I know that I won’t.”
“I won’t, either,” Piper said.
“But, honey?” Julia said a moment later as they turned right into a small park that would take them along the river’s edge as they walked toward the tower. “That doesn’t mean you should get stuck here in this memory, either.”
Piper turned to look at her mother. “What are you saying?”
“That you’re the best daughter in the world,” Julia said.
“But there’s more to you than that. You’re also a twenty-three-year-old woman in Paris for the first time.
I was right around your age when I lived here for the summer, and it’s the summer I became who I am.
It’s the summer I found myself. I want that for you, too. ”