The Long Walk

by Jill Cox

  “Okay, okay.” Harper smoothed her dark bob into place and breathed in deeply. “Focus with me for a second: what are we going to do about tonight? I mean, we have to take the kids over to the Musée d’Orsay this afternoon. It’s too important to skip. But we can’t just let them wander free in the museum while we solve this.”

  “We could take them to the movies tonight,” Anne suggested. “I mean, we’d have to take them to an American movie and it would be pretty expensive, but surely we can make it work.”

  “Maybe so.” Valérie ran a finger over her lower lip. “What about a nightclub?”

  “In Paris?” Harper yelped. “I wouldn’t even go to a nightclub here with people my own age. Too many shady people in the club. There’s no way to control it.”

  “Is there another restaurant like Le Chapiteau Rouge?” Kelly asked. “Because I really think karaoke is our best bet.”

  Anne rolled her eyes. “That’s because you want to sing Copacabana again.”

  “Hey, I just want to give Meredith a chance to redeem herself.”

  I was about to protest when Pete’s face suddenly lit up like a little kid. “Dude,” he chuckled. “I’ve just come up with the idea of the century.”

  Anne’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

  “Stay tuned.” He shot her a dazzling grin, then pulled me to my feet. “If Meredith and I haven’t solved your problem by the time you’ve reached the Post-Impressionist floor, Meredith will perform Gangnam Style right there at the entrance for all the tourists to see.”

  Kelly frowned. “Meredith knows the Gangnam Style dance?”

  “Sort of,” he said, winking at me. “Not that you’ll ever see proof, because we’re about to blow your minds.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Twenty minutes later, our taxi pulled up to the Guénégaud apartment. Pete slipped the driver a twenty euro note, even though our fare was a third that amount. And before he’d even keyed in his building’s door code, Pete was dialing Madame Beauchamp.

  “Hey, Kathy. Listen, the Addison girls and Meredith Sullivan are in town with some students. And…” He paused for a moment as we reached the first floor landing. “Yes, all four of them together. What? No, I had no idea. Save that scolding for Marie-France de Clavéry. She’s known for months.”

  Pete continued up the next flight of stairs. “Kathy says hi,” he whispered.

  I waved and followed him up the steps to his front door. Unlocking all three locks in less than ten seconds flat, he breezed into the apartment like he was king of the world.

  But for a full thirty seconds, I stood frozen at the threshold, because this was not the same apartment I’d known back in the day.

  For one thing, the walls, which had been a very pale shade of blue before were now a surprisingly trendy shade of gray. And the living room furniture, which had always had a slightly feminine, boho chic style, now resembled a Pottery Barn catalog, all the way down to the Persian rugs on the floor.

  But as I wandered over to a bookcase, I began to recognize a few things. The photo of Pete and his parents at Disneyland Paris in the small silver frame. A collection of archival albums protecting his dad’s photography. A few French books that must have been his mom’s or Gigi’s, judging by their age. And the photo of Lucky playing mahjong from that first stint in Shanghai.

  When had he shipped these things from Oregon?

  “Are you serious? There’s a Bluetooth speaker system in the Grande Salle?” Pete laughed in the kitchen. “Why haven’t you ever told me that before? Uh, no, Kathy. I would not have ruined orientation by blaring heavy metal. I would have improved it by blaring Justin Bieber.”

  Afternoon light poured in through the wall of glass at the south end of the flat as my eyes took in the rest of the living room. On the opposite wall from the bookcase, Pete had framed a map of China littered with green, red, yellow, and blue dots everywhere. As I approached, I spotted Beijing, Guangzhou, some town called Suzhou… there had to be fifty little dots, most of them in rural areas. I trailed my finger along the routes, wondering what each color signified.

  “Yellow means I went there once,” he suddenly said from behind me. “Green twice, red three times, and blue four.”

  “You’ve been to all these places?”

  He nodded, his mouth resting in a thin line. “People would come in to Shanghai from all over China, hoping to find work, but sometimes they’d get there without knowing they needed specific permission forms from their home province. Only they couldn’t return home to get it, because, well, they didn’t have the money. So James sent me with them to their hometown to work through the red tape.”

  “Your Mandarin is that good?”

  “Nah,” he smiled. “But I’m pretty intimidating when I want to be. So the city officials usually expedited the process for my friends.”

  “Look at you,” I chuckled. “You’re like Robin Hood. Or wait… Batman?”

  “Batman, Robin Hood, Starlord… whichever you like best, Sully.” Pete’s eyes twinkled in the mid-afternoon sun reflecting through the glass wall. “Here, come look at these.”

  I followed him back across the room to the bookcase. When he showed me the contents of a small wooden box I’d passed by earlier, my heart nearly burst with cuteness. “Look at the tiny gnomes!” I laughed, picking one from the bunch. “Where’d you get these?”

  “At the boulangerie down the street. Can you believe it?” He pulled one out that had a polka dot mushroom for a hat. “They put these in their king cakes for Epiphany instead of those creepy little porcelain babies. Because, as Annette the Baker says, ze bébés, zey are bee-zarre.”

  I always had to laugh when Pete imitated French people speaking franglais. He had no discernable accent in either language, which was both unnerving and charming, all at the same time. “They’re so sweet,” I admitted, cradling the tiny gnome in my palm. “I wish you would have told me about these when we lived here before so I could have gotten one for myself.”

  “I’ve never told anybody about these,” he said. “Not even Dan.”

  “They weren’t here when you lived here before?”

  “No.” He plucked the gnome from my hand and placed it back in the wooden box. “A couple of years ago, I consolidated everything from the Sherwood house storage units and Gigi’s and shipped a couple of small containers over here. The concierge locked them up in the storage cave downstairs. Now everything I own is in this apartment.”

  I blinked. “Everything?”

  “Everything that I kept, yes.” He placed the gnome box back on its shelf and grabbed a small print of Caillebotte’s Rooftops Under Snow from a different shelf. “This was in my mom’s classroom. It was her favorite painting.”

  Mine too, I thought. No wonder he referenced it our first day in Paris. And here I’d always thought he’d just lucked out picking the right image in the moment.

  Pete’s phone began to buzz in his pocket, but instead of answering, he handed me the Caillebotte print and headed back to the kitchen. “Feel free to keep looking around, Sully. I’m making some coffee. Speaking of which, did you know the professors have a code for that coffee machine at the Centre Lafayette? They can drink all the coffee they want for free.”

  “Really?” I shook my head. “No wonder Monsieur Ludovic was always so sprightly.”

  I could hear Pete laughing to himself all the way into the kitchen. While he banged around, opening and closing drawers and cabinets, I took a closer look at the bookshelves. There was a small photo I’d never seen before of Pete and his grandmother from when he was a little kid, posing on the Highgate campus, and a square black-and-white image of an older man who I assumed must be Pops.

  In all the time I’d known him, Pete had never mentioned how closely he resembled his grandfather. As I stared at Gigi’s husband, Peter Beckett, I could imagine what my Pete would look like in forty years – still dashing, still mischievous, with a whole lot of heart behind those deep brown eyes.

&nbs
p; Except he wasn’t my Pete. He hadn’t been mine for a long time.

  I turned to find Pete setting a tray down on the coffee table.

  “Well, would you look at those Sigma Phi Beta mugs,” I laughed, joining him on the sofa. “Très classy, bro.”

  “I thought so.” He smiled, nodding his head toward a disheveled green box and an equally bedraggled floral envelope. “But these belong to you.”

  I blinked. “They do?”

  “Yes.” He picked up both items and perched them on his palm, staring for a long, strange moment. Then he stretched his hand toward me. “Here you go, Sully. Happy belated twenty-second birthday.”

  I took the box from his hand and opened it slowly. Inside, nestled against the cotton padding, was a circular silver charm with the word Fee written in Ian’s terrible script.

  THIRTY-NINE

  “Your brother gave me fifty bucks at the Portland airport the day we landed,” Pete explained, looking up at me from under his lashes. “James knows a woman in Shanghai who can engrave handwriting onto jewelry. I don’t know how she does it, but I gave her the note Ian included with my earnings and pointed out your nickname. She did the rest.”

  I stared down at the charm. In the years since he’d died, I’d avoided anything that would remind me of Ian. Breathing in air had been challenging enough; I didn’t need to court disaster. But there he was again, right in my palm.

  “I miss him so much my chest still aches,” I whispered as tears slipped down my cheeks. “It never quite goes away, does it?”

  “No. It never does.” That familiar empty look filled his eyes. “But they say everything gets easier after the second anniversary of someone’s death. That’s coming up soon, right?”

  “Next Sunday.” I trailed my finger over the charm for a moment, then looked into his eyes. “Did it get easier for you? The aching?”

  “No. But I’m not as strong as you are.”

  “Thank you, Pete.” I held the charm to my heart. “This is… thank you.”

  He pressed his lips into a thin smile. “You’re welcome. Take the envelope too. I should have given you his note a long time ago.”

  “What? No way. It’s yours.”

  For a long moment, the silence stretched out between us. Then he laid his hand over mine. “I’m sorry, Sully. I should have been there for you when you needed me. The choices I made after Ian died… well, I think it’s safe to say that I make terrible decisions in July.”

  I wanted to tell him I understood. I wanted to tell him about Night and Day and how I wrote it for him. I wanted more than anything to throw my arms around him and tell him I must have forgiven him a long time ago because in this moment, as we stared into each other’s eyes, all I really wanted to do was to find a time machine and go back to that night that Ian and Kate died. Because surely if we went back, we could spare our younger selves the last two years apart.

  But I couldn’t tell him any of that. All I could do was stare into his eyes. Because with each moment that passed, I finally understood why he wanted to give me the charm and the envelope.

  He’d already minimized his life down to the things that brought him joy. These were the final two steps toward minimalistic bliss.

  Pete’s eyes flickered back and forth between mine, as if he could read the thoughts in my head. But then he smiled that big cheesy grin I’d seen so many times the last twenty-four hours. “Listen, don’t let your new Irishman give you grief about the charm, bro. Because the truth is, I bought it with the cash Ian gave me for betting against you on my birthday. So if he asks, tell him it’s a gift from your brother. Something to remind you that no one should ever underestimate Meredith Fiona Sullivan.”

  Despite the tears spilling down my face, I laughed. “What makes you think he’d notice?”

  “This.” He gestured toward my claddagh ring. “Right hand, pointing upward toward your heart. That’s… wow, Sully. The Irishman doesn’t mess around, does he?”

  I’d never believed in that two-halves-making-a-whole kind of love. But as I watched Pete watching me, I realized I’d spent the past six months creating what I’d believed was an amazing life only to hold it up next to a grand masterpiece.

  Anyone could give their girlfriend a claddagh ring. Nowadays, they were as common as roses and chocolate. But Pete had always known exactly what my heart needed. The Pont des Arts charm and the photo album of my own work on my twenty-first birthday. The key from the padlock we threw into the Seine together. This new charm to remind me of my brother’s love.

  Paris itself, when he sacrificed his own spot junior year so I could follow my dream.

  With all of its colors, textures, and shadows filled in, my love story with Jack now resembled a child-like stick-figure sketch.

  Right on cue, the landline rang. “Uh… sorry.” He hopped to his feet. “Give me a minute, would you? No one but Vick ever calls that line.” And just like that, he disappeared into his room.

  I reached first for my coffee mug, but grabbed the crumpled envelope instead. Curiosity overtook me, and I found myself pulling Ian’s note free. My breath caught in my throat as I took in my brother’s scrawly print – something I hadn’t seen in far too long.

  Dear Pete,

  Here are your earnings, fair and square. Lesson learned this time – never bet against my sister when she’s hopped up on love. Because love makes you stupid, like when you willingly humiliate yourself in a tutu in front of a hundred strangers.

  In case you’re the kind of guy who needs big brotherly approval, never fear. Anyone who makes Fee laugh like you do is someone I want in her life. You see the best in her, which makes me think you’re alright.

  Don’t make me regret this note someday. I hate hiring bounty hunters.

  – Ian

  “Love makes you stupid.” Yes, Ian. YESSSSS. Here I was, sitting in Pete’s living room like it was your average Saturday afternoon. What was the matter with me? I had a boyfriend.

  As though she sensed my presence, Pete’s mystery caller began to shout so loudly that I could hear her thirty feet away. “Calm down, baby,” he said barely above a whisper. “I’ve just been messing around my apartment. You know how I get when I’m focused on a project.”

  Baby. Was that Brooks on the phone, and had Pete just called her baby? After all those times we’d mocked Kate and Ian for the same thing? Gross.

  And he’d flat-out lied to her. I mean, yeah – I hadn’t told Jack that Pete was here either, but if he’d asked me directly, I’d like to believe that I would have told him the truth. Wouldn’t I?

  In fact, why was I even in Paris? Once again, I was clinging to the past when I should be in Dublin with my boyfriend, supporting his career, and by proxy, my own. Instead, I was sitting here on Pete’s couch while he talked to the gorgeous and perfect Brooks Darby.

  Also known as Baby.

  I pulled my phone out of my purse and checked the time. Ten minutes before two. On instinct, I shoved the green box into my bag and tucked Ian’s note back in its floral envelope, propping it against the Sigma Phi Beta mug. Then I tiptoed across the hardwood floor, careful to avoid all the spots I knew would creak. The second Pete’s door snicked shut behind me, I sprinted down the stairs and up the street, never once looking back.

  FORTY

  Ian Sullivan had four cardinal rules of travel.

  ONE: always pack in a carry-on.

  TWO: never unpack in case you need to make a quick getaway.

  THREE: always take public transportation to the airport.

  FOUR: if you have to change your flight, always do it online.

  Solid tenets, right? Right. Except I always managed to screw up rules three and four. Especially when I was in a hurry, or when my tear ducts were working overtime from ghosting my friends for no decent reason.

  There was a mechanical problem on the Paris commuter rail, which meant I arrived at Charles de Gaulle ten minutes too late for Jack’s suggested flight to Dublin. Then, the desk agent w
as a trainee who took a full hour removing me from Sunday’s flight to Shannon so she could rebook me on the flight arriving in Dublin by eight that evening.

  Except we didn’t land on time. The pilot circled Dublin airport for what felt like years.

  But thank heaven for Irish midsummer, because when my driver pulled up in front of the Orpheum Theater at a quarter past nine, the sun was still dancing along the horizon of the cornflower blue sky. A few patrons lingered near the exit, buzzing about the event and the fantastic chemistry between Nick Hornby and Jack Kelly. “I must go buy his book,” they all chirped.

  Well, then. At least this weekend had been productive for one of us.

  I hadn’t taken more than a few steps inside the theater lobby when four arms suddenly wrapped themselves around my leg.

  “Tinkerbell!” Sydney shouted.

  “What happened to your fairy wings?” Siobhan cried at the same time.

  “Sorry,” Maeve said, scurrying toward us. “It’s past all our bedtimes, I’m afraid.”

  Warmth enveloped me as the girls fought their mother and kept their arms around me. “It’s okay,” I laughed. “How did it go?”

  “Um, not too bad.” Her eyes flickered back and forth between me and the main doorway leading into the theater. “Don’t get me wrong, Jack was a natural on that stage. It’s just… I’m not one hundred percent certain Michael had pure motives where tonight’s concerned.”

  “No?” I followed her gaze back to the open doorway. “Where’s Emma?”

  Her eyes met mine as she forced her mouth into a smile. “Inside,” she nodded toward the open doorway. “She went to tell Jack goodbye while I make sure these two don’t scamper out into the street.”