Chapter Eight
Julia had feigned sleep when she’d heard Piper come in the evening before, waiting as her daughter brushed her teeth, showered, and climbed into the bed beside hers.
They were sharing a room with two double beds and no privacy, and Julia knew that if she’d revealed she was awake, Piper would have felt compelled to take care of her, to bustle around the hotel room making sure she had everything she needed.
It was better sometimes just to let her daughter off the hook.
Besides, Julia hated feeling like a patient all the time.
They were both awake the next morning by sunrise, despite the jet lag. After a mumbled good morning, Piper quickly pulled on jeans and a sweater and hurried down to the lobby. She returned a few minutes later, still bleary-eyed, with a steaming cup in each hand.
“Latte?” she asked with a smile, and Julia accepted one of the drinks gratefully and took a long, bracing sip.
“So?” Julia prompted once Piper had settled back into her own bed. “What did you do yesterday while I napped?”
Piper smiled and looked at her feet. “I… I kind of ran into that cute waiter.”
“I knew it. So you went back to the café after all?”
“Actually, I saw him at Shakespeare and Company. The bookstore.”
Julia raised her eyebrows. “Must be fate, then.”
“I don’t know about that.” Piper looked embarrassed. “We just talked for a little bit. But, I mean, where could it possibly go?”
“You’re always worrying about the next step, honey. Maybe just enjoy it for what it is.”
“But what is it?”
“Maybe someone fun to keep you company this week when I need to rest. Maybe the beginning of something more. Who knows?”
Piper took a sip of her latte. “I’m here with you, though. I shouldn’t be worrying about some guy.”
“Can’t you do both?”
“I know, I just…” Piper trailed off, and in the silence, Julia heard the words she wasn’t saying.
“Honey, you are the best daughter I could possibly ask for. But you have the right to have a life of your own, too, you know. You deserve to be happy.”
Piper shrugged, but she didn’t say anything.
“So how did you leave it yesterday?” Julia asked a moment later.
“He had to go back to work, but he asked if I could meet him during his break this afternoon for a walk.”
“Then you’ll meet him,” Julia said with a smile.
“What about hanging with you?” Piper looked uncertain.
“You know I’ll need a couple of hours of downtime, anyhow. It’s perfect.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Piper took a long sip of her coffee. “So,” she said after a minute, “remember I told you I have a surprise for you? About why we had to come to Paris this week specifically?” It had been Piper who’d insisted on the dates and taken over the planning of their trip as soon as they’d agreed to go.
When Julia looked up, Piper was beaming, the uncertainty on her face erased by a ray of sunshine.
Julia smiled at her daughter. “Yeah. I’m dying to hear.” She realized the moment the words were out of her mouth that the expression was the wrong one to use, given the circumstances, and she felt terrible as a shadow flitted across Piper’s face.
“Right,” Piper said, looking down for a second before looking back up and meeting Julia’s eye. “Well, we’re going to a concert.”
“A concert?”
Piper nodded eagerly. “The first time he’s played live in years. I couldn’t believe it when I heard, Mom. His comeback tour starts on Friday, right here in Paris. I bought us tickets to see him!”
“Who, Piper?”
Piper laughed. “Sorry, I’m so excited, I’m getting ahead of myself.” She paused and beamed at Julia. “Only your very favorite singer from when you were in high school.”
“No way.” Julia had been a huge Jon Bon Jovi fan back in the early ’90s, but she hadn’t heard he was touring again, and certainly not that he was playing in Paris.
“Yes way!” Piper chirped. “We’re going to see Jackson Quick this Friday!”
“Jackson—” Julia cut herself off and forced a smile.
Jackson Quick? How had Piper gotten it into her head that Julia had been a Jackson Quick fan?
Sure, she liked “City of Light”—who didn’t?
—and she could probably sing the chorus to a few of his other hit songs, but that was where her enthusiasm ended.
But Piper was sitting there grinning at her, waiting for a response, so she mustered as much excitement as she could and leaned forward to grab her daughter’s hands.
“Wow, I mean… Jackson Quick! What are the odds?”
“I’ve been so excited to tell you, Mom!” Piper hopped up without another word and grabbed her phone. “I made us a playlist to listen to this week!” She tapped her phone a few times. “But you probably know all these songs by heart anyways!”
“Uh, sure, probably,” Julia agreed weakly. From what she remembered, he’d been huge in the mid-’90s and then had kind of faded into obscurity. She honestly hadn’t given him a thought in thirty years.
“Here goes!” Piper chirped, and the distinctive opening chords of “City of Light” rang out over her phone’s speakers.
“A moment in time, a brush of your hand.” Jackson Quick’s deep, rich voice crooned the first lines of the song. “The sound of your voice, now I understand, / That from the moment I saw you, my life would be new. / It was always meant to be me and you.”
“Ooh, so romantic,” Piper said with a grin as an instrumental portion took over.
But Julia was lost in the words for a moment.
It had been so long since she’d heard the song, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever really listened to what it was saying.
But the version of love it talked about, well, it was what she’d always hoped for when she was young, wasn’t it?
She’d believed in it, had been so certain that this was what love was supposed to feel like, that when you found your soulmate, you’d know it in the very depths of your being.
But life hadn’t turned out that way. No one had loved her the way Jackson Quick described, and she’d never loved anyone that way, either. What a waste. She swiped at the tears forming in her eyes, hoping that Piper hadn’t noticed.
“Aw, you’re so excited, you’re crying?” Piper said with a laugh, leaning forward to give Julia a big hug. “Just don’t do anything embarrassing like throw your bra at the stage, okay, Mom?”
“I promise,” Julia said, forcing a smile as Jackson Quick’s voice from decades before began a second verse about a kind of love Julia would never know.
Gilles Chaulet had made a mistake.
Like an imbecile, he had imagined that he could juggle a mistress on the side while still appearing to be an attentive husband to Melanie.
In any case, an expectation of fidelity was a very American construct, wasn’t it?
Half the men he knew had discreet relationships on the side, so why not him?
The error, obviously, was believing that Amandine could be trusted, that she wouldn’t do something so foolish as to text him when she knew Melanie might be around.
It was as if she had done it on purpose.
But that was ridiculous, too. Why would she?
He didn’t believe that she had any aspirations to break up his marriage; she seemed very content being treated to fine meals and extravagant gifts on the side.
And though Gilles had the dim sense that perhaps Amandine was taking advantage of him, he also understood that in the context of an affair, particularly at his age, that was the cost of doing business.
Gilles had turned sixty earlier in the year, and it hadn’t gone quite the way he’d expected.
Paris was full of men his age who still cut a sharp figure in their designer suits, but Gilles was aware that no matter how many sit-ups he did in the morning, he had become wobbly around the edges.
His brother Jean-Marc, two years his junior, still had a full mane of silvery hair, whereas Gilles’s had begun to recede and thin a decade ago.
And his brother Francois, older by five years, implausibly still had a square jaw, his face a study of chiseled lines, whereas Gilles’s jowls sagged and the bags under his eyes seemed to grow by the day.
In short, he was no longer the man he had been.
He knew it. Melanie knew it. But Amandine hadn’t known him when he’d been a younger man.
In fairness, that was because she’d only been in grade school.
But still, she only knew how he looked now, and she found him attractive enough to take to bed.
It wasn’t as if he could turn his nose up at that.
Plus, she was a dancer. A damned ballerina with legs up to her neck, who was so flexible he sometimes wondered if her bones were made of rubber. What man in his right mind would say no to that?
It wasn’t his fault, not really. He and Melanie had been married for almost twenty years now, and as he supposed was the case with all marriages, the fire was out.
He had tried to reignite it, though. For example, last year, he’d woken her several times in the middle of the night because he’d been aroused.
“You turn me on,” he’d murmured to her, or, “You’re so beautiful.
” But she had turned her back on him each time and mumbled something about how if he couldn’t be bothered to make her feel wanted during the daylight hours, he should think twice about waking her at three in the morning.
Then, six months ago, he’d met Amandine at a bar, where he was having a post-work cocktail with an American cosmetics buyer who was in town from New York.
Gilles had invited Melanie along, but she’d made an excuse—some after-school event or another she’d had to attend—and when the American had left to head back to his hotel, Gilles had decided to have just one more whiskey before heading home.