She had snapshots of memories, but she wasn’t sure she actually remembered, or if she’d conjured the recollections after seeing photographs.
That’s why on this day that she and Henri had set aside to play tourists, armed with her camera, she wanted to see if any of the sights jogged memories. They went on foot and spent the entire day exploring every inch of the city: they saw the Pope’s Palace, which, as the guidebook promised, dwarfed the cathedral; they shopped on Rue des Teinturiers, the famed artisan street, and in the open-air markets where Henri had been purchasing the fruits and vegetables they’d been enjoying; she had Henri snap a photo of her sniffing dried lavender—a recreation of the one of her mother, and she purchased some pure lavender oil, because it was good for relaxation.
She photographed the opera house, and they visited the various museums. Finally, after a full day, they hauled their tired bodies down to the river and had a picnic by the Avignon Bridge. The bridge was actually named Pont Saint-Bénézet Sur, but was immortalized in the famous nursery rhyme as Le Pont d’Avignon.
Unfortunately, by the time they got down there, the afternoon had turned cold and gray. Sullen clouds in the moody afternoon sky seemed to be as fed up with the wind’s battering as the rest of the locals. Instead of settling themselves on a patch of grass near the Avignon Bridge, Henri and Margeaux headed upstream a bit.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Henri said.
Just around the bend, the tree-lined street opened into an expansive field where several colorful hot-air balloons brightened up the landscape.
“How about a balloon ride?” he asked. “We saw the city at ground-level. It’ll be fun seeing it from the sky looking down.”
It was one of the most romantic suggestions ever.
“How did you arrange this?” she asked.
“I saw a flier at one of the markets and I thought it would make a nice surprise…so voilà.”
They took their picnic in the balloon with them, opting to toast each other as the balloon pilot took them up, up, up over the city until the ramparts and the village looked like a tiny toy town.
The balloon pilot must have been good at romantic flights, because he rendered himself all but invisible, turning his attention toward the horizon opposite Margeaux and Henri as they sailed over the top of Avignon.
At the altitude at which they were traveling, it was significantly colder than it was on the ground. Henri put his arms around Margeaux.
“Body heat,” he said.
Despite all that had happened between them, their sharing a house and bed in Avignon, the rekindling of their physical relationship, they hadn’t talked about the future. Up there, from that vantage point—or maybe it was the sheer romanticism of sipping champagne as Henri held her close so far above the earth—Margeaux was suddenly at a loss for words.
She could get used to this.
And that worried her.
They hadn’t talked about the future but the burning question looming in the back of her mind was, What’s next for us? Where do we go from here?
The question was building but was blown away by the wind before she could form the delicate foreign sentence.
It was interesting how, when she kept busy with projects and deadlines, she could block out the little voices that meandered through the back of her mind. But when she let down her guard, stopped the idle chatter, the voices tended to seep into the crevices of her heart.
Voices that warned her not to let Henri break through the brambles that had grown around her broken heart, holding together the pieces. Because if she did, one of two things would happen: she might make the mistake of believing that her broken heart had been put back together and was whole again; or her heart might simply fall apart and she might not be able to feel again.
What is next for us?
She didn’t know.
Because the wind was kicking up again, and the cold was chilling her to the bone.
Henri leaned closer and wrapped his arms around her tighter, trying to shield her from the biting cold with his big body. He was so warm and smelled vaguely of cedar and leather, and something clean and green.
She could so easily get lost here in his arms. She could forget herself. And she did, for a while, as he ducked his head and found the sensitive spot at the base of her neck, before he finally claimed her mouth. His lips were hot and sensuous, and they warmed her up from the inside out, despite the way the wind was blowing and demanding to know: What’s next for us?
And the question—or maybe the possible answers—made Margeaux shiver.
“What’s wrong?” Henri asked.
How did she tell him? How did she explain that she had no idea what she was doing? That she wanted him, that she wanted this, but she had no idea what this was—if this was real, because it had certainly never lasted before. In fact, every time in the past this had ended so badly.
He gazed down at her with such intensity, his brown eyes squinting against the wind. He looked so open. Yet, for all his patience, how could she expect a man like him to want to make a life with a broken woman like her?
He pressed her fingers to his lips. Kissed her fingertips, slowly, one by one. And the biting wind swirled around them, as if tying them together.
“It’s okay,” he said, as if reading her mind. “They say the Provençal wind does strange things to people. It can turn them inside out, seduce them, make them do things they’d never dream of doing.”
“As if that’s ever been a problem for me,” she retorted.
His eyes gleamed with mischief as he pulled her into him, kissing her. In that moment with the wind in their hair, she could pick out the amber and umber in his deep brown eyes. Right then, more than ever, he looked like the boy she used to know.
He kissed her deeply. It was a scorching kiss, and the heat of it reached all the way through the brambles and thistles that had grown around her broken heart. A searing kiss that made her feel.
Yes, she thought, maybe the wind could seduce people and incite feral thoughts and untamed dreams about the awakening of love. But she knew better. Most of the time it whispered promises it never intended to keep.
It whispered secrets: secrets kept, secrets that should be told. But the past was like the sudden spray of dried-leaf confetti that had danced away on the breeze down by the river; the future was the strong arms holding her, keeping her warm as they floated above the earth and all its problems.
As the balloon made its approach, preparing to land, she watched as the wind whipped the water across the Rhone, brewing whitecaps that resembled waves on the Mediterranean. This was only a small, imaginary ocean and she could see the shore on the other side. She wondered as she sat there shivering, if that might be a good omen. It was funny how when she stopped focusing on herself—her own problems, the little voices that had always chattered in the back of her mind, insisting she wasn’t good enough because she was stupid, a screw-up—those voices quieted when she focused outward rather than inward.
They’d also been nearly nonexistent since she’d been with Henri.
But as the balloon basket landed with a thud, the fickle wind changed directions and blew her hair into her eyes.
Suddenly the voices of doubt were back. What seemed so clear moments ago now made her feel restless and anxious.
Another packet of letters arrived via courier on Sunday, but as with the bundle of letters that had preceded the visit to St. Mary’s, the letter that accompanied this bunch came with a note from Colbert, instructing Margeaux to visit the convent before reading the letters.
The following day, they found themselves at Saint James Convent, located about ten miles west of the orphanage. Their appointment was with Sister Jeanne, and she was waiting for them when they arrived.
Henri was surprised to discover that the woman was younger than he’d expected. In fact, she was probably not much older than he and Margeaux.
Interesting.
Henri understood the part about not being compelled to settle down with a mate. He’d gone his entire adult life running from just such a commitment. But now that Margeaux was back in his life, he was also beginning to feel a tug in the other direction, that sense of free-falling through time and space and into love.
In many ways, it was the opposite of what he’d felt for Sydney—or maybe it was more apt to say what he hadn’t felt for her. The emotions that Margeaux evoked were at once compelling and overwhelming.
While he enjoyed the comfort and ease they naturally slipped into, he craved her like the body thirsted for orange juice when it needed vitamin C or hungered for bread when it needed nourishment.
She nourished his soul.
As Sister Jeanne shepherded them around the convent, Henri found his mind wandering to thoughts of how much he wanted to hold Margeaux’s hand or taste her lips, both of which he refrained from doing in this holy house in front of women who had pledged the vow of chastity.
When their gazes snagged as they trailed along with Sister Jeanne, he could tell that Margeaux was thinking the same thing.
When they paused in the chapel, Margeaux sniffed the air. There it was again. That phantom scent she thought she’d smelled as they entered the convent. But as they’d gotten engrossed in conversation, the aroma had faded and she’d forgotten about it.
Until now, when she was sensing it again.
“Do you smell orange blossoms?” she whispered to Henri.
He shook his head.
It must have been a note in Sister Jeanne’s cologne. Did nuns indulge in cologne?
Perhaps it was her soap.
Or maybe flowers adorning the chapel. But when she glanced around, she didn’t see any bouquets decorating the place.
When they exited the chapel, a black sedan that was parked across the street caught her eye. In many ways, it was just an ordinary, unremarkable car, but the dent in the driver’s-side door set it apart. Now she was sure it was the same car she’d seen parked across the street from St. Mary’s and then again yesterday near the market as they’d walked around Avignon.
Today, a man was slumped down in the front seat. He had a cap pulled down over his forehead and sunglasses, so it was impossible to get a good look at him. What she got instead was an uneasy feeling. She’d had to circumvent enough reporters in her younger, wilder days, it was almost as if she’d built up a sixth sense for them.
But why here? Why now? Visiting a convent and the tourist magnet of Avignon was hardly newsworthy.
Still, when another nun came to tell Sister Jeanne there was an important phone call she needed to tend to, she left Margeaux and Henri alone to enjoy the courtyard as they waited.
“Henri, over the past couple of days, have you noticed that car over there before?”
She turned to point at it, but by that time it was gone. It had evaporated in the same manner as the phantom scent of orange blossoms, leaving her wondering if both had been figments of her imagination.
Until Henri said, “Are you talking about the beat-up black four door that was over there a moment ago?”
He’d seen it, too.
She pointed at the empty space. “Yes that’s the one.”
“I noticed that same car yesterday, downtown. Strange that he’s here again today.”
A few moments later, Sister Jeanne came back.
“I’m terribly sorry you had to wait,” she said. “Let’s go into the living room and have some tea. I have a lot to tell you about your mother and the time she spent here. And I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions.”
Chapter Nine
Her mother had intended to become a nun?
The revelation had floored Margeaux. She was surprised but not flabbergasted by her father’s secrets. However, even though Margeaux was only sixteen years old when her mother died—and not necessarily privy to adult aspects of her mother’s life—she thought she knew her mother pretty well.
How could it be that her mother also had an entire secret past she’d kept from her daughter all those years? One Margeaux knew nothing about until now? Especially given that, Margeaux soon learned, she was at the center of the secret.
Over tea, Sister Jeanne had outlined that Margeaux’s mother, Bernadette Loraine, had been a novice at Saint James and had intended to take the vow until she was lured away by love.
It sort of sounded like the Sound of Music, except the man who tempted her was not a widowed captain with seven singing children. No, there had only been one child when her seventeen-year-old mother left, and that child would be named Margeaux Simone Broussard.
Her mother had been pregnant when she ran away with Margeaux’s father to start a new life. Considering her parents’ meager upbringing and her father’s rise to political success, the two had done well for themselves.
Margeaux didn’t understand why her father would be so ashamed of his past. The last packet of letters hadn’t addressed it. She could only assume that his obsession with perfect appearances made him ashamed of the fact that he’d lured a seventeen-year-old girl away from a convent, and he’d gotten her pregnant in the process. Those in high-ranking public office had committed far worse infractions and kept their careers intact, but on the return trip to St. Michel, Margeaux had reviewed the letters and reflected on her visits to the convent and orphanage. She’d come to one conclusion about her father.
He was a perfectionist.
He wanted nothing less than the perfect life for his wife and daughter. Perhaps by wiping the slate clean of past infractions, he thought he could accomplish just that.
In the letters, he never went into the hows and whys, he’d simply narrated a story about the past and left her to draw her own conclusions. He also told her that the information was hers to do with as she pleased. Since both he and her mother were no longer living, she could use her best judgment as to who would know about their family history.
It was a conclusion to the past that seemed to edge right up to where Margeaux’s installment of Broussard history began. Her father never knew she was pregnant. However, given her father’s illegitimate birth, her parents’ conceiving a child out of wedlock and then Margeaux’s own teen pregnancy—history seemed to keep repeating itself.
Would the cycle of unwed pregnancy end if she confessed her miscarriage to Henri?
Or would it simply open old wounds neither of them could do anything about?
She walked into her father’s study with the last letter in the stack she’d opened during the convent visit, settled herself on the couch and reread it:
Dear Margeaux,
Now you have a clearer understanding of who your father and mother really are. I won’t try to explain away the reasons we did what we did. We were young and in love and sometimes that combination can have life-altering consequences.
However, don’t think for one moment that I would have changed anything about our past—even if I wasn’t keen on publicizing it to the world. I understand at times it may have seemed as if I didn’t want you. That was as far away from the truth as one could possibly stray.
True, you and I were very different people. I wanted you to read books, but you were too busy exploring the world around you. But please know that I respect our differences and have made peace with the fact that you have always been your own person.
I sent you away because I saw how infatuated you and Henri were. By the time the tabloid reporter publicized your relations with him, I realized the best thing I could do for you was to remove you from the situation. As I said, sometimes love can blind a person’s best judgment. There is no way to tell young adults who believe that they are in love that sometimes people change and grow in different directions. I feared you would decid
e to throw your entire life away on a childhood crush, so I had to separate you and Henri so that you could experience life apart. If you were truly meant to be, you would end up together.
What I did not bargain on was the estrangement. If I made any mistakes that I wish I could go back and change, that is the one. But it’s easy to see the right decision when you’re staring down the barrel of the past.
We will never retrieve those lost years, and for that I am deeply sorry. If it is any consolation to you, please know that I always loved you—even if I neglected to show you. My love for you never wavered and will remain eternal.
Please accept my gift of the past. Do with the history what you will and always remain true to the beautiful person you are.
With eternal love,
Your Father
For a long time, she sat and stared at her father’s fine handwriting. Her dyslexia made the letters and words appear to jump around on the page, but she’d read this letter so often that she was more or less reading from memory.
Even though her father wasn’t physically here to experience this with her, really, it felt like the first time she had ever connected with him. The first time that each of them understood where the other was coming from. She wondered how he would have reacted if he had known about her battle with dyslexia. But in the end, she decided it was better to enjoy the knowledge that her father accepted that they were simply different people. Even so, he had still respected her for who she was, even though she was not like him.
That in itself relieved a mountain of guilt and sadness.
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