Anne’s musings were interrupted by the sound of steps on the gravel. A few yards away, the young man with the plaid shirt and jeans was walking toward her.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening,” Anne replied, trying to hide her surprise and annoyance at being disturbed.
“You’re Anne, right?”
Anne hesitated before whispering, “Yes.” After a short moment of silence, she added, “And you’re Guillaume.”
He nodded.
“Every August 26,” he said with a heavy French-Canadian accent, “I find a bouquet of dahlias like the one you just put on my father’s grave. But there was nothing today when I got here. Knowing that the cemetery was going to close soon, I decided to wait. I figured you’d come again this year. …”
Anne saw that he didn’t look like his father. His features would have been forgettable if not for the sparkle of intelligence in his eyes and a smile that wasn’t devoid of charm.
“How do you know my name?” Anne asked him.
“I found a letter in my father’s apartment, dated August 15, 1978, and signed Anne.”
She pictured herself writing Alexis after they had returned from Hôpital Bretonneau that day he was stung by a wasp. Anne had noticed that this last declaration of love was missing from the letters she had brought back from Alexis’s place.
“Papa put the letter in his nightstand. To be honest with you, it didn’t surprise me. Even though Papa never talked to me about you, I knew he was in love. I would’ve had to be blind not to see that!”
Moved by Guillaume’s candor, Anne began to feel less threatened by his presence. She thought that there was no reason to keep him at bay.
“In Lyon,” he said, “I asked my grandmother about this mysterious Anne. She said she didn’t know anything. Same reaction from Stephan Goetz—he wouldn’t say anything. I asked some of the people who live in my father’s apartment building in Montmartre. A couple of them said they remembered that a woman was there sometimes …”
“Why was it so important for you to know?”
“My mother, she was sick, and because of that she was such a drama queen. You know, emotional blackmail and all that. … Until I was old enough to understand that she’d never get better, my father had to put up with so much. I think he deserved another life. …”
Guillaume gazed at Anne’s blue eyes, the curly hair surrounding her face, her elegance.
Noticing that her expression had softened, he added, “I wanted to see you for the right reasons, you know. …”
“I believe you. …”
Reassured by Anne’s response, Guillaume looked around and said, “We should go before they close the gates.”
As they headed for the exit, it dawned on Anne that she should make Guillaume the same promise Alexis had made to her all those years ago. That way, her visit to her lover’s grave might take on a fuller meaning. She would now look after Guillaume.
“You and I have a lot to talk about,” she told the young man. “Let’s go to the café where your father and I used to go.”
About the Author
Dominique Marny was raised in a family that loved art, literature, adventure, and travel. In addition to being a novelist, she is a playwright and screenwriter, and is a regular contributor to the French literary magazine Plume. She has also written five books about her great-uncle Jean Cocteau. Marny lives in Paris.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First published in France as J’ai cherché celui que mon cœur aime by Presses de la Cité, an imprint of Place des Editeurs
Copyright © 2011 Presses de la Cité, an imprint of Place des Editeurs,
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I Looked for the One My Heart Loves Page 31
