Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MADELINE
The walk clears nothing.
Six months. That's all it took to learn a life that was never mine to keep.
I end up on a bench near the Seine, watching a tourist boat glide past, all waving hands and camera flashes. The guide's voice drifts across the water, something about history, something about romance, something about the City of Light.
The school wants us to let you go.
Raphael's face when he said it. The way he couldn't quite meet my eyes.
We didn't say yes.
But they didn't say no either.
I pull out my phone. Open the browser. Type words I don't want to type.
Eurostar. Paris to London. Tomorrow.
The tickets are there. Available. Waiting.
I stare at the screen until it goes dark.
Back at Raphael's apartment, Emma is asleep on the couch, her math homework abandoned on the coffee table. Raphael is in the kitchen, pretending to read something on his phone, but his eyes track me the moment I walk in.
"She waited up," he says. "I told her you'd be back."
"I said I would be."
"I know." A pause. "Are you?"
I don't answer, just bend down to brush the hair from Emma's forehead, feel her shift toward my touch even in sleep. The way she always does. The way all three of them do, reaching for me without thinking, like I'm something fixed. Something permanent. Something they can count on.
What you want and what's best for your children might not be the same thing.
I said that to Raphael earlier. I meant it.
I just didn't realize how much it would hurt to be right.
"I'm going to put her to bed," I say.
Raphael nods. Doesn't push. That's his way, all that patience, all that warmth, all that space he gives people to make their own choices.
Even the wrong ones.
I carry Emma down the hall. She's heavier than she was six months ago, taller, longer, growing in ways I've been there to see. I tuck her in, kiss her forehead, stand in her doorway longer than I should.
Her room is full of things we've done together. The drawing of the two of us at the Eiffel Tower. The pressed flower from the park near Bastien's gallery. The friendship bracelet Sophie taught her to make, the one of which she insisted I have a matching copy.
I'm wearing it now. Purple and gold. Slightly uneven. Perfect.
"Goodnight, ma puce," I whisper.
She doesn't stir.
I wait until Raphael goes to bed.
Then I start packing.
Not everything. Just the essentials. The things that are mine, really mine: the suitcase I arrived with, the clothes I brought from London, the book Elena gave me as a going-away present. For when Paris gets too romantic, she'd written inside. Remember: you're there to work, not to fall in love.
Too late for that.
I fold a sweater. Then another. My hands know what to do even when my brain is screaming at them to stop.
You're the destabilizing factor.
Dubois didn't say it. She didn't have to.
Every word from that meeting had pointed to the same conclusion: remove the variable, solve the equation.
Three single fathers, three happy children, one complicated arrangement, and at the center of it all, one American au pair who somehow became the thing holding it together.
And the thing tearing it apart.
I think about Sophie, critiquing my coffee with that imperious nine-year-old certainty, but saving me the seat beside her at breakfast. About Luc, who let me sit with him while he drew last week—just sit, not talk, not interrupt—and Bastien told me later that he's never done that with anyone.
About Emma, who learned to braid hair just so she could do mine, whose tongue pokes out when she concentrates, who told me last Tuesday that she wants to be "just like Madeline" when she grows up.
My chest cracks open a little more.
And then there are the men. étienne who looked at me on the terrace like he wanted to say something and then didn't, who touched my face and pulled back like he'd made a mistake.
Bastien who watched me like he was already three steps ahead and found it amusing.
Raphael who held my hand on the couch and didn't make it weird, didn't make it anything, just held it.
I don't know what this is. I'm not sure I want to know. But when I try to imagine leaving, just packing my bag, taking my passport, going back to my actual life, I can't finish the thought.
That's probably the answer. And also exactly the problem.
I've seen what happens when adults put their own desires ahead of their children's stability. I grew up in that wreckage. I won't do that to Sophie. To Luc. To Emma. I won't be the reason they learn that the people who are supposed to protect them will always choose themselves first.
Those poor kids. Can you imagine?
I can imagine. That's the problem.
I can imagine Sophie's face when she hears the whispers at school. I can imagine Luc retreating even further into himself, drawing walls instead of birds. I can imagine Emma asking why the other kids' parents won't let them come to her birthday party anymore.
I can imagine it because I lived it.
I zip the suitcase.
My phone glows on the nightstand. 11:47 PM.
I could stay.
The thought surfaces, treacherous. I could unpack this suitcase right now, shove everything back in drawers, wake up tomorrow and pretend.
Let Raphael's steady presence convince me everything will be fine.
Let Bastien's dark eyes tell me I'm worth fighting for.
Let étienne's walls crack just enough to show me what's underneath.
But that's the thing about being chosen, someone always has to lose.
If they fight for me, they fight against the school. Against the other parents. Against the system their children will have to navigate for the next decade. Sophie will hear things. Emma will feel the exclusion. Luc will disappear further into himself.
The fathers are barely holding it together as it is.
Three years of logistics instead of friendship, of careful scheduling instead of actual conversation, of wounds that never healed because no one was brave enough to clean them out.
They started talking again because of the children.
Because of the arrangement. Because of me.
What happens when I become the reason they stop?
What happens when this forces them to take sides? All three of them, who've crossed lines that can't be uncrossed. Three men who might have found their way back to each other, torn apart instead.
By me.
I can't be that.
Tomorrow.
Before Raphael wakes up and looks at me with those steady eyes, before I have to watch Emma eat breakfast, before I lose my nerve entirely.
I open the Eurostar app. The 6:15 AM train has seats available.
Four hours from now, I could be at the Gare du Nord. Six hours from now, London. By lunchtime, Iris's flat, pretending my heart isn't scattered across three Parisian apartments.
My thumb hovers over the purchase button.
Are you sure you want to proceed?
No. God, no. I'm not sure of anything except that I'm about to do something I'll regret for the rest of my life.
I buy the ticket anyway.
The confirmation arrives instantly. Cold. Official. Final.
Your trip to London. Departure: 6:15 AM. One-way.
I stare at those words until they stop looking like words at all.
I return to Emma's doorway and watch her sleep for a long time.
She is starfished across the bed, blankets kicked off, mouth slightly open. One arm is wrapped around the stuffed rabbit she's had since she was two. The one she named Madame Flopsy and insists on introducing to every guest.
I memorize her. The curve of her cheek. The way her eyelashes fan against her skin. The small scar on her knee from when she fell at the playground last month and insisted I was the only one who could apply the bandage correctly.
I slip off the friendship bracelet, the purple and gold one, slightly uneven, perfect, and place it on her nightstand where she'll see it when she wakes up.
She'll know. When she sees it there instead of on my wrist, she'll know something is wrong.
Maybe that's the point.
"Je t'aime, ma puce," I whisper. "I'm sorry."
She shifts in her sleep. Reaches for my hand, an instinct, muscle memory, and finds only air.
I slip out before I can change my mind.
By 4:30, I'm dressed and packed and standing in the kitchen with my suitcase. The apartment is so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat.
I leave my key on the kitchen counter. Beside it, a sticky note with a drawing of a small sun, the kind I always leave, the kind Emma collects in a shoebox under her bed.
No words. Just the sun.
If I write words, I'll write too many. I'll explain. I'll apologize. I'll leave a door open that needs to stay closed.
The suitcase handle is cold in my palm. The front door opens without a sound.
The Gare du Nord is already stirring when I arrive, backpackers sprawled across benches, businesspeople clutching coffee, a group of teenagers sharing headphones and laughing at something on a phone. Normal morning chaos. Normal lives proceeding normally.
I find my platform. Check my ticket. Watch the departure board count down.
My phone starts buzzing as I board.
Then again.
Then again.
Bastien: Madeline, where are you?
Raphael: Emma says your bracelet is on her nightstand. What's going on?
Bastien: Call me. Please.
Raphael: The key is on the counter. Madeline, what did you do?
I turn the phone off.
The train arrives, sleek and silver and impossibly long, swallowing passengers like it's been doing this forever and will keep doing it long after I'm gone.
I board. Find my seat. Stow my suitcase overhead.
Through the window, Paris is waking up. Cafés roll out their chairs. Delivery trucks navigate narrow streets. A woman walks a small white dog past the station entrance, neither of them in any particular hurry.
Home isn't a place. It's the people who make you feel like you belong.
I wrote that on a sticky note once, weeks ago, when I still believed things could work out. Left it on Raphael's refrigerator. I wonder if it's still there.
The train shudders. Begins to move.
I watch the platform slide away, and I don't cry.
I've gotten very good at not crying.
The tunnel swallows us whole, and Paris disappears.
And I am gone.