One Summer In Paris

Good? Her heart skipped in her chest.

Had he changed his mind? That was why he’d come here tonight, to find a way to ask her forgiveness.

This was the first step toward reconciliation.

Would she be able to forgive him?

Yes, she probably would. They’d need to move away, of course. Leave this town and move to a place where no one knew them. They’d see a counselor. Find their way through this knotty mess. Rebuild their lives.

“You don’t want me to cancel?”

“I’ll pay you for my flight ticket. I don’t want you to lose the money. And I’ll take over the hotel reservation.”

Grace felt as if her brain was working in slow motion. He didn’t want to take her to Paris. He was offering her guilt money.

And suddenly she knew. God, she was so slow.

“You’re taking Lissa.”

He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Grace—”

“You want the tickets so you can take the girl—” she emphasized girl “—you’re having an affair with, on our anniversary trip.”

He looked almost as sick as she felt.

“I know it’s not the most tactful thing to ask you.” He looked desperately uncomfortable. “But it does make financial sense. You already booked the whole trip, and I know you’ll lose money when you cancel.”

She could imagine how the discussion might have gone with Lissa.

He would have fought it, she was sure of that.

I can’t expect my wife to give me the tickets she booked to celebrate our anniversary so that I can take my lover.

Maybe Lissa had been testing him, checking how far he’d go for her.

A part of Grace wanted to know the answer to that, too.

He was a man at war on the inside. Good versus bad. David, the good guy, trying to slide into the skin of bad guy and finding it didn’t fit comfortably.

“What have you turned into, David? What’s happened to the man I married?” She stood up quickly, frightened that her emotions would tumble onto the table between them. “Go. I said five minutes, and you’ve had your five minutes.”

His fingers curled and uncurled. “I know it’s been stressful for you, but it’s also been stressful for Lissa.” He slid her a look. Wild. A little desperate. “Some of the people in town don’t even speak to her anymore. She’s finding it upsetting. She’s young, Grace. She’s struggling to handle all this.”

Grace almost choked. “She’s struggling?”

“I’ve lost a lot, too. I’ve lost my house, my standing in the community and also my close relationship with my daughter.”

“She isn’t a pair of socks you’ve abandoned under the bed. You haven’t lost her. You chose something different.” Even as she said the words she was wondering what about me. Why wasn’t she on that list? Hadn’t she ever been important to him?

She looked more closely at him and saw that he looked haggard. Why hadn’t she noticed that right away? If anything he looked worse than she did. Maybe having a girlfriend half his age was proving harder work than he’d imagined.

“You need to leave now.” Before she picked up a skillet and clocked him over the head with it. That would give him the best headline he’d ever had in his time as editor. Shame he wouldn’t be alive to read it.

He stood up. “Let me pay you, Grace. I don’t want you to lose money.”

“I won’t lose money, because I’m not canceling.”

It was difficult to know which of them was most surprised.

David couldn’t have looked more dazed if she had clocked him over the head. “You’re surely not planning on going?”

“Yes, I’m going. I’ve been looking forward to it for ages. Why would I cancel?”

“Because—” He seemed lost for words, even though words were his job. “You don’t— You never— You travel with me. I’m the one who takes care of the passports and—”

“I can carry my own passport, David. And yes, in the past we’ve traveled together but you now have a new traveling companion, so I’ll travel alone. If Lissa needs a trip to Europe, you can arrange your own.”

“I— This isn’t like you.”

“Maybe we don’t know each other as well as we thought.”

“Maybe we don’t.” He took a deep breath. “Can I see Sophie?”

“No.” She’d discovered a layer of steel inside her that she didn’t know she had. “You’ll upset her and she has a test tomorrow.”

“I was the one who always reassured her before tests.”

“Maybe, but right now she doesn’t find your presence reassuring. Call her tomorrow, and if she feels like seeing you then she can. It’s her decision.”

She stalked to the front door and was relieved when he followed.

She’d half expected him to make a dive for the stairs.

He paused in the doorway, and his eyes were sad. “I know you’re never going to forgive me, but I didn’t want it to be this way, Grace.”

She gave him a little shove and closed the door between them, not because she wanted to be rude, but because she didn’t trust herself not to break down and cry.

She’d always believed she could control the things that happened in her life and keep her world in the shape she wanted it to be. Discovering that wasn’t the case was as frightening and heartbreaking as losing David.

Tears poured down her cheeks. She couldn’t let Sophie see her this upset.

She waited until David’s car disappeared into the distance, called up to Sophie to tell her where she was going and then drove to the one person who always made her feel safe.

Mimi

Through her kitchen window, Mimi saw Grace flying down the path toward her cottage.

The edges of her coat flapped open and the rain had dampened her hair into curls so that each strand appeared to be fighting with the next, but what really caught Mimi’s attention was her expression. Everything she felt showed on her face.

Instinctively Mimi reached for her camera but then put it down again. She’d recorded many things over her lifetime, but she wasn’t going to record her granddaughter’s pain.

As a child Grace had learned to hide it with most people, but never with Mimi. It was as if she’d given her grandmother the key that opened the door to her soul. In that moment she looked so like her mother that Mimi was immobilized, her memory transported to another time. It was like seeing Judy again, like being given a second chance.

Some women weren’t meant to be mothers. Mimi was one of them.

It was all my fault, and I’m sorry.

Her silent apology to her daughter went unheard and when Grace lifted her fingers to brush tears from her cheek, Mimi saw only the differences. The nose was different. The mouth was different. Grace’s face was oval and thinner than her mother’s, although Judy’s appearance had altered toward the end.

Mimi clutched at the kitchen counter, steadied herself.

Why did life come with so much tragedy?

Right now she felt every one of her ninety years, and for a fleeting second she wanted to lie down and curl into a ball and let life do whatever it needed to do.

And then Grace drew closer, and Mimi knew that while she was still able to function, she would never give up and let life do its worst. And she would never abandon Grace.

It was a relief to discover that the fight, the anger that she’d thought had maybe left her along with much of her hearing and her previously perfect eyesight, was still there.

She opened the door, heard the hiss of the rain on tarmac and breathed in the smell of damp grass.

Winter had been nudged aside by spring, but the sun had yet to emerge from hibernation. Every day brought a dank wetness, and skies heavy with cloud. The cold made Mimi’s bones ache. She longed for summer when she could fold away the extra blankets she kept close.

“Grace.”

Grace tumbled through the door into her arms, and Mimi almost staggered. It was as if grief had made her heavier. She led her to the pretty blue sofa that made her think of Mediterranean skies and azure seas. She sat, and Grace slid to the floor and sobbed into Mimi’s lap.

She’d done the same thing as a child, Mimi remembered. When her mother had rejected her, embarrassed her, frightened her.

It was painful to watch, and she stroked Grace’s hair, feeling frightened herself.

She’d seen enough in her nine decades not to be shocked by much, but she was shocked by this.

Oh, David, how could you?

David, who she would have said was the most solid, predictable, dependable man she’d ever met. He’d almost made Mimi believe in marriage.

What would happen now?

Was this karma? Was Grace being punished for Mimi’s sins?

Seeing Grace so safe and secure had given her joy. She hadn’t anticipated this, even though she should have done because she knew how easily life could change direction.

“I hate him.” Like a child she sobbed, her tears drenching the thin silk of Mimi’s dress. “I truly hate him.”

“No, you don’t.” Mimi held her, stroking her shoulder. “You hate what he’s done.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing. At some point you’ll see that, but it might take a while.” David had been Grace’s rock. He’d given her the emotional stability she’d craved. Protected by his love, she’d thrived.

“I am never going to forgive him. She’s twenty-three. He has completely and utterly humiliated me. Everywhere I go, people are wondering about me. They’re talking about what I did wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong, Grace.”

“Then why did he leave?”

Such a simple question for a complicated situation.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not important. I’m never important.”

“That’s not true.” Mimi knew this was about more than David. “Your mom was sick. It was different.”

“Maybe the reasons, but not the result.” Grace’s words emerged in an uneven volley, between sobs. “I have to be cheerful and together for Sophie, and put on my best coping face whenever I leave the house.” She blew her nose. “People are looking at me wondering what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Grace.”

“I must have done something, or he wouldn’t have left me for her.”

“Men sometimes do selfish things.” Mimi paused. “Women, too.”

She’d been selfish, hadn’t she?

It was something she didn’t like to admit to herself, which was why she’d never discussed it with anyone. Not even Grace. Her family saw only the facts—that she’d had a child.

They didn’t know the history of her heart.

Grace looked at her, her eyes bruised with grief. “He chose her over me.”

Mimi’s heart felt heavy in her chest. She knew this wasn’t just about David. “It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it? He is living with her. And now I have to go to Paris on my own.” The words were barely distinguishable between the sobs.

“You’re still going to Paris?” Mimi’s heart gave a little lift, like a bird catching a thermal.

“I don’t have any choice—” Grace hiccuped, sobbed, hiccuped again. “If I don’t go, Sophie won’t travel this summer. And I am not giving the tickets to David. I’m not that evolved.”

“Did he ask for them?” Surely even a man blinded by a new infatuation—she refused to believe it was love—wouldn’t do something so thoughtless and cruel?

“Yes. I told him I was using them.” Grace blew her nose. “And I can’t see a way out of it that doesn’t involve ruining Sophie’s summer.”

She would do it, Mimi knew, because Grace was an excellent mother. A far better mother than Mimi had ever been.

“You might enjoy it.”

“It would be a miserable trip. It feels like the wrong choice.”

“Paris is never the wrong choice. And staying here would be worse.”

Grace brushed her hand across her cheeks. “It was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime with the man I love.”

Mimi ignored the ache in her chest. “It can still be the trip of a lifetime.”

“Memorable for the fact that I’m alone in the City of Lights? Paris is for lovers.”

Mimi made an unladylike sound. “Paris is for everyone. Don’t romanticize, Grace.”

“I haven’t traveled alone since I was eighteen, and even then I stayed with the French family you put me in touch with.”

“Then it’s time you traveled alone again.”

“I booked an expensive hotel.”

“Quelle plasir,” Mimi murmured. “I don’t see the hardship. You will have to spell it out for me. Go! You might surprise yourself and have a good time.”

Grace’s expression said that the chances of that were zero. “You want me to do this for Sophie.”

“I want you to do it for you. You will do it and send David pictures so that he can see for himself what a fool he is.”

“I don’t know how to live without him, Mimi.” There was fear in her voice, and Mimi felt the same fear.

What if she couldn’t help Grace through this? She’d failed her own daughter. What if she failed her granddaughter, too?

She punched her way through it.

“You know what I’ve always said—a man is icing on the cake, that’s all. And with all the new research on the dangers of sugar, maybe you’re better off without.”

“You can’t possibly understand. You’ve never been in love. You can’t imagine what it feels like to lose it.”

Mimi felt pain slice through her. She knew exactly how it felt. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can’t survive without David. Life might be tougher, and different, but you will find a way.”

She’d found a way. There had been times when she’d thought that living without him might kill her, but it hadn’t. A broken heart, she’d discovered, was rarely fatal. Instead, it inflicted a slow, painful torture.

Mimi was too old to do many things but remembering was one skill she hadn’t lost. She often thought about him. Of dancing late into the night, strolls along cobbled streets wrapped in the darkness of Paris, long nights entwined together with the open window letting in the breath of wind and street noise.

Was he still alive? Did he ever think of her?

Did he consider her the love of his life or his biggest mistake?

Grace fumbled for her bag. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing this to you. You shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“I’m providing a sympathetic ear and a shoulder, that’s all.”

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