Chapter Two #2
Two weeks later, they were here. Julia had been surprised by how hastily Piper, who was taking a leave of absence from her graduate program in English, had planned it all, and how insistent she’d been about the specific dates of their trip.
“I have a surprise for you, Mom,” Piper had said when Julia had pressed her about it.
“Let’s just say that there’s something happening in Paris that I think will mean a lot to you.
I feel like it’s meant to be.” She had smiled a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile and refused to say more.
“Mom, do you need a nap?” Piper asked now, as they dragged their bags through the front door of the hotel, into the lobby. “Or do you feel like going out for lunch first?”
“Let’s do lunch,” Julia said, forcing a smile through her exhaustion.
Julia spent hours each day napping now, which meant that Piper would be on her own for much of this week.
Piper had assured her that it was fine and that she’d be happy to wander solo around Paris while her mom rested up.
Still, Julia was determined to do everything with her daughter that she possibly could.
How else would they make the kind of memories that would survive long after she was gone?
“Are you sure, Mom?”
“Mais oui,” Julia said with a smile, adopting her best French accent, which was, admittedly, quite poor. “I’m starving.”
“There’s a place a few blocks from here called Café Le Petit Pont,” Piper said. “Want to try it? It’s all over TikTok.”
“How could I refute the wisdom of TikTok?” Julia asked. “Let’s just freshen up, and then we’ll go.”
Something was eating at Melanie.
Henry had known it the moment his granddaughter had picked him up from the airport, her brow furrowed, her shoulders stiff with tension.
“Everything all right, dear?” he’d asked after he’d hugged her, thrown his small suitcase into the trunk of her shiny black Peugeot, and gotten into the car for the ride back to Paris.
She had looked startled by the question. “Oh, I’m fine. Just fine, Grandpa Henry.” But the words sounded like a lie, and the way her eyebrows drew together punctuated his suspicions.
Henry’s heart sank. This was obviously about Celeste.
He had fretted about it the whole way here, in fact.
He hadn’t been as thoughtful as he could have been in the way he’d told Melanie, and now she was upset with him.
“I realize I didn’t explain things well,” he said now, tugging at his collar.
His neck felt hot with embarrassment. “You see, I knew Celeste before I married your grandmother. I was told that she’d died, and I was devastated, but I vowed to put her out of my mind.
I did truly love your grandmother, very much. ”
Melanie gave him a look he couldn’t decipher. “Oh. Okay.”
Henry sighed. He was really mucking this all up, wasn’t he? “My point is, Melanie, there was never another woman while I was married to your grandmother.”
“Right,” Melanie said.
They drove through the outskirts of Paris in silence for a few minutes, and Henry snuck a handful of glances at his granddaughter, whose knuckles were white on the wheel.
She was obviously angry, which didn’t seem like her, to be honest. She was his only grandchild, and with Betsy long gone and both of Melanie’s parents deceased, they were each other’s only family—except, of course, for Melanie’s husband, Gilles.
Melanie had always had a lightness about her, but sitting now in the passenger seat beside her felt like sharing a car with a storm cloud.
Henry swallowed down his guilt over the flame he’d carried for Celeste for eighty years and cleared his throat.
“Melanie, are you upset with me?” He and his granddaughter had always been blunt with each other, and now was no time to dance around the truth.
“Upset with you?” Melanie blinked a few times, looking surprised. “No, of course not.”
“My dear, I’ve known you since the day you were born. Something’s eating at you, and if you’re upset about Celeste, I want to make sure you understand that—”
“Gilles is having an affair,” Melanie blurted out, interrupting him, and Henry was so startled that he couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Gilles?” he finally managed to say. His granddaughter’s husband was about as charismatic as a dishcloth.
He had never understood what a sparkling light like Melanie had seen in a man so dull.
Gilles having an affair? It felt impossible—not least of all because an affair required some degree of initiative, didn’t it? “You’re absolutely certain?”
Melanie nodded, and when she began to cry, she pulled onto the shoulder of the road and buried her face in her hands. Henry rubbed her back for a moment as she sobbed, and then he withdrew and balled his hands into fists.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked gently, and she sniffled a bit before wiping her eyes and looking over at him.
“I just found out this week.” Her expression darkened. “There was a text on his phone. Amandine, her name is.”
“Like the green beans?” Henry snorted. “And what did Gilles have to say for himself?”
“I haven’t told him yet that I know.”
“Why not?”
Melanie looked miserable. “Because… Well… It just feels like my whole world is about to be turned upside down, and I’m not ready. Besides, isn’t this just what French people do? Maybe I have no right to be upset.”
“Of course you do. You made vows to each other, Melanie.” Henry sighed.
Melanie’s marriage had started with her giving up her own life in the States to start anew with Gilles across the Atlantic, in his home country.
Gilles had gone on to have the career he’d always wanted, and Melanie had been stuck working the same job as a school headmistress that she’d taken when she’d moved here twenty years ago—and which Henry knew she had never loved.
It had not been his business to raise these issues with Melanie.
After all, it was a grandfather’s job to support his grandchild however he could, and besides, it was never a good idea to interfere in other people’s marriages.
Who knew what really went on behind closed doors?
But now, Gilles had created the perfect opening for Melanie to reevaluate her choices.
“Do you love him, Melanie?” Henry asked carefully.
She looked surprised, as if the question hadn’t occurred to her. “Of course I do. He’s my husband, Grandpa Henry.”
“But do you love him?”
She was silent for a moment, her eyes on the road. “It’s been twenty years. Maybe it’s unrealistic to have expected the spark would still be there.”