The Book of Second Chances

by Katherine Slee

  “Who do we ask?” Tyler called out to Emily as she passed underneath the sign from her grandmother’s diary. She simply shook her head in response.

  Not yet, she thought as she negotiated the narrow steps to the upper floor, discovered a trio of girls, their blond heads bent over a book, huddled in a tiny reading alcove set into one wall.

  Emily caught her breath as she spied a gray plastic typewriter sitting atop a makeshift desk. Two of the keys were missing and the rest of it was stuck together with tape.

  On the walls around it were pinned dozens of scraps of paper, each adorned with quotes, doodles, and outpourings of love. Used Metro tickets, Polaroid pictures, a restaurant receipt, all stuck to the wall and one another with sticky tape, pins, even lumps of chewed gum.

  As she leant closer, she mumbled through a few of the poems and notes, wondered if ever something of her grandmother’s was pinned here. If ever her fingers used the typewriter to begin one of her books, those she had written before Emily was born.

  This was where it all began, where Catriona Robinson turned her love of literature into a career, a life. Where she found inspiration, kindred spirits, a reason to keep going no matter the odds. Which one of them did she confide in, turn to for help, when she was as poor as a church mouse, raising her daughter alone? Did any of them know who the father was, if he was still alive?

  From somewhere deep within the store came the sound of a piano being played. Following the notes like a rat to the piper, Emily weaved from room to room, spied a couple of narrow beds, under which more books were stored. At the end of one room was a ladder propped up against the wall, and above this was another bed, fashioned out of a shelf with a faded piece of material used as a curtain of sorts.

  Where had she slept? Which bed bore the weight of her? So much about her grandmother was a mystery, but walking in her shadow only seemed to make Emily miss her all the more.

  “Emily?” Tyler’s voice called her over to where he stood by the piano, holding a brown paper package, tied up with string.

  As Emily approached, the man playing the piano turned his head, nodded his welcome without ever halting the movement of his fingers. He was older, but not old enough to be who she had dared to hope for.

  Emily snatched the parcel from Tyler, turned it over to see another sticker, this one of a mermaid with golden hair, playing a harp made from shells. She paused a moment, tried to guess which book her grandmother had chosen to hide within. Would it be the one about a boy who was afraid to put his head under the water, just like Tyler used to be? Someone whom Ophelia took swimming with mermaids, down to the bottom of the deep blue sea, and managed to overcome his fear of the unknown.

  Part of her wanted it to be the last clue, the last book. But already she felt disappointed because she knew there would be so much more to come.

  “Where was it?” she whispered to Tyler, trying not to show the anger in her voice, trying not to let her feelings pour out all over the floor.

  “I asked the woman at the front desk,” he replied, squinting up at the bookshelves behind him.

  “It’s not yours.” Emily clenched her jaw, registered the spasm that followed, that always followed, when she tried to talk too fast, too soon.

  Tyler shrugged, took a book from the shelf, then put it back again. “I just thought it would save time.”

  “Save time?” Emily said, trying not to imagine all the places he would clearly rather be. All the people he would rather be with, because it was starting to feel as if there was something more at stake for him, something other than simply helping her solve her grandmother’s puzzle. Turning from him, she undid the knot of string around the package before slipping the paper from the book. One quick glance at the cover, then she opened it up to read the dedication.

  For Antoine—thank you for showing me how to capture the light.

  “Who’s Antoine?” Tyler was peering over her shoulder, and she took a step away, tried not to let him see.

  “Not sure,” she replied, flicking through the pages of a story about a boy who walked barefoot to school. A child who was gifted a pair of magical boots so he could soar higher than all the people who thought he was less worthy because he was poor. “Where is it?” she muttered, holding the book by both covers, turning it upside down and giving it a gentle shake.

  “She said to come back tomorrow.” Tyler looked back toward the front of the shop, where an assistant with a sharp black bob was passing over a bag filled with books to a man, and his three girls were all twitching expectantly, their blond pigtails jiggling. “Apparently Madeleine wanted to give it to you personally, along with something else.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t know. But she did give me these.” He held out two small rectangles of plastic. In the corner of each was a tiny, metal square. Hotel keys.

  “A hotel?” She had no desire to go to a hotel. It felt clinical, yet seedy, the idea of being ushered to a hotel with him. Was this part of the plan?

  And yet it couldn’t be, because Madeleine had something more. Something her grandmother may not have known about.

  “Apparently it’s just around the corner. Same one Aunt Cat always stayed in whenever she came back.”

  Ever more secrets. Ever more surprises to bear.

  Emily knew her grandmother had traveled when Margot was just a baby. She’d taken her all over the world, carried her in a sling as she researched her next book. She worked any job she could find to make just enough money to feed them both, buy paper, ink, and a ticket to wherever the desire took her next. It was only when Emily’s mother was older and needed a proper education, to have what society described as “stability,” that Catriona returned to England. That was when she went to live with an old friend who worked for a large publishing house in London.

  But Paris? She had never spoken of Paris.

  “I can’t do this.” Emily felt the ache along her scar. Not the one on her cheek, but the one that reached all the way around her spine and down her leg. It was too much, too many highs and lows all tangled up together.

  “Yes, you can,” Tyler said, resting a hand on her arm. “It’s just one more day.”

  For him, maybe, but for her it was forever.

  She pushed him away. “I want to go home.”

  “I know, I get it.” He followed her out of the shop, watched as she turned left, then right, then left again. “It’s frustrating as hell to only be given half the clue, half the answer. But you did find it. And the one in London. And you found them really easily, which means this next one will be just the same.”

  Emily didn’t answer, because she was afraid to admit that she had absolutely no idea who Antoine was.

  Marching ahead, the river to her right, Emily barely even noticed the crowds all heading toward Notre Dame. She didn’t think about how she was walking through the streets of a city she had come to as a child, but had since only ever visited in her mind. A city she dreamt of—the romance, the history, the art—but never thought she would have the courage to come back to. Sometimes she thought she would never again have any courage at all.

  “Look, we’re both exhausted.” His stride had fallen in with her own; quickened then slowed so that they walked in perfect sync. “And hungry. Are you hungry? I know I am. Why don’t we go and get something to eat? There’s a place not far from here we can try.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You say that now,” he replied with a grin. “But wait until you try their coconut moules and fresh baguettes. Absolute heaven, I promise.”

  Emily scuffed the ground with her feet, stared across the road to one of many bridges in Paris dominated by padlocks, a supposed sign of someone’s everlasting love. She was still annoyed with him for taking the next clue from Madeleine, annoyed with herself for showing him her sketchbook,

  “So what’s the book about?” Tyler asked as she strode on ahead.

  “You didn’t read it?”

  “I did. All of the
m. But what’s it really about?”

  Emily stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. She ignored the irritated tuts of people who passed her by and tried to think of when it was the book was written, what it was they were doing when her grandmother came up with the idea.

  “Judgment,” she said, looking back at him in expectation.

  “Prejudice against being poor?”

  A quick shake of her head.

  “More.” Never judge a book by its cover.

  Emily thought back to the day when they had come out of church to see a homeless man propped up against the lych-gate, asleep, with a tiny dog in his lap. So dirty was the poor creature’s fur it was more gray than cream. Emily had hurried past, holding her nose, and her grandmother had scolded her for it, told her she had no idea who he was, what had happened to make him so desperate as to sleep on the streets.

  Catriona had invited the man and his dog back to their home, then made Emily wash the dog in an old tin bath while its owner sat in the kitchen and ate plate after plate of roasted potatoes with lashings of gravy. A dog who licked bubbles from her hands, his little tail wagging so hard it sloshed half the water all over the lawn. Then the two of them were gone, with no more than a doff of threadbare cap and a yellow-toothed smile.

  Emily had asked her grandmother why he wouldn’t want to stay, why he would choose to go back to such destitution, but she had gotten that look in her eye, the one which meant she was traveling somewhere new. All the cogs and wheels of her mind were turning faster than she could keep up with.

  Catriona Robinson had raced into her study and began to write out the bones of a new story, about a boy from Singapore, whose mother lived in a shed at the bottom of her employer’s garden. Someone who had never owned a pair of shoes but walked to school each morning due to an endless curiosity about the world. His classmates teased him about his worn-through clothes, the dirt embellishing his skin, and the fact he was a servant’s child without a father or a home. But still he shared his breakfast one morning with an old hag being taunted by the other children in his class.

  It was a play on Cinderella, with a touch of other fairy tales thrown in for good measure, but the message was clear enough.

  “It’s about you,” Tyler said. “They’re all about you.”

  She started walking, the wheels of her suitcase hopping and bumping with each agitated step.

  “Do you think it’s a lesson about money?” Tyler asked as he jogged to keep up. “Aunt Cat could have lived in a castle in Scotland, or on a boat in Monaco.”

  “So?”

  “Why didn’t she? I mean, the cottage is great, but it’s small. Really small, and you had enough money to buy whatever she wanted.”

  “She didn’t care about money.” She wrote because she had to, always told Emily it was in her bones, her blood.

  “Most people would have been rich and greedy.” Tyler moved aside to let an elderly lady and her poodle pass. “Your parents were the same,” he said as he caught up with her. “Unlike mine, who always seemed to relish having so much more than everyone else.”

  They stood, side by side, waiting for the pedestrian crossing to flash up green, then Tyler rested his hand in the small of Emily’s back as she began to cross the road.

  “I remember Aunt Cat telling me not to rely on money. Tried to get me to understand that there would always be someone with more, just as there will always be someone with less.”

  One summer in the south of France, when they were all staying in some ridiculous villa paid for by Tyler’s parents, Catriona had bustled into the kitchen, insisting that she help the staff prepare dinner, because she could never forget how close to poverty every rich man lived.

  “St. Tropez.” Emily tossed the place name over her shoulder, didn’t bother to look to see if he was still following.

  “What about it?”

  “Next stop.”

  “You’re sure?” He glanced at her, then took out his phone, began to tap in a message.

  She was sure. Because along with being scolded, Emily had also been reminded by her grandmother of all those summers spent in the South of France when she and her parents had spent their holidays in extravagant villas, feasting on lobster and sipping champagne, while children went to bed with empty bellies and dirty feet. St. Tropez was a town dripping with excess, a town Catriona Robinson had first visited, then lived in, when she herself was poor.

  But who’s Antoine? Emily asked once again as she passed by shop windows displaying beautiful things that nobody really needed but someone would buy anyway. Is he who she lived with in St. Tropez?

  It was where she had written her first novel, about a woman who fell for the wrong man. A man who could never love her in return, but spent a lifetime trying.

  Did she follow Antoine to the south of France? Could he be the man she couldn’t love; could he be Emily’s grandfather?

  With tears in her eyes that blurred all she could see, Emily turned her head from side to side, tried to latch onto something that didn’t make her ache with regret, because she had never asked more. She never questioned who her grandmother was, never stopped to think of all she gave up in order to raise her and how everything had changed because she survived.

  “If you’re sure, we could get on a train now,” Tyler said, checking timetables on his phone. “To St. Tropez. If you wanted.” He waited for a reply, for a sign that Emily had heard him, but her attention was elsewhere.

  There. A little farther up the street. Something familiar. Something she had seen before, but when?

  A memory. A smudge in her mind of a memory from when she was still a child; crossing the road wearing brand new red shoes, with buckles on each side that twinkled when they caught the light.

  “Where are you going?”

  I remember this, Emily thought as she walked toward an art shop with a display of brightly colored découpage parakeets in the window. Some were in mid-flight, with ancient, mismatched keys in their beaks, as if they each held the secret to places of old.

  She inhaled deeply as she went inside, wax and oil and parchment flooding her senses. It was like an apothecary’s, with wooden drawers and glass-fronted cabinets lining every wall. Everywhere you looked was color—tubes and tubs and bottles of paint, crayons and pencils and stacks upon stacks of paper.

  A corner wall was covered in hundreds of squares of white, each one containing a picture drawn by a child that tickled Emily’s fingers as she looked at them each in turn. A dove, an angel, a bright purple octopus. She remembered her parents thinking she’d gone missing, when in fact she was seated at the top of the shop, by the easels, trying to draw because she’d seen small, square pictures tacked to the walls.

  Someone had pointed at what she’d done, told Emily’s father she had a natural talent that should be nurtured. It was a sketch of a duck, with long, patchwork feet, and identical to the stuffed toy she took with her wherever she went. He was called Clyde and he knew all of Emily’s secrets, all of her hopes and dreams.

  Behind her stood a wooden cabinet, divided into equal sections, each containing a thick, cylindrical crayon. They were like lipsticks, wrapped up in cream paper all with their own individual number.

  Her father had bought her a box of crayons. Emily reached out her hand, couldn’t quite bring herself to touch a crayon of deepest vermillion, was unable to stop her mind from picturing the cardboard box still sitting in her dresser at home, containing the last remaining fragment of her first ever gift from this shop. It made her question whether her grandmother had known this is where she would end up in Paris. But did she even know of its existence? Of what it meant to her?

  She could still hear her parents’ voices, talking to each other about if they had time to go up to Montmartre before dinner, debating whether it was too far to take her, but then it was a holiday, an experience, after all. She could see the way her father looked at his wife, gave her a slow kiss, as if they had all the time in the world. She could still rememb
er what it was like to have them love her.

  A familiar feeling began to take hold as she looked all around, imagined the cabinets moving closer, the crayons and tubes of color cascading onto her body and burying her deep. The sensation of falling, as her legs gave way. No ground beneath her, no sky above, just darkness and a persistent ringing in her ears.

  Emily didn’t register the sound of Tyler’s voice, nor the concerned looks of other shoppers. She barely heard the rush of traffic or felt the splatter of rain on her skin as he took her away from the shop and all its reminders of the parents, the life, she had lost.

  A moment later she was in a café, listening to Tyler order food and wine in French so fluent he could have been native. She was only half aware of the seat in which he had deposited her, of the walls adorned with art deco posters and a giant wooden cockerel standing guard by the door.

  She sat with hands cradling her glass as she took slow sips of crushed grapes, felt the acidity catch at the back of her throat. Slowly, the world came back into view, her heart settled, and her body relaxed into the padded bench.

  A waitress brought a basket of warm bread and two pots, black like cauldrons, curved handles and tendrils of steam that teased her nose. Emily peeped inside, saw a pile of mussels covered in fragrant cream, with wilting coriander leaves and finely sliced shallots. Her stomach growled in appreciation, and she rubbed her hands together before diving in. It was salty and sweet, due to the combination of shellfish and coconut sauce that she dipped her bread into. A simple meal, but one that hit the spot.

  “I was thinking about what you said about going home,” Tyler said in between mouthfuls. “About working remotely.”

  “Oh?” Emily tossed a closed shell into the upturned lid of her pot and looked across at him. There was a slither of juice running down his wrist, a piece of coriander stuck in his teeth and crumbs all over his shirt.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Only ever communicating with people via email, not in the real world.”