Chapter Thirteen #2
“I already know who I am,” Piper protested.
“Do you, though?” Julia said gently. “You’ve spent the past couple of years setting aside everything that makes you who you are in order to be there for me.
And I can never thank you enough for that.
But it’s time you become you again—the you who laughs at Friends reruns and loves being with her friends and makes the world’s best chocolate-chunk cookies and reads every novel she can get her hands on.
Nothing would make me happier than seeing the woman you’ll be when I’m gone and knowing in my heart that you’ll be all right. Okay, honey? You can’t stop living.”
Piper opened her mouth like she was going to protest, but finally, she nodded. “Okay.”
“Good.”
They made their way across the quai Jacques Chirac until they were standing just beneath the tower itself, its warm light washing over them, illuminating their faces.
Julia stared up at the tower for a moment, and then she looked over at her daughter, whose eyes were wide as she gazed up at the extraordinary iron lattice framework stretching a thousand feet into the sky.
“Piper?” she said after a moment, and she watched as her daughter’s eyes moved from the glory of the tower down to her.
“Yes, Mom?”
“I love you so much,” Julia said, her voice breaking. How many more chances would she get to say the words? Would Piper know, after Julia was gone, just how much she’d meant them with every fiber of her being?
“I love you, too, Mom,” Piper said, and they put their arms around each other and returned to staring up at the Eiffel Tower, which had been there for more than a hundred and thirty years and would still be standing long after both of them were gone.
The Eiffel Tower was sparkling as Kayla crossed through the Esplanade David Ben Gourion.
Usually, she kept her eyes fixed on the magical light show of the tower, but tonight, she was hoping to see Nadim.
No one had ever looked at her as closely or as tenderly as he had last night, and though she figured it was simply an artist soaking in the details of his subject, she had liked how it had felt.
His gaze had been warm and intimate, and every time he’d spoken, his melodic voice had done something to her.
As he’d sketched, he’d told her that by day, he was an accountant for a shipping company but that he found the work soulless and looked forward to stopping here by the river each evening with his pastels before the sun went down.
He’d asked about her job, and she’d explained how rewarding it was to work with elderly dementia patients but that, sometimes, seeing their loved ones try in vain to reach them broke her heart.
Now, as she walked, she noticed Nadim in the same spot he’d occupied yesterday, the shadows falling over him as night approached, a single streetlamp illuminating his easel. He looked up and saw her, a grin lighting up his face.
“Kayla!” He called, waving to her, and she couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across her face, too, as she hurried over.
“Hi.” She felt instantly shy.
“I was hoping I would see you this evening,” he said, beckoning to the open spot beside him on the bench. “I thought you might like to see one of your paintings.”
“Really?” She smiled, but then she glanced down at her watch. “Shoot, I only have a few minutes before I have to go.”
“A date?” he guessed.
She laughed. “No. Actually, I took your advice and invited my dad out for a drink tonight. I actually haven’t been on a date since I moved here.” She promptly pressed her lips together, embarrassed. Why would she admit something like that aloud?
But Nadim didn’t look like he was judging her. “I would think a beautiful woman like you would be asked out on dates all the time.”
She could feel herself blushing. Was he flirting with her?
Or was she reading too much into it? “Well, you would be mistaken,” she said.
“I don’t really meet people my age working in a nursing home, you know?
” In a hurry to change the subject, she sat down beside him and looked at the pastel painting on his easel.
The image he’d created there made her gasp and pull back.
“Nadim,” she breathed. “This is… beautiful.”
“Because it’s you,” he said, his voice low.
Kayla stared at the painting, which was similar to the ones he’d shown her yesterday: a lone woman with the Seine behind her, her face aglow with the lights of the Eiffel Tower.
But instead of the vague suggestion of her face from a distance, this one captured her more closely, from the trio of freckles just below her left earlobe to the single dimple in her right cheek.
He had painted her with the vaguest reflection of the Eiffel Tower in her blue eyes, a small smile playing across her lips.
She didn’t even have the words for how impressed she was. “It’s… incredible.”
He grinned. “I’m glad you think so. This one is yours, if you’d like.” He picked it up off the easel and handed it to her.
She blinked at him, startled, and then looked down at the painting in her hands. “Mine?”
“Of course. You are very kind to allow me to paint you. It’s the least I can do to repay you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll return and talk with me again. I would like that very much.”
“Um, yeah.” She was flustered, overwhelmed by the reflection of herself in his painting. “Of course. I’ll… I’ll come see you again tomorrow on the way home.”
“I hope you enjoy your drink with your father, Kayla. You are doing the right thing by talking with him. Doors open when we say what we mean, I think.” He smiled at her once more and took the painting back from her, signing his name on the bottom right, followed by two x’s.
Then he rolled the painting up, extracted a rubber band from his pocket to loop around it, and handed it to her, looking her in the eye in a way that made her heart beat a little faster.