Paris Ever After
a novel
K.S.R. BURNS
Published by Velvet Morning Press
Copyright © 2018 by K. S. R. Burns
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Ellen Meyer and Vicki Lesage
Everything I write is for Steve
Table of Contents
previously…
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
epilogue
a note from k.s.r. burns
amy’s favorite parisian madeleines
book club discussion guide
about the author
acknowledgements
previously…
Last April—grieving the death of her best friend, unsure of what her future should be—Amy Brodie set off for Paris. Just for a few days. No one needed to know, not even her husband, William. But Will is not a fool, after all. Even though he was out of town at the time, he discovered Amy’s absence and followed her to France. They argued. He returned to Arizona. After a short delay (not her fault), Amy went after him. Then they had another fight. A big one. Taking the gamble of her life, Amy set off alone a second time to Paris, where she’s been living all summer long. It’s now early September.
There. That should get you started.
one
Whatever happens, he must not see me. Not yet. Not like this.
I sprint to the opposite side of the street, barely avoiding a speeding purple Peugeot, and duck into the shadowy recesses of a nearby doorway. From here I can see without being seen.
Unbelievable. I pass the Hôtel du Cheval Blanc almost every day. But today—on my “special day,” as Margaret has been calling it, when I feel particularly at ease and happy and hopeful and just plain good—William appears.
Checking into my former hotel.
William.
At least I think that’s him, hunched over the cluttered reception desk, writing in the old-fashioned registration book.
I creep forward a few feet. The street is very narrow, and the hotel lobby is brightly lit so I have an excellent view.
Yeah, that’s him all right. His hair is shorter and he has one of those hipster stubble beards and I think he’s gained weight, but it’s unmistakably William. As tall, as grave, and—I have to admit—as beautiful as ever.
Oh no. He can’t see me. Not today, not yet. I’m not ready.
And though he doesn’t know it, he’s not ready either, because I haven’t had a chance to tell him my big news. I study his profile as he extracts a blue American passport from the inside pocket of his jacket and hands it to the deskman. Seeing William again shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. We are still married after all.
My scalp prickles. The last time I talked to William—about four months ago—he was furious at me for taking off to France for a week without telling him first. OK, I see now how this reaction could be understandable. Yet at the time, I was so freaked out. So mad. And so sad. All I wanted was a break—from my life, from my past and present and future. When I returned to Arizona and tried to apologize, he didn’t accept that apology.
Nope, he informed me he never wanted to see my face again. Boom. Just like that.
So, feeling I had little to lose, I turned right around and came back to Paris. Just like that. Now it’s September (already), and as crazy as it might sound, I haven’t had a single reason to regret my rash move. Not so far.
The deskman holds up a key, which William accepts with a polite nod. In addition to it being weird for William to show up in Paris with no warning, it’s weird he would opt to stay in the dumpy little Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, where the beds sag, Wi-Fi is not included, and the rooms lock with massive brass keys instead of compact twenty-first-century digital key cards.
It’s also a major clue that he isn’t here on some kind of company business. Absolutely. A cheapie hotel is all the confirmation I need that William is paying his own way. And that can mean only one thing: He’s come to Paris to look for me.
I admire the straightness of his nose and the curve of his neck. Maybe he wants to get back together. Maybe he’s lonely. In our four years of marriage, I’ve noticed he has no friends other than work friends and no family other than his granddad, who lives in Minnesota and only visits Phoenix at Christmas. William is a guy with many fine qualities that I’ve always admired, but he can be cool, aloof, stern. Withdrawn even. He may be coming to a realization that, in an important way, he needs me.
It’s been hard to tell sometimes. On my wedding day I believed I loved him and he loved me. Simple. But it rapidly became more complicated. I know I haven’t met his expectations, and I’m not sure he’s met mine.
One thing I’m absolutely sure of, however, is that he has no idea I’m in possession of the wildest of wild cards. He doesn’t know about Catherine.
I tuck the baguette I’m carrying under one arm and cup my melon-sized belly with both hands. Yes. There she is, as always, growing every minute. Surprise, William. You may be Mr. Science Guy, but this time I’m the one with the superior facts and data.
Not that I planned it this way. It’s you who’s been shunning me, remember? If you’d seen fit to respond to any of the many emails, voicemails, texts, and even postcards I sent you over the summer, I’d have told you about my pregnancy, about Catherine.
But you didn’t. And so I couldn’t. I wasn’t about to leave my big news in a voicemail or write it on the back of a postcard. Who does that? No one. Telling someone he’s going to be a father is major news, the kind of announcement you want to make face to face—or at least ear to ear. In real time.
Meanwhile, real time has slipped by like river water. I can’t believe I’ve spent an entire summer in Paris. An entire intimidating, astonishing, exhilarating, and divine French summer.
The deskman points to a wooden staircase at the rear of the lobby. William picks up his carry-on and turns his back to me, jump-starting my heart into a wild gallop. I forgot how splendidly he moves. I forgot how good his butt looks in jeans.
Oh William.
I step out of my doorway hiding place as a woman about my age strolls past. I smile at her because though she has one child by the hand and another on the way, her pink ballet flats perfectly complement her fuchsia flowered top. She glances at my modest baby bump and smiles back. We’re members of the same sisterhood, the smile says. Even her little one—a boy, judging by his blue cap—favors me with a toothless grin. I again place my hands around the satisfying roundness and firmness of my belly.
Catherine. My little stowaway. When I came to Paris—terrified because I’d rarely even been outside the state of Arizona—my unborn child came along with me, unafraid, unworried, unhesitant.
I had no clue back then. If I had known I was pregnant, I wouldn’t have dared to come. But even before I received confirmation that she was growing inside me, I’m convinced it’s Catherine who gave me the courage to create my new Parisian life. Together we’ve discovered how to decipher the Métro map, repel street hustlers, tie a silk scarf a half-dozen different deceivingly casual ways, jaywalk without being run over by a bus, and slice through throngs of pedestrians without jostling a single elbow. Together we’ve learned the perfect French words to use to keep the bakery girl from selling us a half-burnt baguette and to charm the produce man into giving us the ripest melon. We can order in a restaurant. We can hail a cab. Paris is ours, baby. We own it.
When my phone jingles, I brace myself for the sight of William’s handsome face grinning up at me from the touchscreen. It’s happening. It’s time. Despite myself, I can hardly wait. It’s been so long since I’ve felt his, or anyone’s, arms around me.
But my caller isn’t William. It’s Margaret, my excellent landlady-slash-confidante. She’s probably wondering why I’m not back yet, even though it was she who sent me to fetch our dinner bread from the distant “superior bakery,” the one with a sign in the window announcing that three years ago it was awarded a mayor’s commendation for best baguette in Paris.
“Only the very finest for your special day, my darling girl,” she said as she handed me the butter-soft leather jacket I’ve come to think of as my own. “Besides,” she added, winking, “the fresh air and exercise will do both you and baby a world of good. Off you go!”
Off I went. Margaret came to Paris in her mid-twenties and has lived here for more than forty years, but she still sounds like the born and bred English lady she is.
“Amy dear, good job I’ve caught you,” she says now. “I’ve just realized we haven’t a morsel of Comté in the house. We can’t very well do a proper cheese course without Comté, now can we? Would you mind terribly popping over to the cheesemonger’s on your way home?”
I smile at the word “cheesemonger.” It’s classic Margaretspeak. “Comté. No problem. From our favorite place, right?”
Margaret and I have not only a preferred bakery but a preferred cheese shop. We’re super organized. Our life together, unlikely and untenable as it may seem, is cozy and predictable and safe and relaxed. It’s good for me and for Catherine. And even for Margaret. After all, I save her from loneliness, and she saves me from living under a bridge. Perfect.
She laughs. “But of course, my darling. Not more than two hundred grams, mind.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’m so looking forward to our soirée tonight,” she adds before I can thank her (again) for hosting tonight’s dinner. Her voice is eager yet shaky. Not long after settling into Margaret’s spare bedroom—at her insistence—I realized she’s much more frail than she seemed when we first met, on only the second day of my original Paris trip. Lately she seems to have been getting frailer. Sometimes she even gives me the feeling she’s about to slip through my fingers, like a snapped strand of antique pearls. “We’ve much to celebrate,” she adds.
We do. Well, I do. Today I am not only officially five months pregnant, I am turning thirty years old.
Thirty.
I say goodbye, drop the phone into my tote bag, and gaze up at the sooty façade of the building across the street. The good-old-if-somewhat-crappy Hôtel du Cheval Blanc was my first landing place in France. In fact, there, on the third floor, is the window of my old room. From this very window, I studied and admired and lusted after Paris—fearful, guilty, exultant, grieving, thrilled. I dreamed of staying here forever.
Don’t laugh. That’s all it was at first. Just a crazy dream. I had no intention of leaving Arizona, and William, and my so-called life for good. No. I never meant for William to find out about my brief adventure. I never meant for him to get hurt.
But, oh, he did find out, and he did get hurt. For which I was and remain truly sorry. For which I owe him, in ways I can’t articulate and have been doing a pretty good job at avoiding.
Catherine tickles me from the inside. Sweet girl. She’s happy, uncomplicated, safe. She has no idea that her father is estranged from her mother and that said mother hasn’t gotten everything together yet.
I’m trying. Now that I’m thirty, I need to try a lot harder.
For at least the trillionth time I wonder if I should’ve just left Paris the second I found out for sure I was pregnant. It’s what a lot of people might have done. No doubt most people. I often think the smartest, sanest, safest thing I could do is go back to Phoenix and try to work things out with William. But then I remember that William ignoring every single one of my attempts to get in touch with him probably means he really, truly doesn’t want to see me and that I really, truly need to get busy on building a life as a single mother.
Now he’s here in Paris. It’s a little frightening, a lot confusing, and a tad titillating. No wonder I’m swinging back and forth like a birthday piñata, knowing only that whatever I do—or don’t do—it needs to be the right thing for Catherine.
The tricky part will be figuring out what that right thing is.
two
“You know Amy, I am of the opinion you have arrived at a crossroads,” Margaret says as she reaches her cheese knife toward the Comté.
Hervé nods. “Absolument. Agreed.”
Manu takes a sip of wine and says nothing.
We are near the end of my special birthday dinner. No one here can possibly know William showed up in Paris today, unannounced and unanticipated. I haven’t even confided in Manu, who is usually the first person I tell about anything. I’ve been working hard to act completely normal all throughout the lavish meal, from the asparagus with Hollandaise sauce to the confit de canard to Margaret’s famous Pommes Anna to now, the cheese course.
I look from Manu to Margaret to Hervé and back to Manu again. These are my three friends in Paris. “What do you mean?”
Margaret flutters her eyelashes at me as she positions a sliver of Comté on a shred of superior baguette. “Today marks your fifth month,” she says.
“Right. Yes. I know.”
Of course I know. And it seems incredible to me that I’m more than halfway through, but this is because my pregnancy was confirmed rather late. Oh yes. I was in denial for quite some time and didn’t heed Margaret’s entreaties to visit a doctor until mid-July, when I was more than three months along.
Her green eyes sparkle. “A woman in your condition, my dear girl, needs to start taking far better care of herself.”
“Margaret.” I put down my fork. “What are you talking about? You think I’m not taking care of myself? You can’t be serious!”
She laughs at me. Margaret’s great gift is that she accepts people for who and what they are. But at the same time, she loves to stage direct the humans in her life. She thinks she knows best, and often, she’s right.
Hervé waggles his forefinger at me. “Nevertheless, you cannot, chère Amy, continue to go on as you have been.”
I sigh. Margaret and I met Hervé at a wine tasting not long ago. He approached us bearing flutes of champagne and a story about Margaret’s late husband, whom he claimed to know from a business acquaintance. Now he’s a frequent visitor to the apartment. He is charming, normally, but in every discussion, no matter the topic, he always takes Margaret’s side. Sometimes I wonder why.
“Quite right, monsieur!” Margaret says. As she reaches across the table to squeeze my wrist, her elbow hops, and I worry she’s going to knock over her wine. She’s only sixty-five, but she isn’t one of those hale and hearty oldsters who sails around the world solo or hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. She drinks more wine than maybe she should and takes a huge number of pills, red ones and blue ones and white ones and pink ones. I don’t think even she knows what they’re all for.
I ignore Hervé, wink at Manu, and smile at her. “Margaret. You don’t have to worry. I’m fine. Catherine is fine. R
eally. No one needs to worry about anything.”
Well, that may not be a hundred percent true. Even as we speak, William is somewhere out there in Paris, walking off his jetlag or eating his dinner or sleeping in his room at the Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, not far from this very spot.
Manu snorts. “Aimée is right. She must do as she pleases.”
Everyone turns to stare at him because these are his first words since the asparagus course. “She is well. Strong. Happy. Is that not all we can wish for her?”
He pours himself another glass of the Saint-Émilion he opened to go with the cheese. All evening, Manu has been quieter than normal, I think because Hervé is here. Manu doesn’t like Hervé, and Hervé has little use for Manu. It was crazy of Margaret to invite them both, but she insisted. “We’ll make it a party!” she said.
“Gentlemen! I think everyone can agree that we all have Amy’s best interests at heart,” she says now, and right hand still gripping my wrist, clamps her left around Manu’s shoulder. His scowl fades, and for a moment it’s like the sun has come out. All thoughts of William are erased from my mind. I feel lighter.
“Certainly, madame.” He reaches up to give her arm a squeeze. “You are correct.”
Margaret and Manu remind me a little of William and his granddad. Best buddies. Mutual admiration society. Last April, when she first introduced him to me, explaining that “Manu” is the nickname for “Emmanuel,” she called him her “young friend” and made it clear she thought the world of him. As well she should. He is good to her. They became acquainted when Manu dated Margaret’s daughter, then stayed friends after the break-up, and grew closer after the daughter mysteriously disappeared. Which was two, maybe three, years ago. Way before I came to France. I don’t know all the details, but I’ve always assumed the loss of her child is one of the reasons Margaret takes a multitude of pills.
“But Amy!” Hervé is practically bouncing up and down in his chair. He never likes to be left out of the loop too long. “I believe Margaret is trying to tell you it is time to stop your job.”
Paris Ever After: A Novel Page 1
