That Spring in Paris

by Ciji Ware

  Startled, Juliet turned over Finn’s caustic words in her mind. Then, without warning, he leaned across the sofa and she thought for a moment he would take her hand again. Instead he appeared to change his mind and settled back against the sofa cushion.

  “Juliet, no one can ‘make’ any of us do anything. Not the government. Not family. Not friends. We simply give in to the demands that others put on us—give them permission, in a sense—or, alternatively, we stand up for what we think is best.”

  Juliet nodded slowly and cracked a faint smile. “Well, Major, you’ve given me a lot to think about. But let us remember, you probably have a military pension, or the G.I. Bill or something supporting you, right?”

  “That, and I’ve saved a bit of money,” he acknowledged. “It’s given me the luxury of about a year to consider what I want and need to do next. Like you, I’ve got to figure out what I want, and how to live it—and pay for it”

  With a suddenness that Juliet remembered from her last stay on the barge, the lights of the tower performed their sparkly display and then switched off, plunging the opposite shore into utter darkness. She pointed to the brass ship’s clock on the bookshelf. “Gad, we’ve been talking nonstop! But there’s just one more thing I need to say and then let’s hit the hay.”

  “No... hit the rack, as we say on board,” he teased. “Fire away.”

  “I just can’t get past the fact that my father put up the Bay View Hotel as collateral for Brad’s company.”

  “It’s a big asset,” he acknowledged, “and worth a lot of money, I suppose.”

  “Dad risked our home,” Julie exclaimed, “and the place my great, great grandparents built a hundred years ago after the utter devastation of the city. It’s sheltered us for five generations! As far as I can see, Dad did it just to please and placate his son whom, I guess, my father thinks has outshined him. And Brad seems so indifferent as to how this might impact the rest of us if—somehow—his company goes down the drain in a future recession... or he overplays his hand, and loses the company to some venture capitalist who wants to eat his lunch.”

  “Does Brad live in the hotel like you do?” Finn asked.

  Juliet nodded. “But to him, it’s merely a roof over his head and a place to sleep. He has absolutely no warm or fuzzy feelings for family traditions or history. I feel so powerless about it all and it’s kept me awake many a night since I found out about the equity loan.”

  “Well, you have my sympathies since I know what that’s like—not being able to sleep, I mean—but maybe the tea we just drank and the boat’s gentle movement will lull you into dreamland tonight,” he kidded her.

  Then, in a move that totally surprised her, Finn slid across the small sofa and kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “Dormez bien, Mademoiselle Peintre en Plein Air.”

  She met his glance, only inches away.

  “Your fledgling plein air landscape-artist-in-residence thanks you,” she said softly.

  “You’re welcome.” He briefly glanced down at her lips and then rose to stand at his full height. “Bonne nuit.”

  “Good night,” she said, resigned that they both were doing the right thing to keep their distance. With a cheery smile, she pointed to the short ladder leading down to his stateroom. “I’ll dash down there, if that’s okay.”

  In minutes she’d brushed her teeth, used the toilet, donned her usual sleep uniform of black tights and a tee, and was back in the pilothouse. As soon as he saw her return, Finn immediately headed for the stateroom she’d just vacated.

  “’Night,” he repeated.

  “Dormez bien, yourself,” she called after him.

  Rather to her surprise, she fell asleep almost as soon as she snuggled beneath the sheets and blankets swathing the couch. When she awoke in the early dawn’s hour, her mind a whirl with the last days’ events and conversations, she could see the light was on in Finn’s stateroom below. Despite the soothing tea they’d both drunk, she wondered what—of all the problems he faced—had kept him awake?

  * * *

  Juliet managed to go back to sleep, awakened a few hours later by the sound of Finn entering the barge with his daily bag of freshly-baked croissants in hand, and promising coffee would be ready soon.

  “Okay if I have a quick wash?” she asked as he poured ground coffee into his French presse coffeemaker.

  “Absolutely. I left some towels on a stool right outside the shower cabinet.”

  With his back turned, she dashed down the few steps to his cabin below, grateful to feel warm water cascading down her body while fighting off the image of a naked Finn Deschanel occupying the same space every day.

  Juliet, my girl... get a grip!

  When she turned off the water, she heard Finn speaking on his mobile phone not ten feet from the curtain that separated the shower stall from the rest of his sleeping area.

  “I want you to send the signed documents as soon as possible, okay? Tell her no more fucking around, okay?” His harsh voice sounded as if he was barely keeping his temper in check. As he headed back up to the salon above their heads, she heard him say, “Send everything to my aunt’s address on Rue Jacob. I want this over with!” Then she heard him swear from the pilothouse, “Merde!” under his breath as he clicked off his phone.

  Juliet quickly dressed in a pair of jeans and a navy cashmere sweater, glancing at the looming rain clouds outside the porthole over Finn’s double bed. Emerging from his stateroom, she found him sitting on his end of the couch with his coffee and the newspaper. He looked up at her with a frown.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear my phone conversation just now.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said, advancing toward the sofa. “You sounded upset. I had turned off the shower, so I couldn’t help but hear the last bit. Is everything okay?”

  Finn hesitated. “It will be, once my divorce is final. The marriage has been over for more than two years, but the t’s are finally about to be crossed and the i’s dotted. At least I hope so.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, a sorry mess pretty well covers it. It’s been a bitch, but it’s almost over, thank God.” He looked at her over the rim of his coffee mug. “She’s finally willing to deal with the legalities because she’s getting married again.”

  “Wow.”

  “Not wow, but that’s the way it is.”

  A long silence grew between them and Juliet told herself she should change the subject. But she didn’t. “It must have been really hard for you both, with all your deployments to the Middle East...”

  Finn shrugged and replied, “Actually, we got through that period reasonably well. The trouble began after I got shot down and then transferred to Nevada, flying drones, and we were living together again.” He abruptly handed her a mug he’d set down next to his own. “Here’s your coffee.”

  Case closed.

  Just then there was a knock on the pilothouse door. Colette Grenelle stood outside imparting the news that J-P’s burial was scheduled to take place at eleven o’clock in the morning on Monday, November 23rd.

  “My parents were able to buy a cremation niche in the Columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery,” she announced proudly, referring to one of Paris’s most prestigious burial grounds. To Juliet she explained, “Many famous artists are buried there... Balzac, Chopin, writers like Oscar Wilde, and many famous painters, including Delacroix.”

  “It is a great honor,” Finn agreed for Colette’s benefit. “Jean-Pierre’s professor, Alain Devereux, helped Pierre and me arrange it.”

  While Finn and Colette continued to discuss the details of the upcoming ceremony, Juliet seized the moment to excuse herself, take her courage in hand, and walk out on Finn’s deck into an overcast November morning to make an important phone call. If she wanted to stay in Paris for Jean-Pierre’s funeral, it was time to contact Brad. She glanced at her watch and saw it was just after midnight in California. She crossed her fingers that she could merely leave a
message giving the compelling reasons why she intended to extend her stay in France.

  She listened as Brad’s phone rang once, twice, and then, as if in answer to her prayers, the device went to voice mail. She quickly explained that the man who saved Avery’s life by throwing his body over hers during the terrorist attacks was being buried the following week.

  “I want to see Avery through this part of the trauma and then stay until she can return to her apartment and fend for herself, which should be within the next two weeks. I’ve got my computer with me, so send me any assignments and I can work from here. Love to everybody... and thanks. Bye.”

  There! Let him yell and scream.

  Barely three minutes passed after she reentered the barge and accepted Finn’s offer of a second cup of coffee before a text pinged on her phone. Juliet stared at the message and frowned.

  “Not good?” Finn asked, turning to close the door behind Colette.

  “It’s from Brad.” She showed him the text that read: You are in breach.

  “In breach of what?” Finn asked.

  “My employment contract. A minute ago I left a voice message saying I planned to stay for J-P’s funeral and help Avery get settled in her apartment when they release her from the hospital. I offered to take on any assignment while I’m here.”

  “And that’s the answer you got back from your brother?”

  Juliet could tell he was genuinely shocked.

  “Actually, it’s a little better than I expected. He didn’t pull a Donald Trump on me and text, ‘You’re fired!’”

  “What a sweetheart.”

  Juliet heaved a shrug, took a gulp of her coffee, and then prepared to head back to the American Hospital to see how the patient fared this gloomy November morning.

  “Now you have some idea what I’m dealing with,” she replied, and headed out the pilothouse door.

  * * *

  “I’m thrilled they’re letting you out of the hospital ahead of schedule, but it’s really freezing in your apartment, Avery,” Juliet warned. In actual fact, she was aghast Avery had persuaded her doctor to release her from the hospital so soon. “We don’t want you coming back here with a case of pneumonia.”

  “I’m doing really well,” Avery insisted, “and besides, all the hospitals in Paris are full of victims much sicker than I was. I think they’re letting me go because they can take some transfers from over-taxed medical facilities nearer where the terrorists struck.”

  Avery was sitting on her bed, fully dressed, even having applied make-up that restored her to looking close to the healthy young woman she once had been—except that she still had her arm in its now-familiar sling.

  “Maybe you should stay on Finn’s barge and I’ll sleep in your flat while I’m here,” Juliet proposed, “—that is, if we can get some more blankets and maybe a plug-in electric space heater in that attic of yours.”

  “I want to go back to my apartment.” The stubborn look on Avery’s face was one Juliet remembered all too well from their days arguing over a design at work.

  Juliet scanned Avery’s discharge papers. She was being released from the hospital because she was without infection and ambulatory and—most importantly—her outing to Claudine’s apartment “bore witness to her excellent progress.” The other factors were that her pain meds were now taken by mouth and her American cousin, Juliet, had “vouched she would be available to look after her for the next critical ten days while the patient makes follow-up visits to her various doctors.”

  “I vouched no such thing!” Juliet declared, exasperated. “I’m telling you, the temperature was forty degrees, the few times I slept at your place.”

  “You and Finn just don’t know the intimate secrets of the maid’s room heating system,” Avery replied, with a wave of her good hand.

  “You told me you didn’t remember how to work your heater, either! Even your neighbor, Brian Parker, couldn’t figure out how to maintain a consistent temperature.”

  “That’s because all the really posh apartments below the attic have been completely renovated with new thermostats. Don’t worry, I’ll get the concierge to teach me again how to make it work, and I have a friend I can stay with if it goes wonky.”

  “And just who is that?” Juliet demanded suspiciously. Only her painting professor had been in touch while Avery had been in the hospital. “This is no time to be a good sport. You need comfort and rest. You can’t be moving up and down stairs and in, or in and out of a bunch of artists’ crash pads!”

  Avery snorted. “‘Crash pads?’ Are you kidding me? Every single one of my friends at L’École lives better than I do.”

  “And why is that?” Juliet demanded. “Seriously, Avery, you have the money to live a little better than you do. Should I look for another place for you while I’m here?”

  “No need to fly into commando mode. I love the building I’m in, and, after all, you were the one who told me about number seven. There are rumors an apartment on a lower floor may soon be up for sale at the insider’s price, so just cool your jets.”

  “But I’m worried about now,” protested Juliet. “You have a long recovery ahead and I have to leave soon. How in the world are you—”

  “I said, don’t worry about me!” Avery interrupted, sounding genuinely irritated. “You enjoy the barge and the handsome Major Deschanel, and I’ll revel in the peace and quiet of my own four walls. Do you have any idea how much I look forward to not having anyone wake me up every night—and that includes even you? And we’ll see each other every day while you’re here when we go to all my doctors’ appointments. Now, let’s blow this pop stand, can we? I don’t want to be late to J-P’s funeral.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Following the somber ceremony interring Jean-Pierre Grenelle’s ashes, the Grenelle family gathered at a cousin’s home, while Finn, Claudine, Juliet, and Avery returned to Claudine’s glamorous apartment, where she provided yet another wonderful meal of flavorful cassoulet that looked for all the world like something out of Bon Appétit.

  “And let us not forget the wine,” Finn said, topping off everyone’s glasses except his own.

  “An excellent choice, Patrick,” Claudine complimented. “Thank you so much for bringing it today.” She raised her glass. “Let us raise a farewell toast to dear Jean-Pierre... and may his passing be marked with our continued love of family and friends. Let us honor his memory by refusing to let what has happened bleed all the joy from our futures—and especially yours...” Her glance drifted in benediction from her two female guests to her nephew.

  “Amen to that,” echoed Finn.

  Juliet and Avery locked glances. “To J-P,” whispered Avery. She gazed at her hostess. “I will try not to let this bleed—as you put it—all the joy from my life, Claudine, but it’s... so... hard.”

  “I know, cherie,” Claudine replied somberly. “But, I have lived through the Vietnam era, remember—that was full of hate and violence and warring factions within and without America. And in my long life, I’ve learned we have a choice. As Abraham Lincoln once said—and trust me, I didn’t know him personally,” she joked, bringing a smile to Avery’s lips, “‘people are about as happy as they decide to be.’ I’ve had a few major setbacks in my time, but I urge you to make up your mind to be happy instead of sad. Just decide and do it,” she urged.

  Avery said in a small voice, “But that feels so... impossible.”

  “Well, it’s a different kind of battle,” she said. “Sometimes we, too, must decide to decide to fight... but the fight is against the power of fear, violence, and hate. I’ve found in my life, anyway, the only answer is to love. That, and a sense of gratitude for the good things we do have in our lives. These, and kindness, are the only effective weapons we have.”

  Juliet’s thoughts recalled Finn telling her, in answer to her question if Claudine had ever been married, that the man she’d loved—a friend of Finn’s father—had been killed as a forward observer in the Vietnam War. Grief-
stricken, Claudine had eventually fled to Paris, gotten a job at Paris Vogue in her early thirties, and never came home.

  As they all raised their glasses in a second toast, they were startled by the sharp sound of a bell.

  “Someone’s downstairs,” Claudine said with a puzzled look. “I’ll just go see who it is and tell them to go away.”

  The remaining three sipped at their glasses in silence, glancing through the dining room door. Juliet imagined her companions were turning over in their minds Claudine’s wise words, just as she was.

  Just decide to be happy. No matter what. Happy, grateful, and kind... Those are some great concepts, but where can I find my better angels to help pull it off?

  Claudine’s voice and a deeper masculine one interrupted her reverie. All three guests turned in their chairs to behold a man now standing in the doorway. He was tall, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and dressed in a dark khaki military uniform with a rainbow of grosgrain ribbons pinned to his chest and reams of braid encrusted on the brim of his hat tucked under one arm.

  “Hello, everyone,” he said, staring directly at Finn. “My apologies for barging in like this. I’m only in Paris for two days. A security conference with our allies, called because of the recent terrorist attacks. Believe me, I had no idea...”

  His sentence trailed off as Finn slowly rose from his chair. Juliet spotted a trio of appliqued stars gracing each of the visitor’s shoulders. Then it dawned on her. Three-star General Andrew Deschanel had dropped by, unannounced, to pay a hurried courtesy call on his older sister, Claudine—and inadvertently discovered his son’s city of refuge.