“They’re in love,” he said as he did magical things to the length of her spine. “Alexis is following her heart.”
“Like we did,” she said.
“Like we did,” he agreed.
Except for the fact that they were on the fast track to divorce, it would have been a great story to tell their future grandchildren.
Less than a week ago Alexis had shown up with a handsome man by her side and a big announcement to make. She and Gabe Fellini planned to be married in early spring in Paris.
Just wait until you see Paris, Alexis had raved as she shared her news. I don’t know why you and Daddy never traveled anywhere.
Her darling daughter hadn’t a clue what she was asking of them.
Paris was their city, their secret dream for as long as Kate could remember. High-school sweethearts, they were going to run away together to the City of Light as soon as they graduated. They would put college on hold, grab backpacks and whatever savings they could scrape up, and set out to conquer the world. Ryan would write the Great American Novel while she followed in the footsteps of Monet and Renoir and Sargent.
One day in the far-distant future they would settle down and raise a family, but not until they had had their fill of Paris.
But there was one slight flaw in their plan: a baby daughter named Shannon who arrived eight months after graduation.
And even though they were painfully careful, another baby daughter named Alexis had shown up less than two years later.
And seven years into their marriage, just when they thought they could put the diapers and burping blankets and binkies away for good, Taylor joined them.
In the blink of an eye they had gone from love-struck teenagers to loving parents without a chance to slow down and catch their breath. Life didn’t work that way. Life didn’t slow down and make allowances for youthful enthusiasm, for sweet mistakes, for the daily struggles every couple faced. The only thing you could do was run as fast as you could and hope you’d catch up with each other somewhere down the line.
Through it all, there was always Paris. One day, they promised each other when times were tough and life seemed to be plotting against them. One day when the kids were grown they would make that dream come true.
Who could have guessed their middle child would be the one to make it happen?
Who would have guessed it would be too late?
“Paris,” Kate murmured against his mouth.
“Paris,” he said and then, for a long time, they didn’t say anything at all.
Paris—the following spring
Six days before the wedding
“MERCI.” Kate Finney Donovan fumbled with the fistful of euros then finally handed them all to the impossibly good-looking bellman waiting expectantly by the door. “Merci beaucoup.”
He bowed and said either, “May I be the father of your children?” or “Lady, you’d better take a crash course in the exchange rate,” then closed the door behind him.
She laughed for the first time in eighteen hours of traffic jams, airport security checks, turbulence, and just plain mother-of-the-bride jitters.
Clearly it was a testament to the Parisians that she had made it from the airport to the hotel without incident and with most of her money still in her wallet. She had relied on the kindness of English-speaking cab drivers and her memory of high-school French to keep her from going too far astray and neither had let her down. Although, judging by the bellman’s reaction to the tip she had given him, maybe she had better reread the section on currency in Paris for Tourists before bed.
She was staying in the apartment her great-aunt Celeste Beaulieu kept at the Hotel St. Michel on the Left Bank. Celeste was already at the inn named Milles Fleurs, which was located on the outskirts of the city, for the wedding festivities, and she had suggested Kate might want to spend a few days in pampered luxury before the wedding craziness got into full swing.
Celeste knew all about her lapse of sanity the night of the engagement party. She had listened as Kate poured out her heart a few days later, held Kate’s hand across the transatlantic wires as she alternately blamed herself then Ryan for thinking with their hormones and not their heads. Only Celeste knew what Paris had meant to them and how hard it would be to see the city for the first time as one-half of an about-to-be-divorced couple.
“You will do as I say, chérie,” Celeste had commanded, as only a Frenchwoman from Brooklyn could. “Send on your bags to Milles Fleurs and tell Alexis that you have business to attend elsewhere before you can join them.”
“You want me to lie to her?” Kate had asked, warming to the idea despite herself.
“The business is your heart.” What Celeste apparently wanted was for Kate to discover Paris in her own way, on her own time, so that she would have some control of her emotions when she finally saw Ryan again. Perhaps if she got all of those Paris “firsts” out of the way she would stand a fighting chance.
Considering the fact that she’d burst into tears at her first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, her aunt might have a point. Even through the thick fog of jet lag, the City of Light’s staggering beauty had overwhelmed her as she rode in from the airport. It was every bit as dazzling as she had imagined it as a giddy teenager in love with love and dying for romance. Wide boulevards. Narrow cobblestone streets. Graceful trees dressed in the lacy greens of spring. The Eiffel Tower rising up into the late-morning sky like a dream.
She could almost see the ghosts of Renoir and Monet, Hemingway and Fitzgerald watching over the young artists and writers who sat hunched over sketch pads and laptops and steaming bowls of onion soup, feasting on every wonderful thing the city had to offer.
Why didn’t we do this years ago, Ryan? Before it was too late for us….
She already knew the answer. Children happened. Careers happened. Life happened. And somewhere along the way dreams faded.
Thank God, she had listened to Celeste and claimed this time for herself. Her bags were safely en route to Milles Fleurs. Her daughters thought she was meeting with a gallery owner who was staying in a farmhouse in the Loire Valley.
All she had with her was an overnight bag, some toiletries, and the family portrait she had painted at her daughter’s request. Somehow her daughter’s request had validated her growing success as a portrait artist in a way her many commissions never had. Had Celeste known that traveling light would make her feel glamorous and sophisticated, like one of those world travelers who could put everything they needed in a duffel bag and have room to spare for tchotchkes? More than likely. When it came to life, eighty-something Celeste Beaulieu pretty much had it all figured out.
Celeste was Kate’s grandmother’s older sister who had moved to France in the 1950s, married a handsome Frenchman, and never looked back. She was one of those women who seemed born with an understanding of the inner workings of romance, a throwback to the days of salons and gentlemen callers. Celeste understood without being told that the combination of Parisian charm and Alexis’s wedding might be more than a woman on the verge of divorce could handle.
The sitting room was elegant and quintessentially French. An antique armoire that would have been at home in the Louvre bumped shoulders with an angularly modern chair reminiscent of Vladimir Kagan. The sitting room opened into a library, which led to the bedroom in the rear of the apartment. The bed was short but invitingly wide, a frothy confection of heavenly pillows and down-filled duvets of dove-gray silk shot through with mauve as seductive as a secret lover.
Long casement windows overlooked the wide street below and, just beyond, the legendary Seine