The Long Walk

by Jill Cox

  Uh, no, chucklehead. You’re not. You can’t even spell right.

  Every teacher I know works hours and hours above their contracted schedule, every night, every weekend. Harper said the first time she went up to school on a Saturday last fall, she was shocked to find the faculty parking lot full.

  As for three months off in the summer? Between in-service days and professional development conferences, the average teacher gets maybe six weeks. If you’re the Addison girls, you spend two of those weeks keeping teenagers alive in Paris when they step into a crosswalk, failing to notice the lawbreaking moped headed their way.

  So, no – teaching is not an easy job. And by the time we crossed the threshold of Notre Dame a few moments later, I suddenly realized that Providence had used my senior-year life crisis to steer me away from a calling I’d never received.

  But Pete had received that calling. So had Harper, Anne, and Kelly. And not just because all four of them were kid magnets (although they were). We hadn’t walked twenty feet away from the Fontaine Saint-Michel before Pete connected with the small group of guys, and by the time we were done with the Notre Dame tour, every girl in the group had gone all heart-eyed.

  Very few people on the planet were immune to Pete’s charms. But what I didn’t expect was the respect he commanded without ever raising his voice. Harper, Anne, and Kelly, too. All four of them led by example.

  I felt like I was walking among giants.

  Two hours later, as we boarded a bâteau-mouche for a private dinner cruise over to the Eiffel Tower, Pete won the heart of every girl in sight, including Valérie, the tragically cool tour guide who’d been traveling with the group since Florence. The boat’s deck hand – a smarmy, lanky fellow with the weakest mustache I’d ever seen – stepped unwillingly aside at Pete’s request. He held out his hand to help each of us into the boat. One by one we climbed aboard, and one by one, we each fell prey to those warm puppy-dog eyes of his smiling up at us.

  All of us. Including me.

  The five of us parked ourselves in a booth on the starboard side of the boat. Once the kids settled in for the ride, Pete sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “You guys remember Marshall Freeman?”

  “Of course we do,” Harper scowled. “He ruined every single precious hour we had with Monsieur Ludovic fiddling around with those chocolate bar wrappers.”

  “That’s the one.” He paused for a moment, shooting each of us a curious look. “So, what would you ladies say if I told you Marshall Freeman and Élodie eloped this spring?”

  “They’re still together?” Kelly gaped. “But she’s so perfect, and he’s just…”

  “The opposite of perfect,” Anne winced. “Ugh. He smells like broccoli.”

  “Maybe so, but I guess she’s into broccoli, because she asked him to marry her.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” I asked, pushing my hair behind my ears. “Don’t tell me you work for the Highgate alumni magazine now.”

  “I can see why you would think so, but in this case, the magazine was not my source.”

  “No? Then who was it?”

  His jaw tightened. “Kathy Beauchamp.”

  “Yeah, right,” Anne snorted. “Not even someone as pathologically friendly as you could convince Madame Beauchamp to keep in touch. She’s the OG of mystery and stealth.”

  “Right?” Kelly beamed. “I’m not one hundred percent convinced she’s human. Do we have proof she’s corporeal?”

  “How could we? She never lets anyone within five feet of her,” Anne quipped. “For all we know, she’s a hologram of some extra-terrestrial overlord. I told you guys not to trust that coffee machine. It’s how they plan to infiltrate the human race, one French major at a time.”

  Pete laughed so hard that he snorted, which made the rest of us laugh, and a nanosecond later, Kelly started talking about some celebrity gossip she’d read online that morning. But halfway through her story, Pete’s eyes met mine, and I knew the Marshall-plus-Élodie news was true.

  Because Pete did keep in touch with Madame Beauchamp. Far more than anyone knew.

  Despite her last name, Madame Beauchamp wasn’t French. The woman formerly known as Kathy Ellison was American, and she’d gotten her Master’s degree at Addison College the same year as Margaret and Peter Beckett, a.k.a. Gigi and Pops. Only instead of falling in love with one of her classmates, our fearless leader had fallen in love with the Centre Lafayette’s youngest professor – the charmingly adorkable Guillaume Beauchamp. Which might have been a scandal, except that at twenty-nine, Kathy was three years older than Guillaume.

  Plus, this was France. No one cared.

  When the Becketts came to France thirty years ago in search of an apartment, guess who they stayed with for a month? And when they’d decided to set up the Beckett Endowment at Highgate, guess who organized the paperwork with the Centre Lafayette?

  The Beauchamps were practically family. Which is why, in the months after Gigi passed away, Madame Beauchamp had kept a watchful eye on Pete. And the Addison girls never knew.

  The waiters had just cleared our plates when Pete’s phone suddenly buzzed against the wooden table. Five kissy lip emojis lit up the screen instead of a name, and the caller ID photo? Brooks and Pete smooching on a sofa, looking so perfectly adorable together that I thought I might actually puke on the spot.

  Pete shot upright, his hand flinging out to divert the call, but it was too late. All four of us had seen the lock screen.

  Kelly turned to him, eyes wide, her expression no less gob smacked than if he’d slapped her. “Who is Kissy Lips?”

  Pete’s eyes slipped briefly to me, then he schooled his face into a neutral expression. “Uh… Brooks?” He tucked his phone into his shirt pocket. “I told you about her in January.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did.” His entire upper body went splotchy, including his ear lobes. “We talked about her on the drive up to Vermont.”

  They talked about Brooks? Did that mean Pete had traveled to the East Coast alone? I thought back to early February when the Addison girls had invited me on this trip. In my mind that night, Harper and Kelly had already made Brooks the unofficial fourth member of the Addison girl squad. For weeks afterward, I’d had nightmares that resembled some kind of Taylor Swift music video, and now? Turns out Pete had left Kissy Lips at home where she belonged.

  Harper shifted uncomfortably beside me. “Sorry, Russell. We talked about a lot of things that weekend but we never talked about someone named Brooks. I would remember.”

  “Is she here?” Anne asked.

  Pete looked like a caged animal. “In Paris? No. She’s in Mexico. Cabo San Lucas.”

  “She’s in Cabo by herself? Don’t most couples vacation together?”

  “She’s hardly by herself.” The reflection of our table’s candle flickered in his dark eyes. “Brooks’ best friend is getting married this weekend. I could have gone, but I didn’t want to spend my golden birthday in some cabana. I wanted to spend it here.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. “Your birthday’s Monday. Twenty-five on the twenty-fifth.”

  Pete’s eyes locked once again with mine, and just like that, two years’ worth of anger just… vanished. As Pete’s eyes flickered in the candlelight, the veil finally lifted between us and I saw him for who he’d always been: just a boy, all alone in the world.

  As devastated as I still felt whenever I thought of my brother, I’d never truly felt alone. At school, Dan and the Treehouse boys had kept me in a protected cocoon every day of senior year. In Doolin, my parents were never more than a few hundred yards away from me at any given time. These days, I had Emma and Jack. Sometimes even Michael.

  Even with Brooks in his life, Pete seemed as solitary as ever.

  Kelly’s frown morphed into a goofy smile. “I didn’t know you were a summer baby.”

  “I didn’t know you had a birthday at all,” Anne chuckled. “I thought you were a sprite.
Or maybe the fairy king of the Cascade Mountains.”

  “Oh, I am the fairy king.” The thousand-watt grin reappeared. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I need to return this call.”

  Kelly jumped out to let him pass, and as his long stride carried him to the back of the boat, all four of us watched him go. Before he’d reached the back deck, he had the phone to his ear, his eyes fixed on the Eiffel Tower twinkling behind us like it was the most natural setting in the world.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Sometime around six the next morning, my phone dinged. The graphic design team at Reardon was still at the office, where they’d just finished mocking up the cover for Night and Day.

  I slipped out of my bed and shuffled over to the tiny bathroom, flipping on the light with one hand as I quietly closed the door with the other. Perching on the rim of the bathtub, I downloaded the file to my phone, and when I opened it up, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  A guy and girl twirled in the foreground with the lights of the Pont des Arts far behind them. On either side of the couple, twinkle lights snaked up the bare limbs of two gigantic trees.

  Another e-mail alert scrolled across my phone screen, this time from my editor, Angie. “I know you’re with your friends,” she wrote. “But as you can see from the sketch, the designer’s having a hard time getting the bridge details just right, and we could really use your perspective since you’re actually in Paris. Could you take a few shots this morning?”

  Yes, Angie. Yes, I could.

  The Pont des Arts looked its most glorious from the Square du Vert Galant, a public garden on the westernmost point of Ile de la Cité. The sun was just beginning to rise behind me as I walked along the quay. I always had the strangest feeling whenever I walked along the Seine, as if two millennia of Parisian ghosts were watching me. This morning, it was the ghost of my own past.

  When I reached the Pont Neuf, I descended the staircase and continued west at water level toward the tip of the island. Pushing aside the drooping willow tree branches, I lowered myself to the ground, hanging my legs over the embankment. I took several shots of the bridge for Angie and texted Jack a shot of my feet perched above the water. Twenty seconds later, my phone buzzed.

  “Tell me you miss me, love,” Jack cooed into his phone. “Tell me you’re awake at this ungodly hour, taking photos of the Seine because your heart is missing me in this time zone.”

  “Of course I miss you, Jack. Tell me you’re awake at this ungodly hour, strolling along the River Liffey and asking yourself why in the world you sent me to Paris without you.”

  “Ah.” He clicked his tongue. “Not the Liffey, no. But I am sitting in my hotel room making a spreadsheet of every flight combination between Dublin and Paris for the next two days.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  I could hear the smile in Jack’s voice. “How else do you think I pass the time when you’re not around? I’m bored out of my mind. Wouldn’t it be grand if I could fly to Paris later this morning? Not only could we entertain those young Americans for a few hours with our quaint Irish brogues, but we could also shave a decade off Michael Brady’s life while he frets over my whereabouts all day. Of course, we’d jump on the late afternoon flight back to Dublin and waltz into Nick Hornby’s event tonight two seconds before my agent’s arteries warp out of shape.”

  “Come on, Jack,” I laughed. “You would never do that to Michael.”

  “Oh, yes, I would.” By the huskiness of his voice, I imagined him leaning forward, elbows on his knees as he spoke to me through the mic in his earbuds. “It would serve him right for springing all of this Hollywood nonsense on me. Besides, if Michael wants me to make a name for myself at tonight’s event, what better way than swanning in at the last minute with a gorgeous redhead on my arm?”

  I smiled to myself. “That’s one way to do it.”

  “Yes, it is.” I could hear that sexy smirk tugging at his cheeks again. “But when I mentioned my Paris plan to Michael last night, he said if I stepped foot in the Dublin airport, I’d be in the market for a new agent. Which might work out in the end, except I realized I didn’t even know where you’re staying. You never told me.”

  “I didn’t?” I winced. “Oh. Sorry, Jack.”

  “Yes, well, I might forgive you if you take the 17:45 flight out of Charles de Gaulle airport this afternoon. Thanks to that pesky time change, you could easily make it to the Orpheum Theater on Cecilia Street just in time to ask for the ticket I’ve left you at the Will Call booth. It’s around the corner from the Temple Bar hotel where I’m staying.”

  “I can’t fly to Dublin! Even if I could ditch my friends, my return ticket is for Shannon, and it’s for tomorrow. Besides, you’re the one who insisted I fly to Paris without you.”

  “I know what I said, love.” I could hear the smile spreading across his face. “But we gents from County Clare are hard to resist. If you don’t believe me, ask your mum.”

  For a full five minutes after we said our goodbyes, I remained at my perch, listening to the tiny waves lapping at the stones beneath my feet, glancing nervously over my left shoulder every thirty seconds or so. Because four hundred meters behind me, on the Left Bank of the Seine, sat the entrance to the rue Guénégaud, the street where Pete lived. And when I’d packed my things for this weekend, I’d slipped a little something into the pocket of my cross-body bag that was now burning a hole in its place at my hip.

  The key Pete had given me on the day we’d thrown the padlock in the Seine.

  I twirled it between my fingers. The day after Jack had given me his claddagh ring, I’d promised myself I’d throw Pete’s key in the Seine. I’d spent weeks visualizing myself in the middle of the Pont des Arts, dropping that symbol into the river where it belonged, once and for all.

  Bye, Felicia.

  But then Pete had waltzed back into my life unannounced yesterday afternoon. And fifteen hours later, the Reardon team blindsided me with that image of a couple dancing beneath the brightest moon in four hundred years.

  Suddenly, Jack’s invitation to fly home early didn’t sound like such a terrible idea.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Valérie had scheduled a nine-o’clock tour of the Louvre for the Addison girls and their students. At least, that’s what I discovered when I walked back into our hotel suite at half past eight. Propped up beside my alarm clock was a handwritten note requesting that I meet everyone at eleven thirty next to the Tuileries’ Bassin-Rond.

  The same reflection pool where Pete and I had talked the night of La Nuit Blanche.

  Well, okay, Past Meredith. I guess you really want to hang out with me all weekend.

  Three hours later, the Tuileries’ gravel crunched beneath my feet, just like it had that night so long ago. Crunch, crunch. Déjà vu. Crunch. Only this time, it felt as though I was walking through the movie set of Luke and Allie’s story in addition to my own memories.

  I saw Pete’s unruly curls from two hundred yards away. Not Anne’s curls. Not Harper’s fancy new bob or Kelly’s platinum blond ponytail that stood out from everyone else’s dark hair.

  No, I saw Pete. And judging by the way his shoulders squared back and then hunched over, I’m ninety-nine percent certain he saw me at the exact same moment.

  See, this is why I should have told the Addison girls the entire La Nuit Blanche story a long time ago. Because if I had, they might have asked me to meet them somewhere decidedly less significant to my past. Like, I don’t know, the Louvre’s pyramid. Or its food court.

  Harper and Kelly were telling some story about their students when I walked up to the group. All three of the Addison girls lifted their eyes briefly to me and waved, but not Pete. He was bent forward, elbows on his knees, scrolling his thumb across his phone screen with his right hand. I took the empty seat next to Anne and pretended to listen to the trip story while I willed my heart to slow its roll. Because, yeah, this was the exact set of chairs where Pete and I sat that night of La Nuit Blanche. And unle
ss I wanted to stroke out, I needed to calm the heck down.

  A breathless Valérie appeared just then, clutching her phone to her chest. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice quavering. “I can’t believe this, but our plans for this evening are ruined.”

  “Ruined?” Harper scrunched up her nose. “Why?”

  “Because since yesterday, I’ve been calling Le Chapiteau Rouge up in Montmartre to confirm our reservation for tonight, except they never answered. So when you insisted on guiding your own students through the museum, I decided to go up to Montmartre myself to see what I could find out.”

  “Is Le Chapiteau Rouge the restaurant with the karaoke stage?” Kelly asked. “Yes! The kids are so excited to go there! And by the kids, I mean me.”

  “I know,” Valérie sighed. “They’ve been asking me about it every day. Which is why I got worried. Just before you arrived in Nice, our operations department called to assure me they’d confirmed every booking. This is highly unusual. These types of restaurants love student tour groups.”

  Valérie swiped her brow with the back of her hand, and as she did, Pete stood up from his chair and motioned for her to sit down. Her lips unfurled from their usual pout into a full-on sexy grin, and I wondered if Valérie had ever met a man as well-mannered as Peter Beckett Russell.

  Truth be told, I don’t think I’d ever met one either.

  She threw her hair back over her shoulder and reassumed her usual petulant expression as she collapsed into Pete’s chair. “When I arrived at Le Chapiteau Rouge, you will not be surprised to learn that it was closed. But I knocked on the door anyway, and a man in a white jumpsuit and a painter’s mask stepped outside.”

  “Oh no,” Kelly whispered. “They’re painting?”

  “Worse. They have rats.” Valérie’s eye began to twitch. “Hundreds of them. And so does the restaurant next door.”

  Pete clapped his hand over his mouth, but it didn’t stop his shoulders from shaking up and down. And to my surprise, Anne began to laugh so hard that she actually snorted. Why the rat infestation had struck their funny bones, I had no idea, but since none of us could ever stay serious when someone else got the giggles, the rest of us began to chortle too.