The Space Between Words

by Michele Phoenix

  When I looked down, I saw blood dripping from my sweater’s hem.

  The pulse pounding in my ears drowned out the muted sound of gunfire still exploding from within the hellish concert hall.

  Darkness swirled closer, suffocating and blessed. Extinguishing my will to fight. I felt my knees buckle.

  Then nothing.

  EIGHTEEN

  I DIDN’T LOOK UP WHEN I FINISHED TELLING GRANT and Mona about the events of November 13. I knew Grant sat in his chair by the table. I’d felt him move there as I related the details of Bernard’s death and my survival. Mona sat in a chair right next to me, her hand on my arm. She’d barely moved since I started telling my story. If anything, she’d leaned in closer, shielding me from my own memories as she wiped tears from her face.

  We sat in silence for a while. I fixed my eyes on the tattered fabric under my hand, gold and blue threads loosened by time and wear. Across the room, Grant sat with his elbows propped on his knees, hands tightly clasped as they had been throughout my retelling. I could hear him breathing.

  After several minutes, he broke the silence with a single word. “Patrick?”

  I braced myself for an onslaught of tears and was surprised when they didn’t come. It was as if my ability to feel had been snuffed out by the exertion of recollection. I told them about Patrick’s decision not to join us at the concert, and about his change of mind.

  “I didn’t know until . . .” I breathed deeply. “I didn’t know until later that he’d come to the concert to find us. Vonda told me he was at the doors when they began to—when they began to shoot.”

  “Oh, Jessica . . .” Mona’s voice broke as her grip tightened around my arm again. She looked at Grant, who still hadn’t moved. “What can we do? How can we . . .” Her words trailed off.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do that you haven’t done already.”

  “Do your parents know about the . . . about what you’ve been through?”

  “They do,” I said. “They found out from the police that I’d been shot, and they called me in the hospital—”

  “Wait,” Grant said, his voice sharp. “Shot?”

  I realized I’d left that part out. “In the waist,” I said. “Right here.” I pointed to the spot where the bullet had entered. I told them about surgery and recovery. “One inch higher or lower and the damage would have been so much worse.”

  “It’s a wonder you’re alive,” Mona whispered, and I felt guilt wash over me.

  “So many aren’t.”

  I was grateful that she didn’t answer.

  “Bernard?” Grant finally asked.

  “I don’t know. I . . . I wasn’t myself after the attack and I—I haven’t really had the courage to look anything up since I got here and . . . remembered.”

  “Do you want to know?” Grant asked, somberness in his voice.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Fear tingled on the edges of my consciousness. “Maybe later.”

  He nodded.

  “When Patrick convinced me to go ahead with this trip after the attacks—” I caught myself. “When I decided to drive south, like we’d planned, and landed here, I didn’t realize what I was carrying with me. And you couldn’t have imagined when you took my reservation that I’d still be here all this time later . . .”

  Mona sat back a little. “Listen, if you’re working your way into an apology, I’m going to stop you right now. You’re exactly where you need to be.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent. Grant rose from his chair—slowly, it seemed to me—and walked to the door. It clicked closed behind him.

  Mona watched him go. “He’s pulling a Grant,” she said. “Think now, speak later.”

  “It’s a lot.”

  “It’s a lot,” she agreed.

  The sound of Grant chopping wood in the courtyard reached us through the thin, ill-fitted windows of the conservatory. “That would be Act II of ‘Pulling a Grant,’” Mona said, getting up and stretching her back. Her eyes fell on me. “I want you to know how honored I feel that you shared this with us. And I can see it’s worn you out,” she said with her usual kindness. “I have questions, but they can wait until later. In the meantime . . .” She put out a hand to help me up. “I could use a strong cup of tea, and I’m guessing you could too. What do you say? Earl Grey and snickerdoodles until I get Connor from school?” She smiled. “I’m pulling a Mona: eat now, talk more later.”

  I felt a subtle brightening. The memories still hummed in the darkness of my mind, but I knew they were no longer only mine to know. There was relief in that. “Connor won’t be happy we started without him.”

  “I believe in an early introduction to disappointment,” she said with a quiet laugh. “Life’s full of it, right?”

  I contemplated the statement. Disappointment, yes. And more crippling forces too.

  “Thankfully, it’s also full of snickerdoodles,” Mona said, linking her arm through mine as we walked toward the kitchen.

  With no more translation needed, Grant and I crossed only at mealtimes after that day, or in my walks across the courtyard from the manor to the cottage. I saw the glances Mona cast in his direction when he joined us for lunch and dinner and her pinched lips when he answered questions with short replies, his voice hard, his features set. Even Connor seemed to sense the discomfort of our interactions.

  “That’s an upside-down smile,” he said as we were finishing dinner one night, leaning out of his booster seat to poke at his uncle’s chin. “Un sourire à l’envers.”

  Grant wrapped his fingers around Connor’s hand and pulled it away from his face. “What are you talking about?” His tone always softened when he spoke to his nephew.

  “A smile is like this,” Connor said, contorting his face into a broad, gap-toothed smile. “But a frown is an upside-down smile. See?” He twisted in his chair, bending over as far as he could in an attempt to demonstrate what he was describing. “This is what you look like,” he said, his voice squeaky from the awkward posture.

  “I have to say he’s got a point,” Mona said. She’d been rinsing our dinner dishes in the sink and placing them in the dishwasher.

  I felt Grant look at me as I shoveled our leftovers into plastic containers. “Want to chime in, too, and make it a consensus?” he asked.

  “Chime! In! Chime! In! Chime! In!” Connor chanted.

  Grant wrapped an arm around him and covered his mouth with his hand, pulling him back into a mock-angry hold. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” he growled into the boy’s ear.

  Connor pulled Grant’s hand off his face and craned his neck to look up at him. “But you’re being a poopy face!”

  Grant ruffled his hair and released him. “Great ally you are.”

  “All right, young man,” Mona said, wiping her hands on her apron and helping Connor out of his chair. “Enough harassing your uncle. Bath, pj’s, and bed—in that order.”

  “But it’s not dark yet!”

  “It’s dark enough. Scoot!”

  His bottom lip came out as he crossed his arms, hunched his shoulders, and marched out of the room.

  “Of all the things I wanted him to learn from you,” Mona said to her brother as she followed Connor, “your poopy face was not what I had in mind.”

  That made Grant smile.

  I concentrated on finding the right lids for the containers I’d filled, avoiding eye contact as he sat there in silence. After a moment, he stood and came around the island to the counter I was cleaning. He leaned a hip against it and let out a breath.

  “You don’t know what to do with me,” I said before he had the chance to speak.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You start working on a translation project with a woman who turned up at the B&B with an imaginary friend and a truckload of baggage, and you somehow manage to overlook some of her weird behavior—weird enough to make you call the village doctor. And then you find out there’s even more
in there. The kind of ‘more’ that makes you wonder if she’s going to go full-throttle crazy the next time. Not to mention the amount of time she’s spent living in your space without paying any rent at a time of year when you could be making money if you just kicked her out.” I shrugged so he’d know I wasn’t upset. “I get that I’m—that my situation is off-putting.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Except for the part where I say thank you. Because you’ve been really understanding and good to me. And I want you to know that I feel worse and better since the other day. Worse because I can picture it all now. And better because someone else knows. Two someone elses, to be exact. That doesn’t make me sane, but it makes me . . . I don’t know. Maybe less of a time bomb.” I looked at him as earnestly as I could, so he’d see I was sincere and not hurt by his change of attitude. “It’s still not fair to dump all this on you and Mona. I called my dad. He’s working on a ticket out of Marseille, so . . . I won’t be interfering with your Christmas too.”

  “Now are you done?” He expression had grown more somber as I talked, which was the opposite reaction of what I’d hoped for.

  “I think so.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

  “Grant—”

  He held up a hand. “Please—let me say this.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like to live with the memories you have.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I let the silence stretch.

  “After you told us about the Bataclan, all I could feel was this mind-numbing anger. This—this intense impulse to . . . to lash out at something or someone. I was livid. Still am. What they did to you—to your friend. What they did to the families who lost loved ones that night . . .”

  “So you went out and chopped some wood.”

  He grinned despite the anger still flashing in his eyes. “Was it that obvious?”

  “You have enough kindling to last a few years.”

  He hung his head and was silent for a moment. “I couldn’t get the images out of my mind. What you must have seen. And that man—Bernard?—putting his life on the line to help a stranger . . . to help you get out alive.”

  Guilt tugged at my conscience. I closed my eyes hard to blot it out.

  “But my next thought,” Grant finally said, “nearly right on top of the anger—my next thought was that we have to go to England.”

  My eyes snapped open. His expression was unchanged—reluctant and uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you—”

  “I think we need to go to England.”

  “What does England have to do with—with what happened to me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, exasperation in his voice. He raked his fingers through his hair and took a moment before speaking. “I don’t know why we have to go. It’s just this . . . this feeling I have. And I’m a ‘trucks and hammers,’ not a ‘feelings’ kind of guy. But Patrick told you to follow the sewing box where it was leading you, that it found you for a reason. And you trust him, right?” When I didn’t answer, he shook his head and sighed. “And Adeline died believing that her sister would survive but never knew if she really did. And . . . this whole thing just feels really . . . unfinished to me. And I’m a finisher. I want to see things through.” His smile was sheepish and a bit embarrassed as he shrugged.

  “You know you can’t catch crazy, right?”

  He went back to the island and slid onto one of the stools. Then he looked at me so seriously that I knew this wasn’t a whim. I saw in Grant a protective instinct frustrated by the lapse of time. The same that had sent him out of the room after I’d spoken of the Bataclan. It was that impotence that had fueled his anger.

  He cast a rueful smile my way. “So that’s my thinking,” he said, rolling his eyes a little. “You survived the Bataclan. And Patrick said the box had something to tell you. And Adeline would want to know if what she sensed from God was true—if Julie would survive.”

  His logic eluded me. “Those aren’t related things.”

  “I know. But it’s—it’s what I’ve been thinking. And not liking.”

  “Hence your poopy face?”

  “Are we really calling it my poopy face?”

  “We are.”

  “Okay. So yes, hence the poopy face.” He smiled.

  Mona came into the room and found Connor’s sword propped against the island. “Sir Swords-a-lot can’t take a bath without his weapon,” she mumbled, glancing up at us. She stopped short when she saw our expressions. “Something I need to know?”

  Grant said, “We’re going to England.”

  Her eyes got wider. “I’m sorry, we’re what now?”

  “Going to England.”

  She turned on me. “You know what he’s talking about?”

  I hung the dishrag I’d been using over the faucet. “He says he has a feeling,” I told her.

  “A feeling,” she repeated.

  “A feeling,” Grant confirmed.

  She turned back to her brother. “And when, pray tell, are we going to find time in the renovation schedule to take a vacation?”

  “I’m thinking soon,” Grant said, his expression almost sheepish. “Maybe after Christmas?”

  Mona propped both fists on her hips. “Is this what’s been turning your smile upside down?” she demanded.

  “Maybe.”

  There was a moment of silence while brother and sister faced off, then Mona slid onto a tall stool next to Grant’s and smacked him in the arm. “Get me your laptop.”

  He looked startled. “Why?”

  She glared at him. “Just get it.”

  Grant returned moments later and opened his MacBook in front of his sister.

  “Is Adeline’s journal on here?” she asked

  “In the dock.”

  “Good.” She handed him Connor’s sword. “Now go get your nephew ready for bed while I adjourn to the conservatory and do some reading. It’s time I acquainted myself with the mystery woman wreaking havoc with this household.”

  A little over an hour later, after Grant had put Connor to bed and joined me in the living room to talk about our trip, Mona walked in, wide-eyed and shaken. “That’s quite the story,” she declared.

  “It is,” Grant said.

  She bit her lip and frowned. “I don’t think she survived.”

  “Agreed.”

  “She’d want to know what happened to Julie. Right? She’d need to know.”

  Grant leaned forward. “So . . .” He let the word drag out.

  Mona threw up both hands and, looking more confused than convicted, declared, “So we’re going to England!”

  PART 2

  PERSIST

  NINETEEN

  AFTER HER INITIAL RETICENCE, MONA TOOK TO Grant’s plan with surprising willingness. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Balazuc, but the thought of seeing new horizons—new horizons that aren’t up to us to renovate—that sounds absolutely divine.”

  Grant and I spent hours during the next few days going back over what we’d read in Adeline’s account, looking for clues in the details she’d related, then using Monsieur Vivier’s books to do research into the French Protestants who left the country at the end of the seventeenth century.

  We’d decided to begin our trip right after New Year’s so we could make some progress on our various projects before heading out of town. We’d take a train under the Channel from Calais to Folkestone, get a nice B&B in the country outside of Rochester for a few days, and use the city’s Huguenot Museum as a hub for our exploration of the Baillards’ fate.

  In the meantime, there was a five-year-old who was counting down to Christmas. The exuberance that defined him only increased as the big day drew nearer. His tantrums got louder, his laughter got brighter, and his fantasies got wilder. We told him about the bed-and-breakfast we’d booked, and he seemed only moderately interested until Grant mentioned that it was on a working farm and that the stay inc
luded daily rides on the horses they kept for their visitors.

  “Horses?” he yelped, eyes wide and disbelieving. “Like . . . real horses?”

  All we’d heard from Connor since then were tales of horses and farmers and castles and wars.

  “You sure you’re up for travel with a five-year-old?” Mona inquired after a particularly dramatic reenactment of a cavalry battle that ended on a pirate ship.

  “I think I can take it.” There was something about the simplicity of Connor’s worldview that was comforting to me.

  The days before we left were hectic. Grant had decided to hire a local carpenter to do some work while we were away and had to bring him up to speed on the quirks and demands of turning a barn into a youth hostel. Mona’s energy went mostly to Connor, whose surplus of free time had finally turned into a mantra of “I’m bored! I’m bored! I’m bored!”

  And while Grant focused on construction and Mona on Connor, I found my energies torn between a growing sense of urgency and a muddy sense of strain. The urgency was about Adeline—the impatience of setting out on the search Patrick had inspired.

  And the muddiness was about fear. I realized it now. Fear of getting woven, by time and circumstances, into the fabric of Mona’s, Connor’s, and Grant’s lives. As my comfort level with them increased, the tension of both wanting and fearing connection did too. And every thought of Patrick—every reminder of his absence—only magnified the threat of allowing it again.

  On New Year’s Day, Mona and I set to work putting away the Christmas decorations. She handed me a shoe box with Connor’s name calligraphed on top. “His ornaments go in here.”

  “He’s got his own ornaments?”

  “One for each year of his life . . . plus a few extras from his grandparents and friends. It’s a family tradition.”

  “And the rest of these are yours?” I asked, motioning toward the mismatched decorations crowded on the tree.

  “A lot of them,” she said. “This little skier girl is from the year we went to Aspen. I think I was eight or nine at the time. This scroll is for high school graduation, and this three-tiered plastic cake,” she said, grimacing a bit as she pulled it from the tree, “is for the year I married Fred.” She dropped it into a larger box without bothering to wrap it in tissue, then made a production of wiping her fingers on her jeans.