Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

I smiled, prayed again, and thanked the Gallizenae. I had no bread to leave them, but I pledged to them my eternal allegiance and gratitude.

  And then a shot rang out.

  I reached the base of the lighthouse just as Rainer appeared at the bottom of the stairs, holding his abdomen with bright red blood spilling over his hand.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Alex

  Alex hadn’t noticed the dusk descending, the light fading.

  She had gone out to the rocks ahead of another predicted storm and become so lost in thought—about Jean-Luc’s outrageous offer, and the fact that she missed him, and about what she was going to do next—that she hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. Now everything seemed confusing, alien, the shadows and textures blurring into unintelligible shapes.

  I waited too long.

  Her heart raced, her breath came in rapid, harsh bursts.

  Don’t panic, she told herself. You’ve been through worse. Remember The Trial? You were only ten years old and you survived.

  Of course, she could see perfectly when she was ten. . . . Alex caught herself. Stop it. Focus. If you have to spend the night out here, it won’t be fun but you’ll survive. Rain and wind won’t kill you. She was not an infant. She was simply going blind.

  Still, panic clawed at her throat, encouraging her to scream her anger and rage and fear into the gusts of wind blowing off the ocean, because why not? No one would hear her, and maybe she would feel better.

  Having given herself permission to give in to her fear, Alex felt herself growing calmer. There’s a lesson in there. Okay, let’s start at the beginning. She had gotten herself here; she could get herself back home. She had limited use of her sight, but she had her other senses. She remembered Natalie describing how drunken sailors made their way back to their rooms by keeping one hand on the walls of the island’s narrow passageways. Problem was, she wasn’t in town; she was out on the rocks. So first things first, she had to get away from the rocks and back into the village.

  Slow and steady, she told herself. Slow and steady wins the race.

  Alex took a careful step, then another, reaching out with her hands to feel for the rocks. She stubbed her toe on something but caught herself and maintained her balance. Good, she thought. That’s good. One step, two steps . . . With the next step her foot caught between two rocks, and she stumbled and went down hard, falling on one knee, and a searing pain shot through her. She paused, but the pain passed, which meant nothing was broken.

  Great, Alex, become not only blind but also lame.

  Her breath was ratcheting up with every gust of wind. She was panicking. Think of The Trial. Think of Nat’s face when she realized it was you who left the candy bars for her, as if anyone else could have done so, as if there were a candy bar fairy sprinkling treats throughout the forest to lead lost little girls back home to their survivalist compounds.

  Alex smiled at the thought, let it soothe her. Nat had suggested training a Seeing Eye dog, using a cane, making accommodations. Their childhood roles had been reversed, and now Nat was going to help Alex figure it all out.

  She made it another step, and another, using her hands and her feet to feel her way along. This is going to take forever, she thought, but what did that matter? It’s not as if she had to worry anymore about losing the light. . . .

  After what seemed like hours, she managed to reach the edge of the village and the entrance to a pathway that would lead her to the quay. From there, she should be able to feel her way to the Bag-Noz. No sweat.

  She walked along, stepping with care, and thought again of Jean-Luc. His decency, his desire to help, which, though intended kindly, had enraged her. Alex reminded herself, again: She was not an infant. She could survive what life threw at her; she always had. Including this storm. She would survive the storm.

  And then her foot slipped, and her ankle twisted as she fell into a jagged hole in the cobblestones because she had been unable to see the bright orange traffic cone warning of its presence. Her ankle throbbed, and the hip she landed on stung. Add it to the long list of bruises I’m already sporting, she thought. She took a deep breath, rolled out of the hole, and sat on the wet cobblestones, her palms stinging as she picked out the gravel and the dirt.

  Now the tears came, bitter and raw.

  Ow ow ow ow, she crooned to herself. Resentment bubbled up into her throat like acid. Why her? What had she done to deserve this? What was she going to do with herself now? How would she survive a disaster for which she was entirely unprepared?

  I didn’t see it coming, Alex thought, then laughed at herself. Get it? Didn’t see the blindness coming?

  And at that moment, Alex knew that if she had the option to slip into the stone below her, to be carried out over the sea, absorbed into the mist that danced upon the waves, she would have done so. Right then and there, she would have willingly disappeared into the seascape, to become part of this stubborn village forevermore. She would become part of the foam upon the waves, like the Little Mermaid.

  Wrapped up in her thoughts, her ears filled with the howls of the furious wind, she did not hear footsteps approaching and was surprised when two feet appeared before her.

  Jean-Luc. He was wearing that ridiculous yellow slicker, the hood pulled up, a flashlight in one hand.

  She couldn’t see well enough to read the look on his face. Was he feeling angry? Afraid? Bureaucratic?

  A crack of lightning brightened the sky just before the rain began to fall in earnest, stinging her cheeks. She closed her eyes, wondering if the rain masked her tears.

  Long moments ticked by. Finally, Alex opened her eyes, looked up at Jean-Luc. He reached out a hand.

  “Alex,” he said quietly. His voice was like velvet, capable of coaxing a wild animal to his side, persuading Korrigan to trust him, convincing her to believe in him. “Take my hand, please, Alex.”

  That made the tears fall harder. There was no pretending it was rain now. Alex was racked with sobs, lost, and scared. Stuck, like Natalie had been during The Trial, or hanging off the side of that damned rock, with no recourse, no resources, no knowledge of what came next or how to deal with it.

  “Let me help you.”

  She stared at his outstretched hand but did not move. “I’m not your damned disabled cat.”

  “I do not think that you are. But, Alex . . . sometimes the strongest thing a person can do is to accept help.”

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re in need of a helping hand, and one happens to be right here, waiting for you. Quite eagerly, as a matter of fact.”

  She stared at his hand. Broad, capable, practically glowing in the lamplight. She could see it clearly. In that moment, it was the only thing she could see.

  Jean-Luc stood silently, waiting for her to reply. After another moment, when she said nothing, he sat down next to her on the cobblestones, pulling down his hood so he could look at her.

  “Get up,” she said. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Then we will be ridiculous together.”

  “I can make it alone.”

  “Of course you can. You are Diana the Huntress.”

  The rain poured down upon them, plastering their hair to their heads, running in rivulets down their faces. For a few moments they sat there, side by side, in silence.

  “I’m not Diana anymore,” Alex muttered. “No such thing as a blind huntress.”

  “None of us is the person we used to be,” Jean-Luc replied. “Not I, not Natalie. The Île de Feme itself is not what it used to be. Is that not right? Even Diana got old.”

  “Raphael never painted her that way.”

  He chuckled. “No, he did not. But perhaps he lacked imagination.”

  Alex stared at him.

  “The thing is, Alex, lives must always change, and we must make the be
st of it.”

  “Pourquoi?” she asked.

  “Pourquoi pas?”

  Alex let her head drop back, closed her eyes, and felt the cold rain on her face.

  Pourquoi pas? It was the question Nat’s book had asked, the question that had annoyed Alex for so many years. There were so very many reasons.

  But in the end . . . why not?

  Alex reached out and took Jean-Luc’s warm hand with her cold one.

  Together, they got to their feet.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Natalie

  Natalie could see it all so clearly now. She had been trying to live someone else’s life, according to what other people wanted from her.

  But what did she want from herself?

  Now that she felt free to admit how wrong she had been about everything, the writing once again came—not easily, but steadily. She had something true to say.

  The central message of Pourquoi Pas? hadn’t been wrong, after all, she realized. Natalie still believed in pursuing a dream, in working hard for what she wanted. But real lives, unlike books, didn’t just end. There was no such thing as a Happily Ever After, because the story continued, and a person had to keep working hard and adapting, because life happened, dreams died, and new ones took their place.

  She wrote:

  Sometimes gratitude is just a platitude.

  I’ve been thinking about the fact that the inner life, our quiet core, has little currency on social media. But in the end, it’s all we truly have, and it is precious. It can’t be found in anyone else, and no one else can see it. It’s a secret. And there’s nothing wrong with secrets, as long as they’re true.

  We all live in society, and we all have an outward persona. But each of us must also have days—or weeks, or months—when we allow our inner life to swell up inside of us until it touches everything, every nook and cranny, and we can feel it everywhere.

  If we never take time out to let that happen, then we run the risk of simply accumulating facts and platitudes and other people’s ideas until they begin to rattle around inside, as annoying and heavy and jangly as loose change in a coat pocket.

  Such a person can make a lot of noise, but never really feel anything—nothing but a hollowness, with the wind rushing through.

  Because no one sees the lighthouse beacon until it’s dark, and it’s never more welcome than when spotted during a storm.

  “Hey, Nat?” Alex called from outside her study. “Oh, sorry. Are you writing? I don’t want to bother you.”

  “That’s okay. I was just finishing up some thoughts. By the way, I heard back from Sandy: She loved what I sent her yesterday. Seems the book industry is trending away from ‘inspirational’ stories to ‘authentic’ narratives. According to Sandy, readers want to hear about my having fallen on my face.”

  “Failure is the new success, huh?”

  “I was born for this.”

  “That’s great, Nat,” Alex said with a chuckle, taking a seat by the desk. “I’m so glad for you.”

  “It feels good to be telling the truth. Who knew?”

  Alex smiled. She had stood by her sister’s side when Natalie told François-Xavier’s extended family that they were no longer a couple, and that he appeared to have no intention of returning from Paris. No one seemed overly surprised at the news.

  Natalie did, however, agree to keep the guesthouse renovations on track for a “soft” opening in time for the Festival of the Gallizenae, now just a week away. She devoted her mornings to writing, but spent the afternoons with Alex and Jean-Luc, aided at times by Gabriel and Christine and other neighbors who were pitching in to finish the repairs. Once the electrical wiring was redone, the roof repaired, and the plumbing fixtures installed, all that was needed was to finish up the painting and papering, refinish the wood floors, and make sure they had enough linens and dishes for guests.

  Natalie had been closer to finishing than she had imagined, way back when she sat on her terrace, smoking and drinking and pretending she wasn’t panicking.

  Once they got through the festival days and the official end of the tourist season, Natalie promised to help the relatives find someone to take over the day-to-day operations of the Bag-Noz. As much as she loved the place, she had come to realize that she was not a good fit for full-time island living: Natalie yearned to travel, to wander the streets of foreign cities, to return to California to put to rest some old ghosts. She might even visit Horseshoe Bend and look in on The Commander. To face him as an adult.

  But first things first.

  “I wanted to tell you,” Natalie said, “I’ve got that film option money deposited in my account, plus a nice royalty check. So I think we should go see that doctor in Paris that Jean-Luc knows, just in case. Also, we could go back to California so you could check out the guide dog program, or maybe even travel a little, see a bit of the world before . . .”

  Natalie trailed off.

  “Before I go completely blind,” Alex finished her sentence. “Please, Nat, you can say it. It’s not a secret anymore.”

  “My point is, we don’t have to be stuck out here on this island.”

  “Hey, some of us would love to be ‘stuck out here on this island.’”

  “Really? I mean, it’s a great place to live for a little while. But for good?”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about,” Alex said, seeming to choose her words carefully. “My world has never been as big as yours, Nat. I like small places. I probably would have stayed on that mountain my whole life if Dad hadn’t sold me out. And while I’ve enjoyed traveling a little, I really would love to have a home. Someplace small, manageable. Especially considering my circumstances.”

  “Wait,” Nat said. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Obviously, I’ll need help,” said Alex. “But Jean-Luc and I have been talking about it. . . . It was his idea, actually. I know it’s probably crazy to think that I could—”

  Natalie cut her off with a quick shake of her head. “It’s not crazy that you could do just about anything you put your mind to, with a little help. I mean, driving is probably off the menu, but there are no cars on the island anyway.”

  The sisters shared a smile. In recent weeks, Jean-Luc and Alex had been spending time together. A lot of time. And not just working on the Bag-Noz—they took long walks, sat out by the cove near the lighthouse, even shared romantic dinners at Milo’s and finally tasted Brigitte’s fish et chips.

  “Why didn’t I think of that? You and Jean-Luc could stay here and run this place,” Natalie said, a note of wonder in her voice, “become the proprietors of the Bag-Noz. It seems so perfect somehow.”

  “I’m hoping the Olivier family will be open to the idea. Jean-Luc and I have been working up a business proposal for them, with suggested profit shares and all that. Jean-Luc’s good with numbers and paperwork, as you can imagine.”

  Natalie smiled. “The family likes you better than they ever liked me, anyway.”

  “That’s not true,” said Alex. “I have the sense you never really showed them the real you.”

  “Yeah. I’m working on that.”

  “So, if you’re not running the Bag-Noz, what will you do?”

  “I’ve got a whole list,” said Natalie. “I have to finish this book, obviously. But I also need to kick my nicotine habit, and go see a dentist. And I’m dying to walk the streets of Paris, not to mention getting a proper pedicure and haircut. And then . . . who knows? Maybe I’ll become a goatherd on an island in the Helsinki archipelago, like that woman I saw on the Internet.”

  “I thought she ran sheep, not goats,” said Alex.

  “Whatever.”

  “You might want to know the difference before you go into the business, is all I’m saying.”

  Natalie grinned and took a swig of her coffee. “Ex
cellent point.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Stay here, as our chef.”

  Natalie nearly spit out her coffee. “I’m sorry . . . what?”

  “Hear me out: just for high tourist season. Jean-Luc and I have decided that it doesn’t make financial sense to open an actual restaurant here, but we could offer our guests breakfast, apéro in the evenings, and perhaps the occasional special anniversary or birthday dinner.”

  “But I’m not a chef.”

  “Yes, you are, Nat. You always have been. You might not have credentials from a hoity-toity Parisian culinary school, but people love your food, and you love sharing it. You could spend the summers here, stay through the Festival of the Gallizenae, and then leave before things get too cold to traipse around the world. I understand the winters in the Helsinki archipelago are a bit chilly, so the whole goat—or sheep—thing might need to be put on the back burner.”

  Natalie sat back, thinking. She could spend time with her sister and Jean-Luc, enjoy the beauty of the ocean, watch pétanque battles, collect sea glass—in short, savor island life—but not be hemmed in by the waters of the Raz. She could cook. She could travel. She could “traipse around the world” and still come back to a home. A real home. Her sister’s home.

  She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, and knew that Alex’s proposal was just right.

  “So, two sisters could run this place again,” Natalie said.

  “There’s a nice sort of symmetry, isn’t it? Although we’ll have to make room for Jean-Luc.”

  “There’s plenty of room for him. The man is nothing if not accommodating.”

  “Also, we’re getting a cat,” said Alex. “This place needs a cat or two.”

  “What about Korrigan?” Lately the dog had been spending more time at the Bag-Noz than at the House of Meneï.

  “Korrigan will deal. She’s a survivor.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Oh, one more thing,” said Alex, reaching behind her and handing Natalie a framed photograph.