by Ciji Ware
“Because we’ve sent off the Drones in the Desert packaging designs to the production department. I need a break and so does my team.”
The color images on the prototype boxes were so bloody and horrifying that she couldn’t even stand to have them sit on top of her desk anymore. She looked at her assistants. “Feel free to take the long weekend over Good Friday and Easter. You guys all deserve it.” To her brother she said, “These folks have worked tremendously hard.”
“What if we have to fix or adjust something?” Brad challenged with an angry edge to his voice.
“The project’s locked and loaded. You make any changes now, and it’ll cost you a fortune,” Juliet answered calmly. “And besides, you personally signed off on every single aspect of the next release. Don’t tell me you want to add to the body count on the box at this late date?”
Brad remained silent, glowering at his end of the conference table. He was just being his usual controlling jerk self, she realized, feeling pleased she had called his bluff. Her mind shifted to the lovely invitation from Finn sitting in her email inbox inviting her for Easter Sunday, March 27th. He’d also added a rather intriguing postscript.
Besides hoping you’ll return to L’Étoile de Paris to see this city in the spring, I want your opinion on something I can only speak to you about in person.
She forced herself to concentrate on the business at hand. Brad still had a frown on his face, but he hadn’t actually forbidden her to take a few of the many vacation days owed her after so many years of intense work. Her excitement about her upcoming trip began to bubble in her chest and she could hardly keep a broad smile off her face.
“Well, if that’s all we have to discuss, troops,” Juliet said, closing her laptop, “thanks to everyone for the endless hours you’ve given to this latest project. I’m truly grateful for all your efforts. Brad?”
Her brother didn’t even bother offering her design team a word of appreciation or bid farewell to those in the meeting. Instead, he rose from his outsized leather “CEO throne,” jerked his head in the direction of his assistant, and strode out of the conference room without a backward glance.
* * *
Juliet would have been embarrassed if anyone in her family could see that she was almost completely packed on the Tuesday before her Thursday evening flight from San Francisco to Paris. It was just after midnight when she closed her carry-on suitcase, leaving her large tote bag open for last minute items. She heard her cell phone ping with the familiar alert sign from her BBC News app. Hoping it was nothing more than a candidate declaiming whether Britain should stay or leave the European Union in the debate for the upcoming Brexit referendum, she reached for her phone and clicked on Messages.
Suicide bombings at Brussels Airport
“Oh, dear God, no!” she exclaimed to her empty bedroom and raced to her TV.
CNN was the first with more news about an 8 a.m. attack at the airport in Zaventem, Brussels. Juliet remained sitting cross-legged at the end of her bed, glued to the broadcast for the next hour. She was horrified when word was announced of a third explosion, also in Brussels, set off in a metro station, killing some twenty people.
What must Finn and Avery be feeling to hear this news? Wouldn’t this latest horror in nearby Brussels be an enormous psychological setback for them? It certainly felt that way to her.
The hotel phone in her room rang. It was Jamie.
“Are you watching TV?” he asked. “Hundreds wounded or killed, they say.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be hearing this in Paris.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Jamie agreed. I don’t think you’re going to have a very enjoyable weekend over there, Sis.”
Juliet glanced at her packed suitcase and her travel tote, ready for her to grab it and walk out the door. Suddenly, she wondered if more attacks were planned for other European airports—DeGaulle, for instance. She shuddered. If she was scared, how did the French feel right now? She couldn’t allow her fear of experiencing the horror of another attack keep her from what every instinct told her to do: go to Paris. If travelers like her cowered at home, the terrorists would win.
“These are scary times, that’s for sure,” she murmured into the phone, “but I’m going. In fact, if I can get an earlier flight out tomorrow, will you take me to the airport?”
“Of course.”
“And don’t tell anyone before I get out of here, okay? I don’t want to argue about it. I’ll just go. We’re all caught up at work, thank heavens. Leaving a day early won’t jeopardize anything here and maybe my presence in Paris can help.”
“Let me know when you want to meet me in the garage.”
“You’re the best,” she declared.
She replaced the receiver as she continued to stare, mesmerized, by the shocking images of explosions going off and blood on the floor inside the check-in area of the Brussels Airport. An endless loop of graphic video showed emergency responders rushing to get some three hundred wounded to hospitals throughout the Belgian city. Minutes melted into hours, but still she couldn’t take her eyes of the screen. Should she call Avery or Finn, or just get on a plane? After contacting the airline to substitute her Thursday flight for one that would leave the next day at noon, she decided not to call Paris only to be bravely told by Avery and Finn that she shouldn't make the trip just now. She was just going to grab the first plane out and go!
With that heavy decision made, she fell back on the bed, exhausted, and slipped into a fretful sleep.
* * *
Juliet’s anxiety and exhaustion weren’t helped by the twelve-hour trip across continental America and the Atlantic Ocean, nor by the increased security she met at De Gaulle Airport when her flight landed. When she finally emerged from the arrivals terminal, with helicopters once again flying overhead, she felt tense and jumpy as she waited in line for twenty minutes before securing a taxi to Rue de Lille. Upon her arrival there, she was dismayed when no one answered the bell at Avery’s flat, nor responded to her text. She was about to leave when the street door opened and Avery’s neighbor, Brian Parker—well turned out in an impeccably tailored pinstripe suit and silk tie—strode across the threshold, obviously on his way to work.
“Why, hello!” he greeted her. “You’ve come back. Brave woman.”
Juliet explained her worry about her friend in the wake of the most recent attacks in Brussels.
Parker shook his head. “This perpetual anxiety everyone here feels has become really unnerving.”
In response to Juliet’s question as to her friend’s whereabouts, he offered, “Maybe Avery’s gone to stay with a friend, although my wife has told her that she has an open invitation to sleep in our spare room, if she’s on edge. Actually,” he added, with a thoughtful look, “I haven’t seen much of her lately. I think my wife mentioned to me a few days ago that Avery’s been spending her time painting in some guy’s studio. She doesn’t answer her phone or text?”
Juliet shook her head and heaved a sigh. “She’s probably got her phone turned off. She does it all the time when she’s working. Is it okay if I leave her a note on her door upstairs? I gave her back my key.”
Parker smiled his agreement and allowed her in while he continued on his way. She sprinted up the six flights, scribbled a note on the back of her airplane boarding pass and wedged it halfway under the door.
Surprise! I’m a day early. I’m heading for Finn’s. Call me!
Back downstairs, she retrieved her wheeled weekender bag from the corner where she’d left it in the building’s foyer. Once outside, she hailed another taxi and directed it to cross the nearest bridge over to the Right Bank. She happily pictured the surprise on Finn’s face when she’d knocked on his door. As she tramped down the cobblestone ramp that led to the quay where the barges were moored, her heart quickened and she felt a goofy smile spread across her lips. In her haste to see Finn, she left her suitcase at the bottom of the gangway and ran up the incl
ine. She reached the deck and looked through the plate glass window over the door to the pilothouse—and stopped dead in her tracks.
On one end of the couch facing the coffee table laden with a plate of croissants, a coffee pot, and a mug, a slender woman perched on the corner of the sofa that Juliet had once claimed as her own. She had caramel-colored hair, a pretty face, and a buxom figure that matched that of the woman clad in a lavender sundress in the family photo sitting on a nearby shelf. This day, Finn’s wife, Kimberly Deschanel, was wearing a velour running suit—or was it pajamas?
For a split second, Juliet thought she would pitch off the boat into the Seine. Her breath came in short gasps and she wondered seriously if she were about to black out. Grabbing for the stout wires strung between the metal guard posts protruding from the boat’s gunnels, she steadied herself, but not before a blind fury filled her chest and she almost let out a scream. She had arrived twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. Finn would never expect that his wife and his incipient girlfriend would run into each other. The tableau of the two of them, chatting over coffee and croissants at this early hour, burnt itself in Juliet’s fevered brain.
Just then, Finn looked up, and his expression, first of recognition, and then of consternation, told her everything she needed to know. She whirled in place and tore down the gangway, its clanging sound alerting everyone onboard to her presence even if Finn hadn’t already spied her through the window. She heard him call her name from the now-opened door to the pilothouse, but she ignored him, grabbing her suitcase and sprinting like an Olympian up the ramp and back onto the street. She swiftly cut across Pompidou Bridge and mounted a cement staircase, mindless of her thumping bag or her aching arms, in her effort to reach an escalator that took her even higher to the platform at the Passy metro station and a train—any train—that would get her away from the scene she’d just witnessed.
That’s what you get for wanting to ‘surprise’ a guy you don’t know very well!
Not know him very well? Make that not know him at all...
Still trying to catch her breath and calm her pulse, Juliet again felt she might faint. She stumbled onto an arriving train whose destination she didn’t even know and, for another ten minutes, she merely sat in her seat, not caring where the car was headed. When her breathing finally returned to near normal, she pulled out her cell phone and punched up her Paris Metro app. The gods were with her. The train she’d jumped on so blindly was one where she could transfer at Montparnasse to the Number 12, a line that would eventually let her off very close to Rue de Lille. There, she would sit at the café across the street and wait for Avery to return home, however long it took.
She shut down her phone as the train pulled to a stop and she entered the busy station. She was barely aware of military-clad police with their war weapons guarding passengers making their way to various platforms. Reaching her final destination, she emerged into brilliant sunshine. She’d almost forgotten the attacks in Brussels—the very reason she’d jumped on an earlier plane and flown all night to offer her sympathy and support for two of the people she most cared about in the world.
Juliet was shocked to realize that her heart actually hurt. She had been kidding herself that she was in control of how she felt about Finn Deschanel. Whatever his problems were... whatever battles he still had to fight... whatever ties he obviously still had with his wife, Juliet knew now, with a dread that rivaled anything she’d ever felt before, that she had fallen in love with him. She’d been denying herself that deep knowledge, not committing her whole heart, she thought, until it seemed certain that he was feeling himself again and “ready” for a life with her. But the truth was, she had committed her heart, and now it felt bruised and broken.
What a pathetic, obtuse creature I am...
What else could she surmise beside the fact that Finn had come to the conclusion since their time together before Christmas that he could work it out with his wife? While Juliet sat at a small table on the sidewalk at La Calèche waiting for Avery to appear, her thoughts swung wildly between sorrow and fury and finally an attempt at acceptance.
If she truly cared for his welfare—she should be happy for him, right? Finn and Kim had had a life together before he’d been shot down... and long before he’d flown drones or met her. It was a good thing, wasn’t it, if a couple could reconcile the issues that had torn them apart and live, again, in peace and love?
She couldn’t kid herself, though... she also felt angry. If life had so abruptly changed for Finn, he should have had the decency to tell her not to come for Easter. It would take time for her to feel anything but a crushing sense of betrayal. All he would have had to do was take ten seconds to send her a text. It would have seemed cruel, but at least she wouldn’t be sitting in a café feeling like an abandoned child!
The big wooden entrance door to Avery’s flat across the street swam before her eyes. She brushed away tears with the back of her hand and drank a huge gulp of her coffee, its heat burning a path down her constricted throat. I will do it, she vowed silently. She would do her very best to release Finn with love and gratitude for the way in which merely knowing him had shown her that she deserved better than a relationship with someone as self-centered as Jed Jarvis. She would one day be truly happy for Finn. She swore she would!
CHAPTER 21
Juliet was on her second cappuccino when she spotted Avery walking arm-in-arm with a tall, lanky figure she quickly identified as art instructor Alain Devereux. She watched, dumbfounded, as Avery turned her head with a smile and pressed her cheek against Alain’s jacketed shoulder as he kissed the top of her head.
They were obviously a couple. A couple in love.
What an idiot I’ve been to think I can just barge in on lives that seem to be proceeding most happily and independently without me!
However, in the next instant, Avery recognized Juliet sitting outside the café.
“Oh my God! Jules!” she squealed from across the street. “I thought you were coming Friday morning! Did I get it wrong?” She smiled at Alain. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
She kissed Alain goodbye and told him in her vastly improved French that she’d call him as soon as Juliet got settled in. For his part, the artist seemed to take this unscheduled change of plans in stride, bowed a polite farewell to Juliet from across the street, and reversed course. Juliet paid her bill and dragged herself and her suitcase toward the big wooden entrance at Number 7.
Upstairs, Avery had barely shut the door to her tiny garret before Juliet sank onto the end of the unmade bed and burst into tears. “How could I have been so stupid,” she berated herself, “to fly six thousand miles on the assumption that Finn Deschanel would simply be waiting for me to walk in the door? And how could, my best friend not be honest about the obvious liaison with Alain Devereux?”
Bewildered, Avery took a seat beside Juliet on the bed.
“What in the world has happened to prompt all of this?”
“Well, f-for one thing,” Juliet stuttered between hiccups, “you kinda, sorta forgot to tell me that you and Alain were more than just student and teacher before I sent my poor, love-sick brother over here to take my place as Ace Rescue Ranger!”
“That’s not fair!” protested Avery. “You never told me that Jamie was so smitten before he came over. I let him down as gently as I could.” Her gaze narrowed. “But this is not just about Alain and me, is it? I’ve never seen you cry like this. Have you seen Finn, yet?”
The fight went out of Juliet just as quickly as it had risen in her chest.
“An hour ago, I found Finn with another woman,” she related miserably, adding, “his wife.”
Avery glared at Juliet accusingly.
“Well, well... didn’t you kinda, sorta forget to tell me the guy you’ve obviously fallen in love with was a married man?”
“They’ve lived apart for more than a year,” Juliet defended herself. “I was there on the barge when he told his lawyer on the phone to fin
alize his divorce!” She glared at Avery. “Did you know anything about Kim Deschanel coming to Paris?”
Avery remained silent, and Juliet could almost see the wheels rotating in her head.
“You knew?” Juliet cried. Even to her own ears, her question was a wail.
“No, I didn’t know! I had absolutely no inkling Finn has been seeing anyone, let alone his wife, but the fact that you are so upset by this tells me that the man means a lot to you—and that’s the part you concealed, probably even to yourself!”
“I did,” Juliet said, in a barely audible voice. “I kept telling myself I liked him a lot but that for many reasons, we were a geographical impossibility. Then I unwrapped your portrait of him standing next to the pilothouse and I realized how much I missed him and had totally fallen in love and thought maybe he had too when he invited me for Easter. When I heard about the Brussels attacks I went into a panic about how you two would react and hopped on the first plane out of San Francisco. But when I arrived today and Finn was onboard the barge eating breakfast with his wife on the sofa, all cozy and warm, exactly where I used to sit—I think I went... kind of berserk.”
Juliet couldn’t continue speaking and in the next instant, despised herself for dissolving into tears once more.
“Oh, baby, I am so sorry.” Avery handed her a slightly soiled tea towel to dry her eyes. Although Avery no longer wore a sling to protect her right arm, she gingerly wrapped her left arm around Juliet’s trembling shoulders. “If it makes you feel any better,” she said softly, “I’m also in love with a very married man.”
“Oh, God, Av, really?” Juliet moaned, turning to look at her. “Alain’s also married? And we’re supposed to be smart women! Why would you go and do something like that? At least I thought mine was heading for a divorce. Did you go into all this, knowing he was married?”
Avery heaved a shrug. “Yes... but we’re in France, remember? Alain’s been married for ages. His kids are grown. He and his wife lead totally separate lives. I don’t even care he’s married.”