Chapter Two
“Layla? Layla, oh my god, you’re here!”
Layla had barely taken two steps into the hotel lobby before she heard Emily’s voice: that clear, bright-as-a-bell voice, as excited as Layla had heard it probably a hundred times before, at a hundred different family gatherings.
It’s happening, she thought, surprisingly relieved. No turning back now.
She could admit that her brief, pretty much one-sided interaction with the man in black on the plane had been difficult to shake off, even after the whirlwind that followed: landing and deplaning and passport control, all with Willa, followed by maybe the most chaotic meeting Layla had ever had with a patient’s family.
Willa’s aunt and uncle—an effusive, quick-to-tears American woman and an elegant, fast-talking French man—showered her with a truly overwhelming amount of praise and gratitude, insisting that Layla simply must take some tangible form of thanks for helping and staying with Willa.
At one point, the aunt had so forcefully tried to shove a stack of euros into her hands—“I insist, I insist!”—that Layla had cringed in embarrassment, and the uncle took over with a more sensible offer: a hired car to take Layla wherever she needed to be, to make up for whatever extra time she’d taken to wait with Willa.
In the end, agreeing to take a chauffeured car was better than taking a stack of cash, and once it pulled up—glossy midnight blue, with tinted windows and a brand-new smell—Layla decided that it couldn’t hurt to have a few private moments in that sort of pristine comfort.
The opposite of The floor is probably disgusting.
The opposite of that man in black’s expression, like it was Layla herself who inspired such revulsion.
But in the butter-soft back seat of the car, Layla still couldn’t forget it.
Even as central Paris came into view, she couldn’t forget it.
She wanted to see the panorama of the city with a mature, settled fondness, wanted to re-familiarize herself with its domes and spires and its great soaring tower, its rooftops and windows and balconies trailing flowers, its awnings and café tables and glass cases of delicious beauty.
Instead, it was the universe crashing into her.
These were streets she’d walked and sights she’d seen as a newlywed, with Jamie at her side, Jamie as the more experienced, well-traveled guide.
Disgusting, Layla kept thinking, and every time she did, she felt a rush of renewed frustration and shame.
No man should be able to ruin Paris.
At the very least, not some random man on an airplane who she’d never really met.
Out of the car and inside the hotel lobby, though, with Emily’s voice ringing in her ears—You’re here!—Layla was reminded of the immediate task ahead.
So she smiled as Emily bounded into view, wearing a flowing knee-length dress so pale pink it looked almost white, perfectly bridal.
It wasn’t the sort of boho style Emily used to favor, but Layla knew on sight that Manon—Emily and Jamie’s mom, and Layla’s former mother-in-law—had probably picked it out.
Layla could remember standing before a dressing room mirror in a similarly blush-colored sundress a week before her own wedding shower, Manon nodding in approval from behind her.
“Em,” Layla said, and opened her arms.
Emotion clutched in her throat immediately as Em hugged her—tightly, fiercely—and for Layla, it felt like having the wound from the plane wrapped.
This was right. It was right to be here for Emily.
As they both pulled back, Layla smiled, determined not to show Em the strange mix of relief and guilt and happiness and sadness that welled up in her. But Emily’s eyes brimmed with wetness, and when two big drops spilled over, Em didn’t bother wiping them away.
“You can’t know how much it means to me that you came,” she said, voice soggy, and that mix of emotion in Layla’s body reconstituted itself, dominated now by guilt. “You really can’t know,” Emily repeated.
But Layla could know. She’d met Emily almost fourteen years ago now, when Layla was twenty and Emily was turning eleven, both of them on very different thresholds of growing up, and their bond had been quick, concrete.
Layla was the big sister Emily never had, and Emily a sibling who—unlike Layla’s one, much older half brother, Vaughn—actually seemed to care meaningfully about Layla’s existence.
When Layla and Jamie had finally told the family about their split—together, of course they’d done it together—Emily had been devastated.
No one cried harder; no one asked more questions.
But why?
What did he do?
How will we stay close?
Will you promise to still be my sister?
Will you promise nothing will change?
By then, Em had been twenty-three, probably too old to be asking such grasping, desperate questions. But it was always there, that big- and little-sister dynamic between them. Layla remembered every one of her calm, dry-as-a-bone big-sister answers.
It’s not any one thing.
This isn’t his fault.
Of course I’m always your sister.
The important things won’t change.
She hadn’t intended for all of those answers to be a lie.
“Of course I came,” Layla said, though the Of course felt like another lie, given the last year and a half of pretty much avoiding everyone, so she added, “I’m really happy to be here.”
As she said it, she let her eyes wander to take in the lobby for the first time, and felt a rush of gratitude for its sleek, luxurious blandness: overwhelmingly marble-white with touches of black and brushed gold, oversize columns segmenting the space that looked more like sculpture than architecture, the furniture low-slung and uninviting.
It didn’t feel even a little like the Paris she once fell in love with.
“I wish you could’ve come to my shower, too,” Emily said, interrupting her thoughts, and Layla met her eyes again, looking for accusation there, a sort of A sister would’ve been at the shower judgment.
But Em hadn’t ever been the judgmental sort, and all Layla saw in her face was genuine regret.
“My job,” Layla said automatically, defaulting to the excuse she had used so often with the MacKenzies since the divorce, until they all eventually stopped asking for things that required an excuse. “It’s hard to get time away during my placements.”
“Right,” Em said cheerfully. “How is it? Still going well?”
“It’s great.”
It was the answer she gave to everyone who asked, and she was sure she meant it, despite what had prompted her to take her current position as a locum tenens physician.
When the recruiter had first reached out, the job—basically, being a doctor who took temporary four-to-six-week placements at hospitals where there were staffing shortages or doctors on leave—had appealed as an escape hatch, a way to avoid the crushing, hard-to-keep promises she’d made in the wake of the divorce.
A year and a half in, she could admit that there were other real benefits to the work. The money, of course. Seeing different parts of the country. Time off whenever she wanted it.
That she hadn’t really taken advantage of any of those perks yet—that she spent little, got out even less, worked more than she could ever remember—well.
Well, that wasn’t for Emily to know.
Em nodded and clutched Layla’s hands, and then Layla was being pulled over to one of those low-slung sofas, its fabric lush and its cushions more comfortable than they looked.
Still, once she was seated, she looked longingly over at the small luggage cart with her suitcase and carry-on that the hotel’s porter had left by the reservations desk.
If she could only have a little time to check in, to freshen up…
“I’m texting Michael,” Emily was saying, her face tipped down to her phone, her thumbs flying over the screen. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.”
Layla stared, her brain sluggish to catch up. She maybe shouldn’t have sat down, because it was hitting her now, an overnight flight without sleep, and the adrenaline-rush ending of it.
“On the…on the cruise tomorrow, right?” she said, calling one of those yellow itinerary slots up in her mind.
Today and most of tomorrow were meant to be no-yellow-at-all adjustment days for Layla.
If it’d been up to her, she wouldn’t have run into anyone—even Emily—before things officially got underway tomorrow evening.
“Well, yeah, but he’s on his way back here!” Em’s phone pinged and she looked down. “He’ll be here in like ten! That’s so great!”
“Oh, um—maybe I could change first, or—”
“Oh my gosh, no, you look great. This tonal dressing is very you. Quiet luxury!”
Layla looked down at the beige lounge set she’d worn for the flight.
Aggressively neutral. But also, Em was being generous.
It did not look quietly luxurious right now; it looked crinkled and saggy.
And she hadn’t really taken a close look to see whether she’d picked up anything from that disgusting airplane floor.
“Please wait?” Emily said. “I really want you to meet him.”
You would have met him already, she imagined another version of Emily saying. You would have met him, if you’d kept all your promises to me.
I meant to, she imagined another version of herself saying back.
I meant to have the most amicable divorce in history; I meant to stay so close to all of you.
I meant to keep showing up for friendly monthly coffee dates with Jamie, I meant to come to every single family gathering, I meant to be the kind of sister I was to you before.
I meant to be better at all of it.
“Sure,” she said instead. “I’m so excited to meet him.”
Emily smiled brightly, but almost immediately, her smile dimmed, and she grabbed Layla’s hand again, her eyes suddenly pleading.
“Let’s just do it,” she blurted. “Let’s talk about it before Michael gets here. You know that when I invited you, I didn’t know, I didn’t ever think Jamie—”