Epilogue
Elyse, five months later:
“How’s the coffee, Kurt?” my fiancé asks my dad before giving me a wink. I try not to laugh, because the question is totally unnecessary. On Dad’s face is an expression of rapture so great that I think his soul must have left this plane of consciousness.
“That is the best goddamn coffee I ever tasted,” Dad pronounces as he sets the china cup back in its saucer. “Damn, I knew I married into the right culture.”
As it turns out, the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz is pretty good at coffee.
It’s pretty good at everything, to be fair, as we’ve found out over the past forty-eight hours.
In true nepo-baby style, Sinclair chartered the company jet to fly us over to Paris.
I feel kinda bad about how much shit we gave him for that flex because this trip is both his brainchild and his gift to my family, and it really is incredibly generous.
I get emotional when I think about what he’s really doing here. That he isn’t just treating us to a trip of a lifetime but putting his money to work so that we can build relationships with my mom’s family and immerse ourselves in our history.
I swear, Sinclair is more obsessed with our family history than I am.
At first, I thought it was because he’s from the kind of family for whom history is absolutely everything, but now I know better.
He’s obsessed with our history because he can’t trust his.
He says everything about the Vosses’ lore is just that: lore that’s been edited and erased and is just a load of hot air.
I know that’s true. I have a stack of letters, sealed with wax, that tell me just that.
He’s also obsessed with this term enshrined.
He used it in one of his letters to me. I guess it means making something special and memorable and sacred, but in a loving way, rather than a cynical, sociopathic way.
He adores how our family keeps Maman’s memory alive through a hundred tiny acts, and that’s why he wanted to bring us here.
He can’t handle that we lost her, and her French family lost her, and that we have each other but can’t afford the practical logistics of building that relationship in person.
Honestly, it really upsets him. He thinks it’s such a waste.
And so he whipped us into shape, making us apply for passports a few months ago and chartering the jet and planning the trip.
Like I said, we landed in Paris before flying down here.
Sinclair and Dad hatched a plan that Dad would take Sylvie and Fleurie to Disneyland Paris for a few nights while we had a romantic time in the city.
Sylvie is way more mobile now, but she graciously accepted a wheelchair, along with a guide to push her, because I guess the Disney step count is on a whole other level and her occasional-use walking stick wasn’t going to cut it.
While they were away, Sinclair checked us into a suite at Le Bristol and I pretty much lost my life. We walked everywhere: the Tuileries, Montmartre, Le Marais, while my amazing boyfriend plied me with pastries and coffee to keep me fueled up.
And then we ended up on a small, drab side street in front of a small, drab door. I wasn’t really paying attention until he sank to one knee in front of me. I stared down at him in total shock as he pulled a small black velvet box from his pocket.
He took my hand in his as I continued to gape.
“This is the studio where your mom trained,” he told me, his entire face twisted with emotion.
“I think about your mom a lot, about how much courage she must have had to pack it all in twice, once for Paris and once for New York. But when she followed her dreams, she made mine come true.” The tears rolled down his cheeks.
“And I’ll never stop being grateful to her. Never, ever.”
I stood there, staring down at this beautiful man with his beautiful heart, my own heart an absolute riot of emotions at what this meant, at what he was about to ask, at the fact that my mom had danced here once, and hoped, and dreamed, and Sinclair brought me here.
I was speechless, my eyes aching and heavy with tears even as they started to fall.
He released my hand so he could open the box and took out the most insane oval diamond I had ever seen sitting on a diamond band. It had to be the shiniest, sparkliest diamond in the world.
“Please, please will you marry me?” he asked, holding it up. “I can’t live without you, my darling. I don’t even want to try. And I promise you, I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you and supporting you and lifting you up. I just want to be in your orbit.”
I was crying properly now. “Of course I will!” I sobbed. “Of course I’ll marry you!”
He practically shoved the ring onto my finger before he was back on his feet, pulling me into his arms and kissing the breath out of me and telling me between kisses that no man had ever been as happy or as fortunate or as unworthy.
“I can promise you it’s not a Voss family diamond,” he deadpanned after we’d recovered a little and were kind of swaying in the deserted street. “We don’t need that kind of bullshit energy in our marriage.”
I laughed at that. Yeah, I didn’t really want a diamond that came from the same family vaults that contained the locked-up secrets of past scandals and ruined lives.
“A fresh start is way better,” I said, and he bent to rest his forehead to mine.
“That’s what I’m planning on.”
After a while, he put his arm around me as we stood in front of the little gray door. “I don’t even know if it’s a studio anymore,” I said. “I can’t see any sign.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But your dad gave me the address when I asked him for your hand. I told him I wanted to propose somewhere that had meaning to your mom. It was the best way I knew to include her in the process.”
Yeah. That definitely set me off again.
That evening, Sinclair took me to see Giselle at the Palais Garnier, the theater where the ballet premiered in 1841. It was undoubtedly the most beautiful building I had ever been in, and we sat in one of the most prominent boxes in the theater.
“My wife will never sit in the shadows,” he told me as we sipped champagne. Last time we’d seen this ballet, I’d thought it was the start of something great for us. I was wrong, but this evening, I knew it was the start of something great.
Especially because Giselle saved the deceitful nobleman with her forgiveness. Nice touch, that, and one my fiancé was intent on driving home to me.
And now, here we are in Biarritz, watching Dad lose his mind over great coffee as he gets stuck into eggs and the region’s famous jambon.
(I bet his meal’s namesake is having the time of his life with his Auntie Glo and Uncle Reggie.) We sit on the beautiful terrace overlooking the sparkling blue Atlantic and breakfast at a leisurely pace, like the French do.
Our coffee cups are endlessly refilled as Fleur plays with the street-dance-themed sticker book that was one of many waiting for her when we boarded Sinclair’s jet.
I look over at the man next to me. His blue linen button-down is immaculate, his dark hair is brushed off his face, his skin is annoyingly, gorgeously tan from just a couple days on the beach, and I just know that he’s eye-fucking me from behind those fancy shades of his.
My fiancé is absolutely perfect. And he’s drinking his coffee with his left hand so he can hold my hand across the gap between our chairs.
A woman comes into view as she strolls across the terrace—tall, effortlessly elegant in a linen sheath dress, almost-black hair in a flawless bob under a wide-brimmed sun hat. I’m low-key checking her out when I realize with a start that she’s doing the same to me.
She stops by her table and waves a glossy magazine at me, back page facing me. “Excusez-moi,” she says to me. “Ca, c’est vous, hein?” This is you, huh?
I blush. It’s only been a couple of months since the LANE campaign came out, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get over having my face broadcast everywhere.
Sure, I get photographed all the time when I’m with Sinclair, but earning a billboard is way different from being on Page Six because of whose arm you’re on. “Oui, madame, c’est moi.”
She gives me a happy little pout. “Vous êtes charmant.” You’re charming. I thank her, and she goes on her way. As she turns the magazine around, I see that it is French freaking Vogue.
My family thankfully waits until she’s headed off before the low-key teasing starts.
“Seriously,” my sister says, “we should turn this into a drinking game.”
But my fiancé leans in and whispers in my ear, “I’m loving being the arm candy of the hottest model in the world.”
All I can do is roll my eyes.
My maternal grandmother is still alive. Aside from the trip we took when I was a baby, the only time we’ve met her is at Mom’s funeral.
Her family cobbled together the money to send her over to New Jersey so she could bury her daughter in person.
She stayed a couple days, and I remember, even through my own devastation, how old and grief-stricken she looked.
We keep in touch by email and text, mainly to send her photos of Fleurie, but it’s not a great basis for a relationship.