Chapter 26
The Provencal Market Doesn’t Take a Day Off
Owen moves quickly.
In the city center of Antibes, he pulls into an indoor parking lot.
He weaves his way to the second floor and parks in a corner spot, turning off the ignition. Popping the trunk. His bike is waiting inside, the helmet attached to it. He pulls them out and closes the trunk, leaving the key under the passenger-side mat.
Then he puts on that helmet and bikes out to the street below—steering down the narrow roads leading through the city center and out toward Old Town—the roads getting windier as he hits the countryside and their precipitous peaks, moving him closer to the ocean, moving him past the seaside apartments.
In these early hours, most of the lights are off. A few people are up brewing their morning coffee, the blue lights of their televisions shining with the morning talk shows, cartoons for the kids.
But mostly everyone is still asleep. Owen didn’t sleep. He didn’t even try. He feels better on the bike, better with movement. His heart thumping, and his chest blowing out.
He pulls to the side of the road to check his phone. But he has no new voice messages waiting for him. He has no new text messages either. He isn’t supposed to hear from Nicholas, not yet. But that doesn’t comfort him. Nothing, at the moment, feels comforting.
In all of his planning, he didn’t anticipate this—just how strange it would be, how difficult these last hours would feel. The possibility of being with Hannah and Bailey so close, and yet somehow further away.
It reminds him of that article in Scientific American that Hannah showed him years ago—the article that stuck with him. There was a group of scientists who studied thousands of commuters who missed their trains by five minutes, thousands of others who missed theirs by many hours.
The commuters who just missed the train had a harder time recovering from the missed departure.
They spent days afterward, trying to figure out where they went wrong—what they could have shifted in their day to make up the few minutes that would have gotten them to the train sooner.
The unnecessary stop for coffee, or the last-answered email that should have waited until they were on board.
Anything and everything they should have skipped, so they’d have gotten there in time.
Either way, you missed it. But almost making it was so much worse.
How can Owen explain it? He’s waited five years, ten months, and twenty-six days. But these last hours are all like that. Whenever he stops moving, it’s like he is watching the train pull out of the station. Without him.
It’s not getting him anywhere, giving too much time to that kind of worry, so he tries to move through it—the way he has spent the last nearly six years moving through it.
He kicks his bike brakes, heads back into traffic, speeding up as he gets closer to Old Town Antibes, the tourist destination quiet in the morning light: the empty cobblestone streets and mostly closed restaurants, the stunning museum on the hill.
And the Provencal market, Old Town’s famous market, the only place with any action at this time of day. Farmers are starting to set up their stands, early morning workers opening the marketplace.
He pulls over in front of a small coffee shop, a barista just opening the doors. He could use a cup of coffee. He could use three. But before he even walks inside—his hand on the door—he hears a voice behind him.
“Bonjour.”
He turns around, half-expecting to see an officer in uniform there.
An officer or a security guard. Someone wanting to see his papers.
Someone wanting to know more about where he has come from, why he is sweating from his early morning bike ride.
Someone waiting for an explanation as to where he is going.
Owen has the answers ready for them—he’s run this play several times now—and knows exactly how to make sure they don’t follow him any farther than here. But it’s nerve-wracking all the same.
Isn’t this how it happens? You can see the whole chessboard. You organize your life to see it. But you still miss it, the smallest of missteps. The only way you lose.
But the young man behind him is not an officer.
He’s also not alone, a young woman on his arm, still dressed up from the night before.
He is in a shiny blue suit, she is dressed in stiletto heels and a short dress—both of them looking tired and happy.
And they’re staring out at Owen with matching smiles.
“S’il vous pla?t, voudriez-vous prendre une photo?”
A photograph. They want Owen to take their photograph. They’re just a young couple, hoping to capture this moment for themselves. The end of a long night (an all-nighter) in the South of France.
But the young guy is looking a little sweaty and anxious as he hands Owen his cell phone, cupping his jacket pocket.
Which makes Owen wonder if he wants to capture a photograph not just because it’s the end of a special night—but also because it’s the beginning of a special day for him too.
The beginning of the day he proposes. The beginning of something new.
“Bien s?r, je le ferai,” Owen says.
Of course he will. Owen takes a series of quick photographs for them, the couple posing together. Happy and laughing. Then Owen hands the guy back his phone, offering him a small nod, wishing him luck.
The young guy nods back, which Owen decides to take as the guy wishing him the same. He’ll take it. Because he needs it. They all do today.
They need every bit of luck they can get.
Owen walks aways from the coffee shop, deciding against going inside. Deciding against stopping anywhere else.
He gets back on his bike and keeps going. The only way he can.
Toward Port Vauban.
Toward the boat.