Camille looked over at me with a pouty face. “Is it Sophie’s nap time?”
My brother’s eyes darkened and he sucked in a breath. “I’m tired. Jet lag.”
Dane looked incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
Eric shook his head. “We’ll see you guys back at the apartment.”
“Do you know where you are going?” Camille’s blonde friend asked. I was pretty sure her name was Marine. There was a little wistfulness in her expression as she studied Eric.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, then looked down at me. “Come on.”
I scrambled to my feet and followed him, only we didn’t leave the garden the way I’d entered it. We headed through it, walking toward the giant fountain.
When were about fifty feet away from the others, Eric slowed down and waited for me to catch up.
“Soph . . .” His voice trailed off, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry.”
I nearly stopped in my tracks, but he kept going, as though he were on a mission.
“I’m not sure if Camille lost you on purpose, but she’s been a total witch to you since you got back. I’m your brother, and it’s my job to make sure you’re okay.”
I nearly gasped. Never in our sixteen years as siblings had he ever made this kind of pronouncement. But up until this summer—unless we were doing things with our parents—we had lived completely separate lives.
“And I’m sorry I yelled when Camille’s friend brought you back. I was so freaked out that something had happened to you. I wanted to go find you, but Camille assured me Mathieu was on it.”
I finally found my tongue. “Thanks. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“All I could think about was what Dad would say if I showed up without you. He would freaking kill me. Can we keep this to ourselves?”
For one angry moment, I thought he was more worried about getting in trouble than my safety, but one look at him convinced me that wasn’t true. “Sure.”
Still, part of me wanted to tell my father exactly the kind of witch he’d inherited as a stepdaughter, but I suspected he wouldn’t believe me. What difference did it make if he knew? I’d rather keep peace with my brother. I suspected I would need an ally this summer.
He shot me a look of relief. “Camille said there was a crêpe restaurant between here and the Pantheon. Do you want to check it out?”
I shook my head. “I can’t pay for it. I was pickpocketed in the subway.”
His eyes flew open in alarm. “Sophie, I’m sorry.”
I shrugged, pretending I hadn’t been terrified, but he knew it was a ruse.
He put his arm around my shoulder. “I’ll buy to make up for ditching you.”
“Thanks.”
The crêpe shop was a short walk from the gardens. We got a table on the sidewalk and I stared at our view in awe. The Jardin de Luxembourg palace was on one side, and the Pantheon was on the other.
After we ordered, Eric seemed lost in thought, staring at the Pantheon, which loomed a block away. He caught me watching him and offered me an apologetic grin. “I bet Dad’s in heaven here.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t need the reminder that he’d rather be here living with his new wife and stepdaughter than back home with us. “I know you didn’t just want to leave for my sake. What’s wrong? No one believed your jet lag story.”
He frowned and dropped his gaze to his fork. “Dane seemed preoccupied.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t occurred to me that it would bother Eric to see Dane lavishing all his attention on our stepsister. Would I feel the same way if Jenna only had eyes for Mathieu when she came to visit?
I wasn’t prepared for the weird feeling in the pit of my stomach that accompanied the thought. I didn’t have time to consider it, though, because Eric changed the topic.
“You have to get more street-smart, Soph.”
I gave him a teasing grin. “You want me to join a gang?”
He laughed. “No. But you need to figure out where we live and how to ride the subway by yourself.” A sheepish look washed over his face. “In case you get lost again.”
I had to admit he was right. So after we finished, we walked the short distance to the subway station. We each took a few minutes to figure out how to buy tickets and how to interpret the train map.
“Pont de l’Alma,” Eric said, pointing to the dot next to the Seine. “That’s home base. The RER C. Can you remember that?”
The remembering part wasn’t difficult. It was the execution I was worried about.
He made me repeat the directions from the station to Dad’s apartment building on Rue Dupont des Loges—three blocks south, then three west.
When we reached Dad’s building and started the three-flight hike to the apartment, Eric said, “I’m going to ask Dad to get you a phone.” I hated him a little, since he was barely out of breath. I was sure all his sports activities helped.
“Why?” I asked in surprise.
“In case you get lost again. Even if you come back home, you can call me and let me know you’re safe.”
Home. That was the second time he’d used that word. I wondered how he threw it around so easily so quickly. This place definitely didn’t feel like home to me.
I started to say something, but the open front door to the apartment caught my attention. That was weird.
Eric pushed past me, but one step inside the apartment told me why the door was open. Eva stood in the hallway, overseeing two men who were attaching metal legs to a brown rectangular box.
Eva looked up, her eyes lighting up when she saw me. “Sophie! You’re home. I was hoping to have your surprise ready before you came back.”
It was then I realized that the mystery item on the floor of the apartment’s hallway was an electronic keyboard.
I took several tentative steps toward it, and Eric shot me a warning glare. An electronic keyboard wasn’t even close to the same as a piano.
Eva waved toward the electronic piece. “You’ll have some privacy here, and the man at the shop said when you wear the headphones, it will tune everyone out as well as quiet the noise.”
I fought a tidal wave of disappointment. Eva didn’t know any better, even if my father did. But I wasn’t completely self-centered, and the fact that Eva had been the one to purchase the piano wasn’t lost on me. “It’s wonderful, Eva. Thank you.”
Eric’s shoulders relaxed.
She moved toward me and pulled me into a loose hug. “I want you to be happy here, Sophie. I want you to think of this as your home.”
There was that word again, but even if I had been open to the possibility, the fact that Camille lived here pretty much squelched any hope of that happening.
I gave her a squeeze. “Thank you, Eva. That means a lot to me.” And it did. At least she was making an effort.
As the men set the keyboard upright, Eva went into the dining room and began to drag a chair into the hall. When Eric realized what she was doing, he grabbed it from her and set it in front of the piano.
“I thought you could use an upholstered chair instead of one of those stiff benches,” Eva said softly.
I smiled. “Thank you.” I wasn’t about to tell her an upholstered chair would be terrible for my posture. My piano teacher would be horrified.
One of the men plugged in the keyboard and showed Eva the power button and all the special features. She tried to explain it to me, but I waved her off. “I don’t need them. Just the piano.”
“Try it,” Eva said, gesturing toward the chair.
My music was still in my suitcase, but I didn’t need it. I had countless pieces memorized. I sat down on the chair and curled my fingers over the keys, trying to decide what to play. I settled on Clair de Lune. I’d played it in a state competition only a few months ago, so it was still fresh in my memory. Eva was sure to know it, and I had a sudden desire to make her happy. The correlation to my own life wasn’t lost on me. Debussy had written the piece while living in Paris in the
early twentieth century. It was his attempt to keep the old style of music alive in the ever-changing modern age.
I knew after the first few notes that the keyboard was never going to work. The keys were too easy to press and nothing like the feel of a real keyboard. It might suffice for a week or two, but not the entire summer. Not if I wanted a chance at winning the scholarship competition.
But it was better than no piano at all.
My teacher, Miss Lori, was strict on technical detail, but she also encouraged her students to feel an emotional connection to the piece. Part of learning a new song was studying the composer and the stories behind the piece, all of which made it more than just a few squiggles on a page. Up until last fall, I’d enjoyed playing and excelled at it, but I hadn’t felt that connection.
After my father left, Miss Lori told me my pain could bring my music to a deeper level. “Music is more than notes and tones strung together in rhythm and meters, Sophie. You can be the most technically proficient pianist in the world, but unless you make the audience feel something deep in their soul, you are just another musician. Be an artist. Draw from your well of sorrow.” She cupped my cheek and stared into my eyes. “Make me feel your pain.”
Then she handed me the sheet music to Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament. “It’s a quiet piece from the opera Dido and Aeneas, but I think you will feel a kinship to it.”
Technically, it was an extremely easy piece to play, but it had been written with the intent to be sung. Without the aria, it wasn’t much, yet a haunting sadness remained. And Miss Lori was right: I felt an eerie connection to it. Dido, the queen of Carthage, was wooed by the soldier Aeneas, who swore to love her and then promptly abandoned her.
Miss Lori had known exactly which piece to pick.
My mother and brother became sick to death of the song, but I memorized it and started to feel the intent of the notes.
When I played it for Miss Lori, she was quiet for a good ten seconds, tears in her eyes. “That was beautiful, Sophie. I could feel the sadness in your soul.”
And while that sounded incredibly depressing, I was thankful to find a way to purge my sorrow.
My music changed after that. Most of the compositions Miss Lori gave me were centuries old, yet the men, long since dead, could make me feel the emotions they had infused into their compositions—anger, sorrow, loneliness—and all of it poured from my fingers onto the keys. Over the last year, music had become interwoven with the threads of my soul.
So as I played Clair de Lune now, I let my distress and sense of betrayal over my father’s marriage flow through my fingers onto the plastic keys. The keyboard was so light to the touch that I made errors, but to the unpracticed ear they were minor. Besides, this session wasn’t about being technically proficient. It was about exorcising my demons.
When I finished, I set my hands on my lap, then looked up at my new stepmother, surprised by the tears in her eyes. “Sophie, that was beautiful.”
I gave her a soft smile. “Thank you, Eva . . . for everything.” I knew she was going out of her way to make me feel welcome, and it made me appreciate her, even if I was still furious about the circumstances that had brought us together. The conflicting emotions were unsettling.
She leaned over and gave me a tight hug, and for a brief moment, I thought maybe this summer wouldn’t be so bad after all.
And then Camille came home.
“You really got her a piano?” my stepsister asked in disgust. She stood in the doorway, shaking her head. Dane was behind her, looking over her shoulder.
Eva turned to face her daughter. “Camille. Sophie is very talented. She needs to practice.”
“I’m very good with dogs, yet you’ve never let me get one.”
Eva sighed. “I have to get back to the office. We’ll discuss this more tonight.” She went into the kitchen, grabbed her leather purse from the table, and placed a lingering kiss on her daughter’s cheek when she came back into the hall. Then she spoke softly in French.
Whatever she said upset Camille so much her eyes filled with tears. Then she immediately headed into her room and shut the door behind her, this time without a slam. I cast an anxious look toward it, wishing I’d thought to grab my sheet music. But I hadn’t played for nearly a week. I wasn’t looking to practice. I needed to play.
Eric handed me the headphones with a wry grin. “I think we need a pair of these at home.”
I hoped he didn’t get too used to it.
CHAPTER Ten
MY MOTHER AND I had been emailing daily, and she kept asking if my father had followed through with getting me a piano. I’d dodged her questions so far, although I wasn’t sure why. I used to take my dad’s side in everything, but why was I covering for him now? Maybe some habits were hard to break. I finally told her that Eva had gotten me a keyboard, and on Wednesday afternoon—her Wednesday morning, her day off—she video-called me.
“Making sure you had access to a real piano was part of the agreement,” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “Your father assured me that would happen, but apparently he’s too busy living his new life to concern himself with it.”
She was saying everything I’d already thought, yet I still found myself defending him. “Eva went out of her way to get me a keyboard,” I assured her. “I’m making do.”
She shook her head, her lips pursed in irritation. “That’s so typical of him—letting someone else clean up his mess. I’m calling him.”
“Mom, please don’t. I’ll work it out.”
She finally agreed, but only because her new boyfriend showed up to take her out to breakfast at the end of her call. I was usually irritated by how quickly she could forget us when he was around, but this time it worked to my advantage.
I hung up and took a deep breath. This was my second day alone in the apartment. Camille and the guys had gone off to meet her friends, but I’d insisted on staying behind, telling them I needed the practice. Miss Lori had given me several new pieces to work on over the summer.
I also had no desire to spend any more time with my stepsister than necessary.
So I’d spent two full days practicing. After my call with my mother, I pounded on the keyboard in frustration. I tried to play a cadenza, but my fingers slipped over the too-loose keys.
My mother was right. This was never going to work. While I was grateful for Eva’s thoughtfulness, I was frustrated with the limitations. I needed a bench to fully slide from one end of the keyboard to the other, and if I had to play on these weak keys all summer, the muscle tone in my fingers was going to suffer. But if I let my mother intervene, it would only make a difficult situation worse.
What I really needed was to talk to Jenna. I risked video-calling her even though it was eight thirty in the morning in Charleston. To my surprise, she was already dressed and standing in her bathroom when she picked up the call.
“I have to multitask, Soph. I’m babysitting the Meriden twins and I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”
“The Meriden twins? You must be desperate.”
She turned toward her cell phone, her mascara wand in her hand. “Hello! I’m coming to Paris in almost four weeks! I need money. Now tell me everything! The wedding. Your new mom. You and Dane.”
I made a face. “It’s like I’m in Cinderella with a genuine evil stepsister.”
Jenna’s mouth twisted. “Figures. And your new mom?”
“Stepmom.” I shrugged. “She’s nice. It’s complicated.”
“That’s fair. And Dane?”
“He’s part of the reason Camille got her evil status.”
Her eyes flew open. “She stole him? Already?”
“You don’t understand, Jen. She’s beautiful.”
“And so are you. Don’t sell yourself short. Plus, you and Dane have history.”
“But not the kind I want.”
She shook her head. “Where is he right now?”
I shrugged. “Dane and Eric went somewhere with Camille and
a few of her friends. I think the Grand Palais.”
“Wait.” She blinked and held up her hands. “Why aren’t you with them?”
“Eva got me a keyboard, so I stayed here to play.”
“You gave up spending personal time with Dane Wallace so you can stay in an apartment and play a piano?”
I wasn’t sure why I didn’t just tell her what a jerk he was being. There had been hints of it at home, but I’d chalked it up to teenage boy behavior. Living with him 24/7 had been eye-opening. “I know it sounds ridiculous when you put it like that . . .”
“Sounds ridiculous? Soph, that’s like rolling over and playing dead. You’re just giving her a chance to sink her claws in even more.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Wait. I know that look.” She grabbed the cell phone off the bathroom counter and it looked like she was walking into her bedroom. “Is there someone else?”
My cheeks grew hot. “No.” I shook my head. “I mean, I thought there might be, but it turned out he was just doing Camille’s dirty work.”
“Start from the beginning. Don’t leave out any details.”
So I told her about meeting Mathieu outside the restaurant, his subway station rescue, and his argument with Camille in the park.
When I finished, Jenna studied me for a moment. “It’s a tough call. Just remember that Dane is coming home and Mathieu is staying in Paris. Dane could be your date to Homecoming while Mathieu will be making French bread.”
I rolled eyes. “I seriously doubt he’ll be baking bread.”
She lifted her eyebrows in mock exaggeration. “But you don’t know that, do you?”
I shook my head, grinning. “No. I suppose not.”
She lifted her chin with a smug smile. “I rest my case.”
“I miss you, Jen.”
“I miss you too. Don’t stay home tomorrow. Go with them and show Dane that he’ll be much happier with you.”
“And how do I do that?”
“You’ll figure it out. Flirt.”
I wasn’t so sure. The mere fact that I’d never had a boyfriend was proof of my inability to flirt with boys. And I wasn’t even sure I wanted to flirt with him.
One Paris Summer (Blink) Page 7