Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  And then there was Natalie.

  Alex still remembered every detail of the day Nat left. Alex had driven back to the compound from her job at the lumberyard in town, her sense of dread building with each of the sixteen miles of road that twisted along the river at the base of the mountains. She found their father in his workshop, took a deep breath, and unceremoniously informed him that Nat had run away, hitching a ride with a logger heading down to the San Francisco Bay Area.

  Alex had expected The Commander to rage and to yell, perhaps declare Natalie dead to him. But instead, he set his tools down on the rough wooden bench, leaned on his palms, and hung his head.

  “’Frisco? That den of iniquity?” His voice was hollow, its sound much worse than rage. “Give it a few weeks. She’ll be back, tail between her legs.”

  “I don’t think she’s coming back, Dad,” Alex said.

  “Then she’ll be dead within the month.”

  Alex couldn’t sleep that night or the next. Nat dead? But he was probably right. Her silly, flighty little sister. Without Alex to look out for her, how would Nat survive?

  But her sister hadn’t died. Quite the opposite: Freed of the compound and her family, Nat had flourished to a downright insulting degree. Somehow she found a job in a coffee shop, earned a GED, managed to land a scholarship for college, and then attached herself as an au pair to a family that roamed the world. Nat eventually settled in Paris, where she studied French cuisine, fell in love with a handsome Parisian chef, and went on to write a bestselling memoir.

  When Pourquoi Pas? was published, Alex had been first in line at the bookstore to buy a copy, then devoured it over a weekend. Nearly four hundred pages of endlessly detailed descriptions of their childhood of deprivation, of Nat’s quest to rise above it all and discover the finer things in life: literature and art and wine and food. Especially food. An entire chapter was devoted to Nat’s efforts to master the five French “mother” sauces, which brought her to Paris, and which ultimately led her to fall in love with the perfect Frenchman.

  But as Alex read, what struck her was Nat’s version of their childhood. The Morgens weren’t portrayed as self-sufficient and family oriented but as crazy and punitive, five girls and a wife suffering under the thumb of a madman.

  Their names had been changed—Alex was called “Diana” in the book, for some reason—but since Nat had published the book under her own name, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection. Their mother, Carla, had died before the book came out, and The Commander had never in his life set foot inside a bookstore. Still. When Alex discussed the book with Faith and Hope, she learned she wasn’t the only one upset by it. Pourquoi Pas? made the sisters feel exposed and bloody, like the animals Nat used to butcher, their guts spilling out onto the clay tile of their mother’s otherwise spotless kitchen floor.

  And now Alex had come to beg her baby sister for a place to stay.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” their mother used to say, and Alex was a beggar with a paucity of choices.

  She stood and crossed over to the window, leaning forward on the deep sill, forcing herself to focus on the sights: the blue-green of the water, the stark white triangles of sails far out at sea, the seabirds riding the breezes overhead, the children playing on the beach in the little cove.

  Memorize this, Alex, she told herself. This is your chance. Remember every detail.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Natalie

  Natalie made her way downstairs, steeling herself against the sight of the wallpaper peeling away from the walls and hanging in random strips, the bare spots of aged plaster webbed with cracks and marred with water stains.

  “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” her mother used to say. Once upon a time Natalie had puzzled over what that meant. Now she knew.

  She put the kettle on for tea and took refuge in her little office off the kitchen. There, her computer and notes sat waiting for her on a large 1940s-era wooden desk in front of a bay window.

  In one smooth move, Natalie took a seat and opened her laptop, as if she couldn’t wait to start writing. As if muscle memory would somehow compel her to put words on paper—or, more accurately, on computer screen. As if she had something, anything, to say that someone, anyone, would want to read and that hadn’t been said a thousand times before.

  Nothing. She had nothing.

  When she was a girl, books had been Natalie’s refuge. So when her memoir was first accepted for publication, she had been overwhelmed with glee at the thought of her book sitting on a bookstore or library shelf alongside the tomes that had once kept her alive, stoking her imagination, allowing her escape.

  It had spurred her to write more, but now . . . ?

  Natalie sat back and gazed out the ample window onto the walled garden, a wild tangle of green to the rear of the house. When she first arrived on the island, Natalie had thrown herself into weeding and digging and cleaning up the charming yard. But François-Xavier insisted their time was better spent on the interiors, and then those projects fell by the wayside as well, and somewhere along the line Natalie seemed to have lost the will to do much of anything.

  Still, the foursquare design of the original walkways and old stone walls around the raised planting beds gave the garden a natural structure, and the perennials endured, blooming in bright pinks, blues, and yellows despite the neglect. Natalie enjoyed watching the birds flit about as the ocean breezes buffeted overgrown hydrangeas and rosebushes and lilies of the Nile.

  She smiled as Bobox bobbed by, the ridiculous white plume atop her head quivering with every strut.

  The teakettle whistled and Natalie hopped up to make herself a cup of Darjeeling. Maybe caffeine would help.

  She brought her steaming mug back to the desk and stared at her computer screen for another moment, deleting the last sentence she had written—two days ago—and adding another. Then she deleted that one.

  Her hands poised above the keyboard, she startled at the shriek of rusty nails being ripped out of ancient wood, followed by a hammer striking repeatedly.

  Natalie’s jaw tightened with every whap. It was their childhood all over again: Alex was hard at work; Natalie was not.

  She looked out the window once more.

  Natalie had glued small round mirrors onto fishing line and strung them about the garden like wind chimes, but instead of chiming notes the mirrors cast random circles of light onto the ground and the stone walls, like a string of disco lights. That was back when she thought of doing consciously romantic things, when François-Xavier would coo over her skills and compliment her on her strange way of looking at the world. Natalie suspected her offbeat sensibility came from being socialized into mainstream society far too late. She was “different” without ever intending to be, and François-Xavier never realized how hard she tried to mimic others, to fit in, to be normal.

  Now Natalie watched little circles of light careen wildly along the paths and plants, as incessant ocean breezes tossed the mirrored strings about.

  Sitting up straighter, she forced her attention back to her work in progress, willing herself to focus. She had to finish the book under contract. Had to. She needed the money. And even more than the funds, Natalie needed to retreat into her fantasy world, to pretend that she was still an author living the dream on a fairy-tale island.

  In point of fact, the Île de Feme was not particularly romantic, at least not to someone who lived here full-time. The old houses were charming, the absence of motor vehicles relaxing, and the little stone pathways darling. But the island was essentially a low reef poking out of the water, one that might well be submerged as the sea levels rose, slipping, Atlantis-like, beneath the surface, the ocean waters drowning anyone stubborn enough to stay behind until the island was nothing more than a potential danger to passing boats.

  From outside came the sound of sawing, and then more h
ammering. Natalie brought a sachet of lavender to her nose and breathed in the scent, hoping for calm and inspiration.

  If it hadn’t been for the sound of Alex at work outside, Natalie would have given up, maybe taken a walk to her favorite point on the rocks by the water, past the monument to the men who left the island during World War II. Not many people ventured out on the jagged rocks at the edge of the water, and this spot felt almost like her private haven in which to sit and watch the waves and the lighthouse.

  Natalie could not explain why she enjoyed the sight of the lighthouse so much. It wasn’t as though it did anything, just stood there, stoic and permanent seeming.

  But since she couldn’t escape her study, Natalie spent the next few hours writing, and rewriting, a thousand words describing the labyrinthine pathways that formed a web around and through the residential part of the island. About three feet wide, just wide enough for a charette—the little wagon islanders used to transport things—to pass through, the walkways were formed by the stone walls of the houses and gardens, and had been built to shelter the islanders from the relentless wind and frequent rains blowing in from the ocean. But it was also said that a drunken sailor could always find his way back from the café by careening down those pathways, trailing one hand on the wall until he arrived at his quarters.

  One thousand words, or about four pages. And it was the most she had written in a week. Natalie glanced at the journal where she jotted down ideas and kept her daily word count. Back when she was writing Pourquoi Pas? she had composed a minimum of two thousand words every day, sometimes as many as five thousand. The ideas had flowed out of her almost too fast for her fingers to keep up. She dove into that book with passion: It had been part memoir, part diary, part escape.

  But as it turned out, the ending was pure fantasy.

  This current work in progress was known only by the title on the contract: “Untitled Memoir Follow-Up.” If she didn’t get some words on paper at some point, her publisher had the right to cancel the contract and there would be no follow-up, untitled or otherwise. Natalie still had time to pull it together, but the clock was ticking.

  She organized her pens, straightened a pile of unpaid bills. What Natalie really wanted to do was to get up and pour herself a drink, maybe munch on some stale crackers or even brave a trip to the general store for a package of cookies. She could go for something sweet right about now.

  Maybe . . . Could she slip through the garden and out the back gate? No, Alex would notice. Alex noticed everything.

  Natalie hadn’t realized until this moment how much she had been appreciating her pity party of one. She wasn’t close enough to anyone on the island for them to drop by uninvited, and after a period of awkwardness—“Qu’est-ce qu’elle fait?” “What’s she doing?”—the neighbors had come to respect her “writing time.” Members of François-Xavier’s extended family did come by occasionally, but she made a point to get a jump on them by visiting them at their homes so they didn’t have an excuse to snoop around the disaster that was the Bag-Noz.

  Natalie had retreated to a tiny rock off the Côte Sauvage of Brittany, a mere speck in the Atlantic, and Alex had still managed to find her. Just how far away did Natalie have to go to rid herself of the family legacy?

  She blew out a long breath. One thousand words would have to do for today; she couldn’t write any more. She checked out Twitter, and watched a short video about a woman who ran sheep on the islands in the archipelago of Helsinki. Imagine living out there, all alone except for a sheepdog and some sheep. Natalie was strangely intrigued by the idea. So far away from judging eyes . . .

  Then she turned her attention to her other social media sites: Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook. And her own website and blog, of course. She hadn’t taken many photos lately, so she posted a couple of old ones she hadn’t used yet: the sun setting behind the lighthouse; the sea glass on the beach; an artsy angle of the peeling wallpaper in the dining room that somehow managed to look funky and interesting, a sort of glamorous decrepitude instead of just dusty and decayed. Her followers were always thirsting for more; theirs was an incessant demand for Natalie to foster their dreams of travel and romance and self-fulfillment.

  Natalie’s platform was a big part of the reason her publisher had given her a substantial contract for a second book. She had to keep her followers happy. There was always a shiny new site to lure them away if she didn’t stoke those flames.

  She responded to a few fans who had written heartfelt e-mails about how Pourquoi Pas? had spoken to them and changed their lives. Natalie gushed to them about how a love for food, for art, for life could change everything.

  She wanted to believe it. She used to believe it.

  Dear Cathleen/Deirdre/Serena/Jennifer,

  Thank you so very much for writing me! I truly believe that dreams can come true. If you keep your heart and mind focused on your aspirations, there is nothing too great for the Universe to grant you. . . .

  Natalie felt vaguely nauseated as she typed the perky words, as if her lies were backing up on her.

  Or maybe she was just hungry. She checked her watch: It was nearly time for dinner. Her sister had just arrived from abroad, and Natalie Morgen, who had made a name for herself writing a book about French food, had nothing to offer. To be fair, Alex hadn’t given notice that she was coming, but still, this was France. Here it was against the laws of nature not to sit down for a meal with visiting family or friends. A proper French household would always have something to offer guests: a hunk of crusty bread, a slice of creamy pâté, a cup of savory soup, or the silky remnants of a hearty beef stew.

  Natalie went out to the terrace to find Alex crouched down and inspecting the fit of the newly replaced front step.

  “Hi,” said Natalie.

  “Hey.” Alex lifted her chin.

  Alex’s figure was spare and athletic, and Natalie felt a surge of resentment. They had all been thin as kids, when there hadn’t been much to eat and what little there had been wasn’t worth eating. Natalie had put on weight upon leaving home, first with easy access to junk food and candy while she was in college, and then when she arrived in France and indulged in pastries and cheeses, potatoes and creamy sauces.

  François-Xavier used to say he loved her luscious curves. He said it less as time passed, though, and the curves became more abundant. Maybe that was why . . .

  “Thanks for this, Alex. It looks great.”

  “The step had dry rot. You really should keep up with this sort of thing or it will compromise the building.”

  “Yup. It was on the list.” Natalie felt herself clench her jaw. She already felt off-kilter; the last thing she needed was her older sister preaching at her like she was a child. “Guess I can scratch that one off, huh?”

  “Hey, look what I found when I was digging out some of the dirt underneath,” Alex said, holding up a small mud-caked bundle.

  “What is it?” Natalie asked.

  “A set of keys.”

  The old-fashioned keys had been wrapped up in fabric and twine. The fabric had rotted and now hung in strips, but the cord was still knotted tightly around the keys.

  “Looks like these were dropped a long time ago,” said Natalie.

  “I think they were buried,” said Alex. “They were pretty far down.”

  “Why would someone bury a set of keys?”

  “Good question. You mentioned there were some doors you couldn’t unlock. You might try them. Anyway, like I was saying, you got to keep an eye out for dry rot because otherwise . . . Nat? Are you okay?”

  Natalie had sunk down to sit on the top step. The muddy bundle of old keys felt like the perfect metaphor for her life.

  Natalie remembered a time, not so very long ago, when this kind of discovery would have thrilled her, when she would have dreamed of racing inside to open locked doors, to find something new and e
xciting. She used to cradle old things between her palms, willing herself to think of the other hands that had held them through the years. Back when her life was still beautiful, Natalie would have imagined trying the keys in every lock, asking family members if they had any stories relating to them, and then putting them on display in a shadow box for guests to enjoy.

  What had happened to her vision, to her imagination?

  Natalie coached her readers to follow their dreams and yet her own future, which had seemed so bright not so long ago, now lay before her like a gloomy gray vista, a cold ocean of doubt shrouded in salt haze.

  “Nat? Are you okay?”

  Alex’s voice had a gentle, careful edge that grated on Natalie’s nerves. Still . . . Natalie had kept her secrets for so long, a burden weighing upon her. Alex wasn’t on social media, and besides, though the sisters might not understand each other, Natalie knew Alex could be trusted.

  Natalie opened her mouth to tell Alex the truth about François-Xavier and the stalled guesthouse repairs and the fact that she could no longer write and was worried about money, but then hesitated. Alex was probably leaving in a few days, and Natalie would rather Alex leave with an impression of her as a successful author, not her screwup little sister.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just dizzy for a second.”

  Bobox strutted by, clucking softly.

  Alex gestured with her head. “What’s with the chicken?”

  “She sort of came with the house.”

  “Does she give eggs?”

  “Every once in a while, but she’s pretty old, I think.”