Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Finding Grayson’s mother’s Montmartre apartment was much easier than he’d reckoned.
Freezing on the northern Parisian streets, he followed his instincts and cut up the road from Chateau Rouge, up a set of painfully steep stairs, and finally to a wooden door he would have recognized anywhere.
He saw the name on the buzzer: HARRIS and laughed aloud.
It was rare to see such an English-language name on an apartment building in Paris.
His memory had served him well. He pressed the bell and waited, his hands in his pockets, until his daughter’s voice greeted him through the intercom. “Hello?”
It didn’t take much prodding to get Camille to let him up.
The door unlocked with a dramatic buzz, and he shoved his way through and up an additional three flights of stairs.
Outside his mother’s apartment door, he slid his boots across the mat and pressed the already open door wider.
Standing in the foyer, he assessed the prewar apartment, its ceilings more than ten feet high, its glowing wooden floors, its floor-to-ceiling windows and doors onto a balcony lined with lace-like iron.
“Camille?” he called, surprised at how tender he felt, just in saying his daughter’s name.
Her mother had called him here, saying that Camille needed him.
So he was here, no matter what had happened, no matter how it had destroyed his business. He couldn’t care less.
“I’m here, Papa.” Camille’s little voice came from the room at the far end of the hall.
Grayson followed it, poking his head into the study, where Camille was buried under a heap of blankets, a book of poetry on her thighs. Her eyes glowed with the light from the window. Snow continued to flutter outside.
“Camille, honey,” Grayson said, removing his shoes and stepping into the little room. “Honey, are you all right?”
Camille had grown up in Paris. She had a French mother and French friends. In nearly every way, she evoked the energy of a French woman and lacked any of her father’s Americanism. But for him, she spoke English, knowing it made him more comfortable.
“Did Mama call you?” she asked. “Did she tell you that I was losing my mind?”
Grayson entered the room quietly and sat across from his daughter.
On the table between them were more stacks of books, some of which he remembered his own mother reading.
He loved that his daughter was a study in contrasts: a reader, a dreamer, a party animal.
She took on as much of life as she could.
“She said she was worried about you,” Grayson admitted. “I’ve been worried, too. You haven’t answered any of my texts or calls in a while.”
Camille raised her shoulders.
Grayson’s heart dropped. “I know it’s been hard. The divorce and everything, it must have come as a shock.”
Camille made a sound in her throat.
“What?” Grayson asked. “Please, honey. Talk to me.”
“The divorce wasn’t a shock,” Camille said. “I always prayed you and Mama would get divorced sooner. You weren’t meant to be together. I knew that when I was a little girl.”
Grayson couldn’t help but smile at his daughter’s rather rude statement. “Did you know before I knew myself?”
Camille laughed. “I don’t know about that. The story I’ve always heard is that you didn’t want to be with Mama. That you left her behind.”
“We broke up,” Grayson affirmed, scratching his chin. He was embarrassed to realize that he’d forgotten to shave since coming to Paris. He probably looked like a schlub. “We were young. Twenty-four or so. We realized we didn’t have anything in common and parted ways.”
“That’s when you went to New York,” Camille said. “The first time.”
“Yes,” Grayson said. He wasn’t sure where all these questions were coming from, nor why his daughter was suddenly so curious about his past.
“And the minute you broke up again, you wanted to go back to New York?” she asked.
“I wanted to try it again,” Grayson admitted. “It was calling to me.”
“And your environmental company,” Camille said.
Grayson searched for a hint in her voice that she was making fun of him. Normally, that was her thing: a French girl, teasing him, making him feel less than. But he couldn’t find it.
“Do you think it’s foolish to try to build a better world?” he asked his daughter.
Camille turned to look at him head-on. Just as he’d seen in her social media photograph, she’d lost quite a bit of weight. Her cheeks were hollow and dark. It worried him.
“I think it’s the only thing we can do,” Camille said. “Yet I can’t help but think it’s too late.”
“What’s the use in saying it’s too late?” Grayson asked.
“I know. You have all your talking points ready,” Camille said. “I’ve seen your interviews. I’ve read the articles about you.” She swallowed. “I also saw the paparazzi photos of you next to the private plane. Old habits die hard, don’t they?”
To Grayson’s surprise, he didn’t get angry.
Too much had happened, and he didn’t want to blame her for having taken the plane.
He loved her too much. “I don’t want to do that again,” he said.
“I want to be calculated and sure about how I spend my money. I want to know how I’m building a better world. I want…”
“Control. You want control. Just like everyone.” Camille raised her hands over her head, stretching out her back and shoulders. “Who can blame you?”
Grayson felt it like a punch in the stomach. She sees right through me, he thought.
“You never would have come back to Paris if it weren’t for me,” Camille said then.
Grayson wasn’t initially sure if she meant now or back when Genevieve was pregnant with her. He supposed it worked both ways. He wouldn’t have come back to Paris. But he’d dropped New York City in an instant, all to come be her father. He’d lost so much yet gained so much.
“Back when I was twenty-four, things in New York weren’t perfect,” he admitted.
“Things were rocky with a girl I was seeing. I didn’t know if she liked me, or if she respected me, or if she cared about me at all.
I had dreams of founding my own company, but I was still working for my father and hated it.
I was lonely. When your mother called to say she was pregnant, I hadn’t heard from my then-girlfriend in weeks, and I decided to pack up my life and come be your dad.
I don’t regret it. Not in the least.” He pressed his hand against his heart.
“It was the pleasure and joy of my life to raise you.”
He realized now, as he looked at his beautiful and too thin daughter, he wasn’t yet done raising her. She needed to come back to New York City with him. She needed a fresh start, too.
“Come with me,” he said.
Camille blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Come to New York,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, if you recall. You can come to New York, live in one of my apartments, make new friends, and find a new way. You can stop living whatever life your mother’s so worried about. You can create a new identity.”
Something in Camille’s face softened. “Oh, Papa. I don’t think you can ever create a new identity. Isn’t that naive?”
“Not in my experience,” Grayson said. “You can recreate yourself over and over again. Your life is the most brilliant of adventures, but it’s also a project. You can get better. You can fix the things that are broken.”
Camille was quiet for a long time. Outside, winter winds blasted against the apartment building and seemed to creep through the windows, under the doors. Grayson suddenly craved his warm and toasty apartment back in New York. He craved his heater on full-blast.
“You know, they’re going to forget about it,” Camille said.
Grayson wasn’t sure what she meant. He gave her a blank look.
“The public,” Camille said. “They’re going to forget that you flew private.
They’re going to eat you alive for another day or two, and then they’re going to find other people to dig into.
You’ll be able to move your company forward.
You’ll be able to make that difference you’re always talking about.
” She gave him a smile that seemed almost sincere.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
Camille stood and walked to the kitchen.
Grayson could do nothing but follow her.
He tried to imagine a reality in which they both lived in New York, in which he met her for burgers and heard about her big, brand-new life.
He tried to imagine what had gone so wrong here in Paris.
Camille had been dating someone, the son of a ridiculously wealthy banker.
Had they broken up? Had she had a falling out with one of her ex-ballerina friends?
Grayson cursed himself for not forcing himself into her life, for not demanding answers to more of his questions.
But she’d spent so much of the past few years rejecting him. It had hurt.
Camille put a teakettle on the stove and her hands on her hips. For a long time, they listened to the water boiling. When it began to screech, Camille removed it from the heat and turned to look at her father. “What are you doing for Christmas?” she asked.
“I don’t have any plans,” he said. “Do you?”
“Mama wants to spend it with her new boyfriend,” Camille said.
Grayson hadn’t realized his soon-to-be ex-wife was seeing anyone. He searched himself for sorrow and found nothing. He was glad they were done with each other.
“A few friends have invited me,” Camille said. “But I don’t know. Maybe it would be nice to celebrate the holidays in my other country. America.” She tried on a smile.
Grayson felt bowled over with happiness. He couldn’t believe it. It took everything within him not to give her a bear hug. He didn’t want to frighten her away.
She snapped her fingers. “But we will take a commercial flight,” she said. “I’m not taking a silly boat across the Atlantic Ocean. We’d probably miss the holiday in that case.”
Grayson laughed, knowing that he couldn’t push his luck. “Are you sure you want to fly commercial? Do you know what it’s like?”
Camille pulled a funny face. “Maybe we can fly first class at least?”
Grayson decided it was a decent enough compromise. “I’ll make the arrangements,” he promised her. He couldn’t believe they’d be spending Christmas together. It felt like a miracle that she’d decided to let him help her.