Beautiful Secret

by Dana Faletti

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t do more rugged, Michel,” Tate interrupted as she once again mounted the cheesy bike, feigning confidence. “I said I wasn’t into it.” She smiled at him then, unable to ignore the warmth that flooded her chest, and began pedaling. “I thought you said you spoke English,” she teased.

  Surprisingly enough, Tate found that, overall, she was enjoying this unexpected excursion into the great Ardennais outdoors despite its strenuous beginnings. The trail, if it could be called that, was an overgrown path that wound down the mountain they had climbed, switching back and revealing pockets of untouched forest. She was enveloped by lush green foliage and crisp air that swept sweaty ringlets from her cheeks, blowing her curls dry as she sped along.

  As she rounded a corner and pedaled toward a widening in the path, a gurgle of water startled her. There, at the foot of sprawling pines and maples, a thin, steady stream of water slowly twisted its way through small boulders on the forest floor.

  “It’s the source of the Meuse,” Michel called from behind, but Tate’s mind was swept up in the memory of the dream she’d had on the Seine boat ride.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whispered to herself, still forging ahead through the mossy air.

  Without warning, her flimsy bike reared like an ill-tempered stallion, tossing her over the handlebars and flopping sideways to land on the large rock in its path.

  Tate landed with a thud, face first, onto the muddy banks of the river Meuse.

  Her first reaction was relief.

  Michel couldn’t possibly say “You are very beautiful” when she had this thick, hot mud all over her face. Tate pushed herself up onto her hands in time to see a panic-stricken Michel hop off of his bike and run to her. Half-heartedly, she gave a thumbs-up sign to relay that she was not injured, then began the process of smearing the mud off her face and onto her T-shirt.

  “Cousine,” Michel began, squatting in front of her, “you are—”

  “Don’t say it!” Tatiana wailed and squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could drown out the words that terrified her.

  When the silence became uncomfortable, she opened her eyes. Michel was watching her strangely, with one eyebrow raised and his mouth sealed shut, as she’d commanded.

  “I was going to say,” he spoke quietly and slowly, taking her filthy chin in his hand, “You, cousine, are very clumsy.”

  Clumsy. She was clumsy.

  Of course she was clumsy.

  The overfilled balloon that was about to burst in Tate’s chest slowly began to deflate, her breath escaping in giddy giggles.

  Michel, still holding Tate’s chin in his hands, gazed seriously at her then, tilting his head as if to study her. Silence hung over them like a prayer waiting to be uttered, but Tate was too lost inside his eyes to find words.

  Just then, a burst of sun lit a path through the veil of branches to land on Tate’s face, illuminating and thawing all at once. Michel brushed the side of her cheek with the knuckles of his callused fingers, dusting away dry flecks of shale and sending shock waves across Tate’s skin.

  With a series of blinks and a shake of his head, Michel seemed to suddenly become aware of himself. He backed away quickly, still peering at Tate with eyes that were all fluid and light. Clearing his throat, he tore himself from her face and regarded his bike.

  “I have a handkerchief,” Michel told her, his voice thick, his words sounding forced. “It will help.”

  As she wiped the dirt from her skin with the wet cloth, Tate wondered what Michel had seen that had startled him. His unshaven face had betrayed both contented awe and crippling fear. Was she reading him right? She couldn’t be. This distant cousin she’d only just met, this man with his chapped hands and eager smile…she hardly knew him.

  She wanted to know him.

  This silent admission left a bitter taste on her tongue. She forced it to the back of her throat, hoping to swallow it, to get the taste of desire out of her mouth as quickly as she could. This crazy attraction couldn’t be real. A breath-grabbing fever flickered over her skin every time she looked hard at him.

  The waves of hair that swayed over high soft cheekbones. The broad shoulders and taut abs. The almost scruffiness of his comfortably stubbled chin. His too-honest eyes. For God’s sake, she was married—legally, at least—and Michel was her second cousin. This was totally unacceptable. These feelings were surely pseudo-emotions, her sleep-starved mind’s reaction to one trippy dream along a Parisian waterway.

  And yet, their skin mingled as Tate slipped Michel’s handkerchief back into his fingers, and a glow laced up her arms and over her chest. It seemed no matter how she tried to wash away the flavor of this forbidden hunger, an aftertaste of need lingered on her tongue.

  “Tatiana, there’s a clearing ahead,” Michel told her, his eyes locked on to hers, their hands still touching with only the thin cloth between them. “We can lunch there.”

  Tate bit her lip and nodded, finally breaking eye contact with Michel. Turning away from him, she walked the few steps to retrieve her relatively unharmed bicycle. With each step, Tate tried to push away the attraction that scared her to death.

  “Well,” she said, diverting their study of each other to the bike. “Looks like it survived.”

  “That bicycle has survived many years of accidents, Tatiana.”

  “I kind of figured that,” she replied. This thing had to be older than her thirty-three years.

  Walking their bikes at an easy pace, the two headed toward the small clearing, where Michel unpacked a proverbial red checkered blanket and spread it out on the sparse grassy floor. Tate kneeled at one corner of the blanket and watched him unpack lunch supplies, her knees cooling at the touch of still-damp ground.

  “Wow, you came prepared,” Tate told him as she regarded the glasses, plates, and cloth napkins he pulled from the leather backpack he’d somehow hauled up that insane hill.

  “Oh, not me,” he said, revealing a baguette, plastic-wrapped cheeses and cured meats, and a container of something she didn’t recognize. “Colette prepared the lunch for you, Tatiana.”

  “That was sweet of her.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Michel said as he ripped a hunk from the baguette and tossed it into his mouth. “Do you like some wine?” he asked with his mouth full.

  Tate nodded, watching his fingers twisting and pulling at the corkscrew. A muted pop was followed by the flavor of berries and spice in her nose. The scent of oaky fruit and alcohol took the edge off just a little. Holding her glass out for him to pour, she focused on the red splash, which flowed over her anticipation with a growing measure of calm.

  Everything would be fine. She’d get over this weird flirtation.

  “Taste this,” Michel said, suddenly bringing his fingers to her lips.

  With no time to protest, she parted them and allowed him to slip something inside. A bright burst filled her mouth as she let the tart sweetness seep into her tongue. “What is it?” she asked after swallowing what she guessed was some kind of fruit.

  “It is my grandfather’s cassis berries. His prize from the garden,” answered Michel, smiling and washing down his mouthful with a slug of wine.

  Tate realized that was what was in the container whose contents she hadn’t been able to identify before. Little berries, almost black and about the size of peas. She swiped a handful and leaned back onto her elbows to enjoy them, this time of her own accord.

  “My grandmother had an amazing garden,” she blurted, startled that she’d wanted to share this intimate memory. “She lived in the heart of the city, in a little row house with an alley behind, a totally urban space.”

  Tate wasn’t even sure if Michel, with his limited English, was following her, but she felt an unexpected freedom in talking about Nana, so unlike the pit of dread that usually gathered in her belly anytime she dared to reminisce.

  “She grew everything in that city garden. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil. Yellow roses, geraniums.” B
ehind Tate’s eyes, those flowers were so real, she could almost smell them.

  “Nana even had a grapevine in the backyard. The wood that supported it was built over this gravelly parking spot.” Tate laughed, remembering how out of place but wonderful that arbor had been, a beacon of ripe nature surrounded by cold, hard cement. She and her brother had spent endless August hours climbing the arbor, crunching on tiny sour grapes, hoping to discover just one that was ripe enough to be sweet. “I haven’t thought about that garden in a while,” she said, spreading a spoonful of creamy white cheese onto a baguette and taking a bite.

  “And you?” Michel asked. “You have a garden at your house?”

  “No,” Tate said flatly, the reminder of home breaking the afternoon’s magic and tapping at her guilty conscience. “My husband didn’t want that much green space at the house, didn’t want to maintain it. He works a lot of hours,” she explained. “So there’s really nowhere to plant a garden.”

  Michel snickered, flipping onto his belly and dipping his finger into the berries. “Don’t tell my grandfather that,” he said. “He will show up at your door in America and find for you a space to plant a garden.”

  Tate raised her eyebrows and picked at the salami on her plate. She’d always wanted to plant a garden but never had the sense of urgency to argue with Nathan over it.

  “What kind of job does your husband do?” Michel asked her.

  “Nathan’s a psychiatrist.”

  “A physician?” Michel’s eyes were fixed on a space beyond Tate, as if he was asking questions only to be polite, not really concerned with the answers.

  “Yes, a doctor who deals with mental disorders.”

  This grabbed Michel’s attention. His head tipped sideways; his squinting eyes fixed themselves on Tate. “Crazy people?”

  She had to laugh at the simplicity of his definition. She swallowed a chunk of crusty bread and nodded. “I guess you could say that. I’m sure some of his patients are crazy.” She shrugged. “We don’t really talk about his work, though.” Or anything else. We don’t talk at all.

  “My wife was crazy,” Michel said nonchalantly.

  Tate froze mid-sip of her wine, holding it in her mouth for a long moment before letting it glide down her throat.

  Wife? He was married?

  “She died,” he said, sweeping the cork off of the tablecloth and forcing it back into the half-empty bottle.

  “Michel…” Tate spoke hesitantly, uncomfortably unused to being the one offering condolences. She was usually on the receiving end of this conversation. “I’m so sorry—”

  “It was a long time ago, Tatiana,” he told her, his words sharp.

  How long ago could it have been? Michel was only in his mid-thirties. Tate couldn’t find any words for the moment. She wanted to hide her face or at least to stare at the red checkered blanket until her eyes crossed, but she felt she owed him more than that. Sitting up straight, legs crisscrossed, she forced herself to look fully at Michel. Forced herself to crack open the vault in which she locked up her grief. Forced herself to feel it, if only to gift him the comfort of not being alone with his. She knew loss well, had gotten up close and personal with it over the last couple of years. It was a bitch, and nothing anyone said could make it any less bitchy.

  So she’d say nothing and listen. If he wanted to talk about his wife, she was all ears. If not, she knew the drill, practiced it like a religion, and could ride the wave of subject change like an all-pro surfer.

  After a few moments of surprisingly not-awkward silence, Michel propped himself up on his elbows, his chin resting in his hands. “So, cousine,” he said, addressing Tatiana in the teasing tone she was quickly getting used to.

  Hangin’ ten, she thought. “Oui, cousin?”

  Michel snorted. “You speak funny French.”

  Tatiana gasped, feigning offense. “How dare you?” She placed an open hand on her chest.

  “You dare me what?”

  Tatiana’s giggling abruptly stopped. What was he playing at? “I didn’t dare you,” she told him, wondering if she herself dared…

  The two said nothing for a moment, and this time the silence between them straddled a very thin line between awkward and hot. Slowly, Michel pushed himself up from his belly and over to where Tate sat, perching himself directly in front of her, his legs crossed exactly like hers.

  “Tatiana,” he said, his voice syrupy and thick, his eyes as needy as they’d been that first night. Their clear blue flowed over her like a warm bath, easing away worry, effortlessly washing between the cracks of the walls she’d built around her truths.

  “Yes, Michel,” she answered him, her own language feeling sticky on her tongue.

  “You are a very beautiful woman.” The words rolled off of him and onto her, not terrifying her at all but instead wrapping her with sweet comfort.

  “My husband doesn’t love me,” Tate told him, once again shocking herself with the revelation.

  “Tell me, Tatiana,” he said, softly, the sea of blue in his eyes parting just enough to make room for her inside.

  And so she did.

  Chapter 10

  Tate

  “Tomorrow girl,” her father used to call her. The wrinkles beside his eyes would deepen as he’d smile at her and lovingly pinch her little-girl chin. “You know, Tati, your last name, Domani, means ‘tomorrow.’ Such a beautiful future you are.”

  Tate resented her husband for so many things, from logical and grand to minor and verging on ridiculous. At times, she even found herself pissed off at the ugly, clipped sound of his last name.

  It hadn’t always been this way.

  She remembered the last Christmas she and Nathan had exchanged gifts.

  “It’s top-of-the-line, Tate,” Nathan had announced, even though she’d barely ripped open the wrapping paper. “Grinds your beans, then makes the coffee. Freshest pot you can make at home.”

  For months afterward, she’d hurriedly cleaned up the wet, mossy mess that somehow splashed out of the auto-grind machine and all over the counter as it brewed, not wanting Nathan to feel bad about his flawed purchase. Later, even after he’d failed to show for her father’s funeral—a blatant sign that he was no longer willing to drink with her from her cup of losses—she’d continued to protect him. She’d tweak and rebrew and let that first swallow of coffee glide down her throat, facilitating the singular admission she’d grant in his favor—the coffeemaker had been thoughtful.

  Nathan knew that Tate’s favorite time of day was the moment she took her first quiet sip of coffee. He’d wanted that moment to be as perfect as possible for her every day.

  Their paths had collided at the University of Pittsburgh, where Tatiana was working on her master’s in speech pathology and Nathan was finishing med school. The moment they’d met should have been particularly telling, but love was blinder than a bat searching for a needle in a hundred haystacks. Nathan was carrying a lunch tray through one of the crowded campus cafeterias when he’d tripped and spilled half a plate of steaming hot vegetable lasagna down Tate’s shirt. She had suffered second-degree burns all over her chest, and Nathan had insisted on accompanying her to Presbyterian Hospital for treatment. Days of doting and flowers later, their relationship had bloomed from what seemed like guilt-inspired good deeds into genuine romance.

  She remembered the first time he’d taken her to Isabela on Grandview, one of the most expensive restaurants in the city. The view from their table had been stunning, showcasing Pittsburgh’s three conjoining rivers and innumerable bridges at sunset. Bunches of lily of the valley, Tate’s favorite flower, had stood in vases on every table. She’d been swept up in Nathan’s sweetness, his effortless attention to the minor details of her.

  For a long time, life was like this. Only the best of everything for Tate.

  But it was never for her. Not really. She realized this now.

  Now, the foreshadowing of their first meeting struck Tate as darkly comical. She should h
ave paid attention to the warning sign the universe had so clearly laid in her lap—or rather, down her shirt.

  This man will burn you, Tatiana. He’ll take away your tomorrow.

  Looking back, she realized that Nathan’s cheating was a side effect of her catastrophic circumstances. She could barely handle the train wreck of her life. How could she expect him to hang along for the ride? Who wanted to be tethered to someone so steeped in sadness? At first, he’d simply escaped into his budding private practice, angling himself toward his career and away from Tate’s needy broken heart. The other women came later.

  “Cheaters never change.” This was Suri’s favorite phrase as of late. She’d purse her lips in the way that drove Tate nuts and eye-bully her into a response.

  But Tate wasn’t looking for him to change, not really.

  In truth, it wasn’t the cheap pink polka-dot thong she’d found in his pants pocket or the hotel charges on his credit card bill. By the time she’d discovered the trail of infidelity, Tate was already too far gone to care. She’d hit rock bottom long before the panties, somewhere between her parents’ separate but equally earth-shattering deaths and the first time Nathan forgot to at least call and tell her he wasn’t coming home.

  She’d crashed and burned when the worst thing had happened.

  That was when her heart had slammed into that solid stone wall at what felt like the very end of all things.

  Nathan’s indiscretions were really just aftershocks, and Tate was already buried underneath too much rubble to feel them.

  To this day, she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of that damn coffeemaker. It sat in the stark white kitchen like weighted silence after a bad joke, the only proof of the fairy tale she’d lived once upon a time. He’d loved her then.

  Chapter 11

  Tate

  “Your French cousin,” Suri said, and then paused. Tate gripped her phone and cringed as she awaited her friend’s next words. “I have to admit, I was hoping you’d have a fling with a dishy European, but I never thought it’d be…your cousin.”