Whispering in French

by Sophia Nash

  He picked up my hand and examined it. “You’ve got the long fingers and hands of your great-grandmother, my mother, Marguerite. She believed there was only one goal in life: To love and be loved. And it doesn’t matter if it’s romantic, fraternal, parental, neighborly, or for one’s country even. But I think there’s one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Happiness is a risk and it’s also a choice. It’s very easy to play it safe. Live alone in the privacy of your mind, never sharing, never showing vulnerability, and never risking your heart, all in an effort to protect it from pain.” He paused and studied my face. “But it never works.”

  “But I do love. My love for my daughter is almost painful in its intensity. And, of course, I love our family. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And my friends and job—I love too.”

  “Do you, really? Do you love them all properly?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I do.”

  “Just promise me you’ll think about it, Kate. I know you and I have been hiding behind bickering, but I’m asking you to think about how you want to go on.”

  “I will,” I said. “But I must also ask you to think about how you want to go on. I refuse to try and force you to do something against your will anymore. And I don’t know what to do.”

  “Kate, my darling, I am too old to find a solution. I’m smart enough to know that progress has surpassed me. So the only thing I can do is trust you. Up until now I have not had faith in you. After seeing Lily, I have faith. And so, I will promise you now that I will follow your lead. If you want me to go to the nuns, I won’t be happy about it, but I will. If you want to arrange another house for all of us, I will go. If you want to sell this bag of stones and ivy so Jojo and the rest of the village have a new mairie, I will sign. And yes, I know all about Jojo. He’s a complete idiot even if he does have a good heart. But I ask you to not forget your uncle—my only remaining son. And also to remember the legacy of Madeleine Marie and the people who loved you without ever knowing you—all because you are a du Roque.”

  I breathed deeply for the first time in a very long time. Fear of disappointing him was to become my constant new bedfellow. It was just my luck that Major Edward Soames had the perfect anecdote or distraction from that fear. It was called constant chastisement and brutal honesty. In large doses.

  Chapter Twelve

  The earth trembled the next day. Ever so slightly.

  “What in bloody hell was that?” The major reflexively crouched and braced his hands on a large boulder, flanking one side of the littoral.

  “Just a little quake,” I replied, walking past him. “It happens all the time here. Nothing to be alarmed about. Nothing like the San Andreas Fault on the West Coast of the United States. Trust me.”

  “There’s just about nothing I like about this country,” he muttered. “Or your gun-loving nascent nation across the pond.”

  “What about French wine?”

  “I’m not a fool,” he said, shaking his head. “I put up with a lot for the wine.”

  “So I understand. But . . .”

  “Yes?” He resumed walking behind me along the narrow, orange clay path.

  “But how is your intake? Moderate? More than that?”

  “I see my relative has been telling tales.”

  “Are you comfortable with the amount you drink? Do you drink alone? Are you trying to numb the pain?”

  “I drink all the damn time. It’s relaxing and one of the few pleasures in this Gallic wasteland. What are you suggesting?”

  I felt his hand on my shoulder tugging me. I turned and stood my ground.

  “I’m not an alcoholic if that’s what you think,” he said. “I can stop anytime I choose. In fact, I stopped for a few months just to make sure. It’s just that I don’t choose to live like a monk the rest of my life. Moderation in all things. I like a glass or two of a good red in the evening like most people.”

  “That was a long answer.”

  “Bloody hell,” he said. “This is never going to work if you can’t trust me.”

  “Okay. All right,” I replied, giving up traditional therapy in lieu of getting something through this ox-brained Brit. “How about if you ease off the sauce for a bit if only to calm everyone in your family. Can you do that? How about trying six months this time?”

  “Roger. Now, did you bring water for yourself?” He paused. “And by the way, now it’s my turn.”

  “Does that mean you’ll actually stop drinking for at least six months?”

  “Stop doubting me. Do you have water or not?”

  “Answer my question.”

  He smiled. “How about if I give it up for a year?”

  “Well, that would be something I think your wife and relatives would appreciate,” I said, searching my backpack for water. I fished it out and drank seven-eighths of it.

  “Water is life,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So,” he began, “this no-drinking business doesn’t include cider, yeah?”

  “What?”

  “Cider.”

  “Is it alcoholic?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Then that would be a no,” I said. “A hell no.”

  “Fine. Have it your way. Honestly,” he added, “you should have been a teacher. I’ve never met someone so exacting. No one likes a hard-ass, you know.”

  “Maybe, but everyone’s relatives will thank a hard-ass.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “Now it’s my turn.”

  I ground my teeth and sped ahead to walk up a set of log steps single file. I could hear him right behind me, and I had the feeling he could mow me down and keep on going if he wanted.

  “Move your feet, Hamilton.” I could barely breathe but I was determined to keep up the pace.

  “So,” he said, right behind me. “We talked about the necessity of voicing our fears. Are you ready to tell me yours?”

  “Sure.” I was panting so hard I could barely speak. “My fears are my oldest friends. They’re not very original. Fear of harm re my daughter or family and friends, fear of failure, of conflict, and of death. And there’s always the old standby.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, his breathing even.

  I stopped abruptly at the top of the steps and he rammed into me.

  “For the love of God, woman. Move your arse well ahead if you’re going to stop like that without any indication.”

  “Yes, major.” I added a mock salute. “Are you always this charming with everyone?”

  He gave me a disgusted look. “No, Hamilton. I make a special effort with you since you, according to Uncle Phillip, are a walking saint. Okay, don’t tease me with that melodramatic crap about an old standby fear.”

  “Do you have any friends? Any at all?”

  “Not in France.”

  “Except me,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. He just brought out the worst in me.

  He finally laughed. “You’ve got me there. I forgot the wine merchant. He’s a nice, old chap. Has even started to import Guinness for me. He’s not going to be happy about the sudden absence of my business. Bloody hell, stop sidestepping. Your. Fear. Now.”

  I gazed at the profile of the mythical lady, crowning the mountain up ahead. “That I’m unlovable.” I turned to look at him in all his untidy, sweaty glory. He’d let his old standby two-day growth of beard grow wild for an extra week. “I think most people worry at least a little about that. Do you?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m one of the most loyal and lovable people on earth,” he stated, “but I can also be incredibly stupid. Sort of like a Labrador retriever.”

  It was impossible to tell if he was joking or not. “I see.”

  “You asked the wrong question, as usual,” he continued.

  “Okay. I’ll play along. What should I have asked?”

  “If other people think I’m lovable.”

  “And?”

  “The answer to that would be a, uh, resou
nding no.”

  “Why do you think they think you’re unlovable?”

  “Because I’m a pain in the arse, Hamilton. A complete dick. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Keep the bloody hell up.”

  “Today you seem to really like the word bloody. Are you giving fuck the day off ?”

  He looked at me and then burst out laughing. “Keep that up and I might warm to you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Will wonders ever cease?”

  “I’m not a fan of clichés. Try harder.” He tipped back his hat and looked toward the peak of the mountain. “Have you noticed that the mountain peaks sort of look like a person’s profile?”

  I gazed toward the mountaintops. “Of course. Local lore has it that it’s a beautiful woman who lies asleep on top of the mountain. It’s known as Les Trois Couronnes—the three crowns.”

  “Pity she’s got no tits.”

  He wanted a reaction and so I didn’t give him one. Instead, I began walking.

  “Fight, damn you,” he muttered behind me.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “What did you just say?” “I said, fight.

  I’ve seen dental floss that has more life to it than you.”

  I turned to face him. For the first time in my life I wished I knew how to make a fist and smash it in the smug face in front of me. Instead, my hands lay limply by my sides. “What? You think inappropriate comments are going to make me open up? It’s just the reverse, major.”

  “I want proof that you know how to stand up and say what you want to say. Call me a misogynist pig. You know you want to.”

  “I don’t have to prove a damn thing to you. You don’t know me at all.”

  “I know a coward when I see one.”

  I ran at him without even knowing I was doing it. My fists rammed his abdomen and he barely moved. He grabbed my wrists, placed both of them in one of his ugly mitts, and continued, “Um, we’ll have to work on that. If you really want to do some damage, aim for the bollocks. Okay, settle down. Let’s sit on those rocks ahead. Americans are always so hotheaded. Always resorting to violence. All guns, no humor. You being the prime example.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was angrier at him or myself for losing it. Heretofore, I could say I’d never attacked a patient. Then again, he wasn’t technically a patient.

  He took his time wiping off the large rock with a rag from his pocket. He indicated a seat and I took it. His face inches from mine, he began. “What the hell happened to you in this lifetime? When did you stop fighting? How did you fail your daughter?”

  And so I told him. Told him the same things I told Magdali. Of Lily breaking her arm and collarbone when she’d jumped out the window to get away from her father.

  “It could not have been an isolated event,” he said calmly. “Had he ever physically harmed your daughter before this? Or you?”

  I hated telling him. He just wouldn’t understand that I was different from other people. That I could handle anything and everything. That I understood that it was my ex-husband’s problem, not mine. That I could compartmentalize, analyze, and file away serious stuff and never ever let it affect me. It was obvious Oliver was just caught in the cycle of repeating childhood abuse and would never change. His problems were not my fault. I never took anything personally.

  “Where the hell are you? Answer me. What did that fucker do to you?” Soames barked out every syllable of the question with a voice I’d never heard him use. It demanded response.

  “I was married to Oliver for well over a decade and a half. In all that time, he did only one thing to me, aside from the endless stream of verbal abuse, which was easy to tune out.”

  “For Christ’s sake. And that thing was?”

  “He pushed me down a flight of stairs. Right after Lily was born.”

  “What?”

  Suddenly, Soames’s voice faded away. Blood was pounding in my ears. And I shifted focus to the profile in the mountains. “I was holding Lily at the top of the stairs, and he was screaming at me in the middle of the night, telling me I had to get her to stop crying because he had to go to work in the morning. And his mother was behind him, watching the whole thing, begging me to give Lily to her.” I stopped to catch my breath. It felt like I had run a marathon. For so long I’d kept this hidden away in the depths of the darkness of my mind and now it was oozing uncontrollably. “I couldn’t go outside because it was the dead of winter. Snow on the ground. I told Oliver to go back to bed. That’s when he lost it—went nose-to-nose with me and started stabbing my shoulder with his finger . . . and I fell all the way to the bottom.” I moved my gaze from the deep-blue, calm sea to his face. “I had a hand on the banister, which helped break part of the fall and protected the baby. I just overstretched the ligaments in one of my legs.” I finally shifted my eyes to his.

  Edward Soames was stone cold calm. “And?”

  “And I looked up from the bottom of the stairs and told him I wanted a divorce, and ordered him to get out by the morning and take his mother too. I locked myself in Lily’s room with her. All night long I sorted through the possible courses of action.”

  “There was only one possible course of action. Take the bastard to court and sue for divorce,” he said with the authority of a military man.

  “As I was saying”—I shook my head—“by the morning, I realized I was in trouble. I had no viable solution that would keep Lily out of harm’s way. No one I could depend on to keep her in hiding. And I feared no judge would grant me sole custody as it would be my word against his and his mother’s. And his father was president of the country club, chairman of the bank board, and the head of the richest, most respected family in Darien. People knew Oliver was a conventional, churchgoing, mild-mannered, successful man. They never saw the fury that lurked just under the surface. I didn’t see it until Lily was born. It was just a horrible Catch-22 situation all the way around. But there was no way on earth I would ever have risked allowing Oliver any custody. And so I didn’t divorce. I waited for Lily to grow up instead.”

  Soames shook his head. “And that’s where you are dead wrong. Not that I blame you. It’s a common mistake. You’re just not thinking the way a man would think. You’ve just got to attack a bastard until you break him.”

  The sting of insult battled with curiosity and the latter won. “Really? How would you have handled it?”

  “I would have looked him in the eye and told him that if he ever dared lay a finger on me or the child again I would inform every person in our acquaintance, his father, including everyone at his work that he was a fucking lunatic who abused women and children.”

  “I see. You think that would’ve worked.” My voice was too high. I could hear it.

  “Yep. I guarantee he would have never ever touched you or your daughter again.”

  “You have no proof of that. He was a narcissistic, tortured man. And no matter what I said or did, it didn’t make a difference. Lily and I just went along for the wildly out-of-control ride. It was simple. His fits of rage always wiped clean by confession on Sunday. But you were right that Lily and I were held hostage by my own fault. I was the idiot who married him. And the idiot who didn’t protect my daughter.”

  “What happened when you found her at that homeless shelter?”

  Fingers curled into fists, I couldn’t feel my hands. I forced myself to release them.

  “Tell me what happened then,” he commanded again.

  “By then, I’d filed for divorce, during which I allowed my attorney to subpoena Lily’s best friend, who spent one summer with us and who testified against Oliver since Lily was gone. I was lucky, the judge assigned to the trial had no ties to Oliver’s father and he believed us instead of Oliver and his mother.”

  “Of course he did,” he said. “What happened after?”

  “When I found Lily in California, we met with a social worker. Lily refused to live with me even though her father was gone. She would not agree to go with me. She said she hated both of us,” I
said. Guilt dripped from every word. “As she should. Sure she was underage, but I knew it was futile to force her to go with me as she would have just run away again.”

  He sighed heavily.

  “Don’t look at me like that. The only way she would agree to leave was if I sent her to Miss Chesterfield’s.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have offered a choice. Maybe she just needed you to insist that the two of you start anew somewhere you wanted to live. Begin a new life somewhere other than Connecticut. Maybe New York. That’s where you work, right? Your daughter just needed you to be the parent and set the ground rules. She just needed you to be strong, firm, and love her.”

  I could feel my blood now churning in my chest. I hated him. “I could say almost the exact same thing to you, major. Your wife, daughter, and son would like nothing more than for you to go back, be a great father and husband, restart your life, and move your heart and head onto a new, healthier path by dealing with your issues. Why aren’t you doing it? That’s how to love your family.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” he barked. “We’re talking about you.”

  “Look, Lily and I are going to be just fine now. She’s back, Oliver and I are divorced, Lily won’t see him, and I have a great job.” Most of the time, I thought. “I’ve won the trifecta of life: happy child, great job, secure future.”

  He shook his head. “Well you don’t look happy if you ask me. You’ve isolated yourself and you’re just going through the motions of living. Have you started dating yet?”

  “Absolutely not! I have my child and I have no reason to tie a dance card around my wrist ever again. Not in this lifetime or the next. I’ll be happy the rest of my damn life alone. I don’t need or want anyone. I’ve got everything I need.”

  “So your idea of a life after your daughter leaves for college in several years is to do what?” he asked. “Listen to the lives of bored housewives and the wolves of Wall Street? Punish yourself? Live your life for your daughter when she visits on vacations? Run away from all messy entanglements? Keep on living for others instead of for yourself?”