Epilogue
TWO MONTHS LATER
Jackson’s tour was over for now. He had talked to Cash and made clear that whatever plans his manager had for relaunching his career would have to wait.
Energized by the success they’d had in Paris and at his five other shows in London, Dublin, Madrid, Munich, and Copenhagen, Cash had wanted him to head out on the road again as soon as possible, but Jackson had been firm.
His moments now all belonged to Julia. He would go on tour next year. After.
He couldn’t bear to think of the after, but it was coming. He knew that. Julia was getting weaker and more jaundiced by the day, and there was talk of bringing hospice in to ease the final weeks for her. But first, she’d wanted to go to Paris one more time, and so they’d come.
It was where they’d met, and it was where Piper had met the earnest, poetry-reciting Nicolas, too. Jackson knew how much it meant to Julia to see her daughter so happy, and to know now not only that Jackson would always be a part of Piper’s life, but that Nicolas might well be, too.
What Julia didn’t know was that Jackson had brought along a ring today.
Nor did she know, as they were about to duck into Le Maison Grog, that the owner, Russ—who was finalizing the sale of his share of the bar at the end of the week—had champagne chilling on ice for them, or that Piper and Nicolas were already there waiting.
“You doing okay?” Jackson asked as they got out of the hired car that had taken them from the airport to the Latin Quarter. “You sure you don’t want to stop at the hotel first?”
“No,” Julia said, her voice weaker now than it had been even a day or two before. She was fading before his eyes. “I missed this place.”
She smiled faintly, and he kissed her. And then, he held open the door, and together, they walked through.
Inside, Piper and Nicolas sat at a table, smiling at them. Russ stood behind the bar, four champagne glasses at the ready.
“What is all this?” Julia asked, turning to Jackson in astonishment.
“This,” he said, getting down on one knee and holding up the ring he’d bought for her, an oval-cut diamond solitaire flanked by pavé diamonds on a platinum band, which Piper had approved before he’d bought it, “is me proposing to you.”
“Proposing?” she asked, staring at him and then at the ring.
“I know we haven’t gotten as much time together as we would have liked,” he said, looking into her eyes.
“But I want to marry you, Julia, if you’ll have me.
I wasn’t really living until I met you. And now, well, I want to be married to you for the rest of the time we have.
This is the life I’ve been singing about all these years, the life I never really believed existed.
But it’s real, and I want to spend as much of it as I can with you. ”
Julia stared at him, and he looked up at her from on bended knee, hoping that he hadn’t gotten this all wrong.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“Say yes, Mom!” Piper called out, which brought a smile to Julia’s face.
She looked Jackson in the eyes. “Yes,” she said, and his heart did a somersault.
“Yes, Jackson. Yes.” And then he was on his feet, and she was in his arms, and he was kissing the woman he knew he’d marry, in the place where it had all begun, and even though he knew he wouldn’t have her forever, they had this moment and all those that came after. And he was here for all of them.
Shelby paused outside the door to Le Maison Grog. She had arrived just hours before on the overnight from Atlanta, her first time back in Paris since her ill-fated divorce party. Was she doing the right thing? She didn’t know, but for once, she was following her heart.
She had gone through with her divorce from Brandon, and though there were parts of the dissolving of their marriage that still devastated her, she had no doubt that she’d done the right thing.
She hadn’t talked to Russ in two months, though, because she didn’t want to leave one relationship only to dive headfirst into another.
Doing that would have meant that she’d simply traded Brandon’s expectations for Russ’s, even if she knew Russ would never try to force her into a mold.
The thing was, though, it wasn’t just Brandon who had tried to make Shelby into something she wasn’t.
Shelby had done it to herself, because she’d spent her whole life believing that people loved you only when you became exactly what they wanted you to be.
She’d needed the time it took to find her way back to simply being herself. And she’d told herself that once she knew who she was, she would come back.
She knew there was a good possibility that Russ had moved on, that he had a girlfriend by now or that he simply wanted nothing to do with her after the way she’d left.
And if that was the case, it would be okay.
Shelby would still be Shelby at the end of the day, and she’d return home to the States ready for her next chapter.
But what if her next chapter was here? She would never know unless she opened that door. And so, steeling her nerves, she did.
Inside, Le Maison Grog was nearly empty, save for two couples sharing a bottle of champagne at a table.
One of the couples was young, perhaps early twenties, and the other looked a generation older.
From the way the man—who looked a bit like the old rock star Jackson Quick—was looking at the woman, it was crystal clear that they were in love.
For a moment, Shelby hesitated, staring, caught up in wishing that someone would look at her like that one day.
And then, the door to the kitchen opened and Russ emerged, and he stopped abruptly, staring at her like he’d seen a ghost. “Shelby,” he said.
“Is this a bad time?” she asked, glancing at the two couples.
Slowly, Russ shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Good,” she said. “Because I’ve come to ask if maybe, if you have the time, you might like to go out on a date with me.”
He held her gaze. Her heart pounded. She was walking into her next chapter, whether it included him or not, and there was something incredibly gratifying about realizing that, about knowing that she had turned the page and that she had done it by herself. Still, she held her breath, hoping.
“I would like that, Shelby,” he said at last. “I would like that very much.”
The monitors beeped a steady rhythm as Celeste’s chest rose up and down. Henry paused in the doorway of her hospital room, tears in his eyes, collecting himself before he entered.
He had been in Paris for two months, living with Melanie in her apartment, which was a lot more cheerful now that Gilles had moved out.
He had never seen his granddaughter happier, and he was so glad that she had discovered, before it was too late, that it was better to be alone than to be with the wrong person.
She was finding her way, and he was honored to have been with her in small part on that path.
He had gone to see Celeste every day, talking to her, telling her stories of the past, waiting for her to come back to him.
Sometimes, he could see the light flicker on in her eyes for just a moment.
Sometimes, she tilted her head just so, and he knew that, for a few seconds, a part of her had remembered.
But since the night of the concert, there had been only glimpses of her, and he could feel her drifting further and further away.
“Are you sure you want to stay in Paris?” her grandson, Jean-Luc, had asked Henry just last week, peering at him with concern. “I’m sorry to say, Henry, that I don’t think she knows anyone at all anymore. You must have a life of your own to get back to.”
“Celeste is my life,” Henry replied. “And I will be here as long as she is.”
She’d had her heart attack the very next day, just before Henry had arrived for his morning visit.
When he had turned the corner to the rue Royer-Collard, he had been startled to see an ambulance out front, two paramedics pushing a gurney out the front door.
He’d hurried over as quickly as he could using his cane, knowing somehow, before he got there, that the patient was Celeste.
He had caught just a quick glimpse of her before the ambulance doors slammed closed.
He had been at the hospital ever since, spending the days in her room, the evenings sleeping in the waiting area. Melanie had tried to convince him to come home, but she didn’t understand that his home was wherever Celeste was.
The doctors had solemnly told Henry and Jean-Luc that it was the end.
For a week now, Celeste had drifted in and out of consciousness, waking for only a few moments at a time, hardly aware of her surroundings.
When Henry sat by her bedside and squeezed her hand, sometimes she squeezed back, but mostly she lay motionless, her body slowly disappearing, cell by cell, before him.
She seemed to grow smaller with every passing day.
Now, wiping the tears from his eyes, Henry entered Celeste’s room, thinking, as he always did when he looked at her, that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Even now, with her white hair unwashed, her face pallid, and her body wasting away, she was still a radiant angel.
He sat beside her, as had become his daily habit, and reached for her hand. Her breathing was slow, and he could hear a rattle in her chest as the air moved in and out of her lungs. “Good morning, my love,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’ve missed you.”
Her eyes opened, and slowly, she looked around the room, her gaze finally settling on Henry.
She stared at him for a long time, and he had the strangest sense that she looked different today, her eyes bluer, brighter.
“I’ve… missed you,” she said with difficulty, her voice barely more than a whisper.
He gave her a sad smile. It was, of course, a parroted response. He had gotten used to this over the past two months with her; he would say something, and she would repeat it back, her expression blank, the words devoid of meaning.
But then something different happened. She was still looking into his eyes when she said, “Henry?”
His heart skipped. Surely he’d imagined it. “Celeste?” he said. “Did you just say—”
“Henry,” she repeated. She blinked at him a few times, as if trying to bring him into focus. “It is you…. isn’t it? You… came back.”
His breath caught in his throat. “I’m so sorry that it took me so long, Celeste. I came as soon as I could.”
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them a few seconds later, he could see that she was already beginning to fade. “I dreamed… that you… would. I waited… so long.”
“I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you, Celeste,” he said. “You were with me all the days of my life.”
“Henry,” she murmured, “I never stopped… loving you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, his eyes filling with tears, because he knew that this was the end, that it was the last time he would be able to say those words to the woman who had both saved and shaped his life. “Always have. Always will.”
She held his gaze, and in her eyes, he saw the past and the present and all the moments in between, the moments that had brought them together and driven them apart and reunited them once more.
“The world shatters around us,” she rasped, words he’d first sung to her so very long ago. “But, still… we are here.”
And then, her eyes closed once more, and her breathing stilled, and he could feel the very second that her soul left her body. The monitors began to beep, but Henry stayed there, holding her hand, long enough to finish the verse.
“Beside you always, the world so bright,” he whispered, the last words of a song that would forever honor the love of his life. “Together forever, you’re my City of Light.”