Chapter Fifteen
Nicolas hadn’t called, and Piper couldn’t believe it.
Why had he bothered listening to her pour her heart out as they’d walked around Paris if he’d intended to ghost her? Why had he asked for her number at all? Why had he gazed at her so tenderly and made her feel like she mattered?
“Did you talk to Nicolas last night?” her mom asked as they waited near Notre Dame for the hop-on, hop-off Big Bus.
They’d just finished a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby—an almond croissant for Piper and a chocolate croissant for Julia, with plenty of coffee—and they were planning to spend the whole day riding around the city to visit several monuments and shops.
Piper knew it would be exhausting, but that’s why her mom planned to turn in early tonight instead of napping this afternoon.
Besides, she’d have some time to rest on the bus between stops.
“Uh, yeah,” Piper said, forcing a smile. She hated lying, but this trip was supposed to be perfect, and she knew her mom would fret about it if she thought Piper had been hurt. Fortunately, Piper had had plenty of practice pretending things were okay when they weren’t.
“Oh, good,” her mom said, putting an arm around her. “So you’ll see him again tonight, after I go to sleep?”
“Mom, honestly, he’s just some guy in a city I don’t live in,” Piper said, shrugging her mom’s arm off. “I think you’re making too big a deal of things. Let’s not talk about Nicolas. Let’s enjoy Paris, okay?”
Her mom gave her a suspicious look as the bus—double-decker and maroon with big yellow lettering—pulled up. “You’re sure everything’s okay?”
Piper bit her lip. Nothing had been okay in two years. “Of course,” she said with a sunny smile. “Come on, let’s grab seats.”
A few minutes later, Piper watched from the bus’s upper deck as they turned onto the street that ran along the river and drove directly past the Café Le Petit Pont on the left. Piper averted her eyes. Seriously, was the universe messing with her?
“You remind me of me when I was your age,” Piper’s mom said a few minutes later as the weeping willow at the edge of the ?le de la Cité rolled by to their right, which felt like another dagger to Piper’s heart. She looked quickly away, focusing on her mom.
“I do?” Piper asked, trying to shake off the feeling of rejection that had washed over her.
Her mom sighed. “I fell in love the summer I lived here, too. Or maybe it wasn’t love, but it was something special. Something I hadn’t felt before. It sounds crazy to say, but when I came back to the States, I came back knowing that I had value.”
“Of course you did, Mom. You do.”
“I know. But I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you necessarily know when you’re young.
And when you don’t know you have value, you settle for less than you deserve.
” Her mom’s voice was thick with emotion as she added, “Sometimes way less. That’s what I was doing before that summer I spent in Paris.
But being here, even for a small amount of time, changed me. ”
Piper didn’t know what to say, so she reached for her mom’s hand and squeezed.
“The thing is,” her mom continued, “I didn’t hang on to those lessons. And by the time I met your father, well, I think I had slid back into believing that I was lucky to have anyone pay attention to me.”
They didn’t talk much about Piper’s father.
When he and Piper’s mom had divorced, he’d remarried in less than a year, and his new wife was pregnant within months.
By the time Piper was a teenager, he had three preschoolers at home and hardly any time for her—but then again, he’d never had time for her when he’d still been married to her mom, either.
Sure, he’d called dutifully every Sunday through her teen years, and she’d seen him once or twice a month for court-ordered visits, but she’d always felt like a guest in his new home rather than a daughter who belonged there.
Once she’d gone off to college, her relationship with him had cooled; he was busy with her younger half siblings, and she no longer felt obligated to pretend she and her father were something they weren’t.
Since her mother’s diagnosis, though, he had been calling more frequently, which she supposed was nice. He was trying.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Piper said after a minute. “I know things with Dad didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.”
Her mom shrugged. “We were both young and na?ve and didn’t know what we were doing. I only wish that he’d left more room in his life for you.”
Piper swallowed the lump in her throat. “I think he’s trying now.”
“I think so, too, and I’m glad,” her mom said.
“And, look, I don’t know what will happen between you and Nicolas.
Maybe you’ll stay in touch. Maybe you’ll never see him again.
But the way he looks at you is the way you should always be looked at by someone you care about, Piper.
You deserve to be adored, and in the future, wherever your life goes and whoever you date, if you don’t feel that way, give yourself permission to walk away.
I’m glad I finally had the courage to do that with your dad, you know?
But I did it years too late. I don’t want you to make the same mistake. ”
Piper looked away from her mom as the bus came to a halt in front of the Musée d’Orsay. “You’re not supposed to be telling me all these things now, Mom. You’re supposed to say them along the way.”
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Piper’s mom said. “I know.” Piper sniffled and put her head on her mother’s shoulder, and they stayed like that as the bus pulled away from the curb and chugged toward the next stop.
Melanie’s bed felt empty without Gilles in it.
That was a pathetic thing to admit, and Melanie hated herself a little for feeling that way, for regretting, even for a second, that she’d banished him.
The thing was, she wanted to be in love with him, just as she had been when she’d married him two decades earlier.
Instead, she felt like she was waking up and realizing she no longer belonged in her own life.
She swung her legs out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, where, to her surprise, her grandfather was already up, clutching an oversized garbage bag.
“Morning, Grandpa Henry,” she said with a yawn, moving past him to the Nespresso maker as she tried to pinpoint what felt different to her about the kitchen. She placed a cup under the spout, inserted a pod, and pressed the brew button.
“Morning, dear.” He was already dressed for the day, and she knew without asking that it was because he was eager to visit his old girlfriend again.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he tied the garbage bag shut.
“I thought I’d do you the favor of getting rid of some of the flowers. A few roses are nice, but twenty dozen are clearly overkill.” He looked uncertain. “But maybe I’ve overstepped. If you wanted to keep the flowers…”
Melanie slowly shook her head. That’s why the kitchen had looked different; there were two dozen or so roses arranged tastefully in a vase on the counter, but the rest were squashed into the bag her grandfather was holding.
It was a relief not to have the evidence of Gilles’s betrayal on every conceivable surface.
“No,” she said. “This is perfect. Thank you for doing that.”
Melanie turned her back to him and busied herself with pouring sugar into her coffee so that her grandfather wouldn’t notice her eyes welling up. She felt his hand on her shoulder a moment later, and she turned, wiping away her tears.
“You deserve more, Melanie,” he said, looking into her eyes. “You know that, right? Whether it’s with Gilles or not. And perhaps it is with Gilles, dear. It’s just that you shouldn’t settle for anything less than love.”
She sniffled and forced a smile. “Right. But there’s still the matter of being married to him, you know? Now, can I get you a coffee?”
Five minutes later, they were seated in the kitchen, each with a fresh cup, as the flowers decayed in a trash bag by the front door.
“Can I forgive him for cheating?” Melanie asked as her grandfather took a sip of his coffee. “I want to, I think. But I’m not sure if I can.”
He set his coffee down and reached for her hand. “I think you need to do whatever your heart tells you to do. But I also think that you need to protect that heart until you know whether you can trust your husband again.”
She looked down at her coffee. “I can’t imagine my life without him. But that’s not a reason to stay, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” her grandfather said. “And in this moment, my dear, the future is up to you. Do you move forward with him? Or do you choose a path alone?”
“I don’t know,” Melanie said miserably.
“Just remember to listen to your heart, not the parts of your head that want to keep things on an even keel because it’s easier,” Grandpa Henry said. “Stay with Gilles because you love him and feel you can trust him again, not because you want him to be something he’s not.”
Melanie blinked back tears. She and her grandfather had never talked like this; it was disconcerting now to realize that she’d missed out on fifty years of his advice. “Thanks, Grandpa Henry,” she said.
Her grandfather reached across the counter and squeezed her hands. “I love you, kiddo.”
She looked him in the eye, sadness sweeping over her.
He was nearly one hundred. He wouldn’t always be here.
And if she left Gilles, who would she have when her grandfather was gone?
She’d be all alone—but that was no reason to stay, either, was it?
She forced a smile. “I love you, too, Grandpa Henry.”