Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sabine sat in front of Guillaume’s house, drawing vineyards in a new little homemade book, waiting for Aubin. She was annoyed with him for making her wait but also happy to just sit.
Actually, she wanted to find out about prom, so she called Willa on WhatsApp, using the Wi-Fi code Madame Klein had supplied. It rang several times before Willa picked up.
“Been waiting for you to call,” said a raspy-voiced Willa. “What took you so long?”
“Did I wake you up? I’m an idiot, I forgot about the time difference. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. How’s the house? Is it perfect? Please tell me it’s perfect.”
“More like a train wreck,” said Sabine. “I’ll tell you more, but how was prom?”
“Beyond! All the fundraising with Peyton’s mum paid off.
Of course she was a total sideshow, done up in this tight dress and five-inch heels and over-the-top makeup like she was competing with Peyton for Prom Queen and acting insane, telling people what to do and where to go—but I have to hand it to her, she pulled it off. ”
“And you and Max?”
“Max got all dressed up in this awesome tux with velvet lapels—they looked So. Hot. My dress matched perfectly. We rocked the look. When we got to the dock, waiters gave out these mocktails with pomegranate seeds floating up and down. Then the cruise left, and dinner was amazing and my centerpieces were on point and there was a band for dancing after … And the fireworks! They went off over the harbor, and Max kissed me and said I was the best kisser ever. Me! Wish you’d been there. ”
Sabine felt sick to her stomach. She’d made the wrong choice. She should have gone to prom.
Aubin drove a car out of the garage. Red. Shiny. Cute. Sabine rolled her eyes. Perfect. She had to be squished into the smallest of cars on the planet with Aubin. Could she bail? He rolled down the passenger window, leaned over, and looked at her.
“What are you making there?”
“Nothing,” she said, shoving her tiny book into her bag. “And you don’t have to do this.”
“My uncle is not happy when I don’t do what he says.”
“Gotta go, Willa.”
“Where?” asked Willa, “and who are you talking to? I haven’t even heard about France!”
“Call you later.”
“What? No! Tell me now—”
Sabine hung up and got in. Aubin shifted into first and sped down the driveway.
“Stop!” yelled Sabine.
He braked suddenly. She lurched forward.
“Why?” he asked mischievously. “I’m a very good driver.”
“I’d like to make it back alive, so slow the hell down.”
“Easy, it was just a joke. I’ll be good.” He checked for oncoming traffic, turned onto the main road and drove reasonably.
How would she survive this guy? Say something. Anything. “I didn’t know anyone still drove standard.” There. Talk about driving.
“Here everyone knows how,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“No, ’cause it’s not the eighties and why would I bother?”
“Because it’s more fun. And most car rental places in Europe give you a manual—it is not your choice. And you never know when you might be trapped somewhere with only a manual car, and you have to take charge. When you took your license, they didn’t offer this?”
Sabine paused.
“Oh,” he said, smiling again. “Do you not have your license?” He was intolerable.
“I was too busy with school.”
She didn’t have her license because they didn’t own a car. You could get anywhere in Toronto by bike or public transport. Plus, who’d pay for lessons, gas, insurance, parking?
“Well, then you should not judge those who know how to drive manual.”
“I was not judging. I was asking.”
She looked out her window to take it down a notch, and he drove them to a nearby town called Bourmont-entre-Meuse-et-Mouzon.
“Come,” he said, and before she could even react, he was out and heading up the road.
So she got out too and followed him to the town’s old church.
It was beautiful, a clock high in its tower, stone pillars, an archway, and faded, light blue front doors.
Temporary metal fencing and red and white tape barred the entrance.
“What is it with closed churches around here? The little one in Mirabelle is closed, too.”
“Not enough people,” said Aubin. “Nothing’s going on around here.”
They turned down a wide lane leading away from the church’s doors, lined with mossy stone walls and giant trees covered in ivy.
“This is the Promenade du C?na,” he said.
The further down the lane they went, the more they found themselves in the semiwild, a forest right on the edge of Bourmont. “And here, the Parc des Roches.”
They passed a monument, like a square pyramid with stone steps leading up to a large cross.
“That’s a calvaire,” he said. “I don’t know what they call it in English.
I don’t even really know what it’s for. But it’s always been here, in my lifetime anyway.
” Obviously a Christian monument, but all alone, in nature.
How different this place was from Toronto, with its new buildings, busy roads, and rush-hour crowds getting to work or school.
“What was the little book you were making before?”
“It’s just a hobby. I draw pictures, make up a story … Then I usually recycle them.”
They arrived at a semicircular dry-stone wall built into the land, stairs leading down to a stone platform, a mysterious door carved into the hill leading into darkness.
“Is this a castle ruin?”
“No, it was built by a man in the 1800s who wanted to make a romantic park.”
“What does that mean?”
“A park made for the purpose of losing yourself.”
She liked the sound of that.
“You can walk along a winding path,” he said, “unsure what comes next, because you’re in nature, and nature isn’t planned. And then you’re surprised by a man-made thing. Fake ruins, or a nonsense place of mystery and wonder to transport you to a different time.”
As they descended the hill, the birds called to each other, and the sunlight played amongst the tall tree branches.
They took a narrow path between two high rock faces covered in deep green ivy and moss—the kind that, in a kids’ book, would lead to a new world. They emerged into a clearing with a small round stone shelter, a roof of flat stones laid against one another.
“It is a cadole,” he said, “a shelter made from the rocks pulled up from the earth by people who work the land. They use the cadole against the weather, to store tools or to rest.”
They walked further, pausing at the foot of an overhang demarking this piece of land from the piece on top: a dramatic divider between this world and that.
She watched the sunshine break through the branches and skip across the forest floor.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“It’s dumb.”
“Tell me anyway. I dare you.” Not a jerk now. Human. Gentle.
“I missed my prom last night. Decided not to go a long time ago.”
“I have seen this prom in movies. We don’t do it in France, but it sounds like fun.”
“I hated high school. I did well, but it was subjects I didn’t care about. I got along with everyone, but there was mostly just my best friend, Willa.”
“And how was this prom, without you? Or do you even know?”
“I was getting the report from her when you pulled up. It was on a boat on the harbor. Everyone wore ballgowns, the kind that have no straps and are either so short you can’t even bend down, or long and flowy numbers like fairy princesses.
They had dinner and dancing and grab bags of gifts …
It’s stupid, because we’re here in France, which is great, but …
I had one chance at prom, and I’ll never get it again. ”
“What part do you miss most?”
“I don’t like dressing up, so it’s not that. And I hate fake conversation. But Willa and her partner had this romantic kiss under fireworks …” Her lip trembled.
“And you wonder if you made the wrong choice.” He gazed at her.
She hadn’t noticed his blue eyes before.
Fact from biology class: only eight percent of humans had blue eyes, because the gene that caused them was recessive.
And those blue eyes were staring at her, not with pressure, but with understanding.
Guillaume drove Marlow to the Nenier parking lot.
Marlow got out—a bit more nimbly this time—with a basket of food Madame Klein had made up, lest she get hungry.
A baguette, cheese, jam, saucisson sec, as she called it—dry, hard sausage that would surely clog your arteries but was so delicious—red wine, a bottle of bubbly water, and drinking glasses.
“I will do a few errands and return when the mairie opens to make sure you are able to submit your appeal without difficulty,” said Guillaume. God, he was nice. Too nice?
She had two hours to kill, so she climbed the stairs to Maison Perdue and let herself in. The place was a disaster. She felt a surge of fear at what she’d gotten herself into.
Marlow had suffered night terrors as a toddler.
Her parents, bleary-eyed in their pajamas, would console her to no avail, and she’d scream and hyperventilate in her onesie until eventually her father would go into her parents’ bedroom and shut the door, and her mother would take hold of her little arms and say “for God’s sake, Marlow, snap out of it!
” And she would settle. But she was still afraid.
When she was a teen, she’d found a book by R.
D. Laing, a psychiatrist who’d written about fearful children.
Parents often told their children, don’t worry—nothing’s there.
But what children heard was that Nothing was there, as if Nothing were the name for a real thing.
They couldn’t see this thing that lurked in the darkness, and their parents kept telling them it was there, and their terror intensified.
Even as an adult, nights were the worst. Marlow slept lightly and was often awoken by what she called the four AM frets, a sense that she’d forgotten something, insulted someone, failed at work, not made good.
She’d have to get up and turn the light on.
And her mother’s voice would come to her. Snap out of it.