We stop in the middle of the bridge, our hands curling over the railing. “I take it you’ve been to Lyon before? Wait, don’t tell me. You performed here,” I say, teasing him.
He laughs, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, and I’m so glad I made him laugh about something that can hurt. He nuzzles my hair. “Look at you, already taking the piss out of me about my once-upon-a-time career.”
I slink closer, looping my arms around his waist. “And you like that I do that,” I say.
He pulls back, tucks his finger under my chin, and raises my face to meet his eyes. “I do. I truly do.”
He sighs a little wistfully, then turns his gaze back to the water, staring out at the curving ribbon as he leaves his arm around me. He doesn’t say anything, and I suspect he’s remembering the last time he was here. Maybe with his family.
“Were you here on vacation when you were younger?” I ask.
“Yes, I was . . . maybe twelve,” he says, seeming a little lost in thought. I say nothing, giving him the space to keep going if he wants. “There’s so much history in this town. I always loved that when I was a kid. I asked them to bring me here.”
A grin spreads across my face as I picture him as a kid, tugging on his parents’ hands, asking for a trip. “Why did you want to explore Lyon when you were a young English boy?”
His blue eyes glint. “Don’t tell anyone, but I had a secret fascination with the French Revolution. I guess I loved the idea of the revolutionary spirit, so I made them take me to France, to visit Versailles and Paris and Lyon. I wanted to come here and learn more about this city’s role in the French Revolution, but I think I was most taken by the river.”
“Ah, that I understand. I’m the same way,” I say.
“Are you a river junkie?”
I gaze out at the water, drawing in a huge inhale. “I have a bit of a thing for them. I feel this primal, almost ancient sort of connection to the Seine. Which is not entirely surprising, because I feel a sort of primal, almost ancient connection to Paris. Is that crazy?”
He shakes his head. “No. Paris has that effect on people. Paris has an effect on you. I told you the other day, you were made for Paris and Paris was made for you.”
“When my parents first took me there, I knew deep in my heart,” I say, tapping my chest fiercely, “that I would live there someday.”
“It spoke to you when you were younger?”
I tell him all about my connection to the city, how I feel at home there, at peace there. “Do you know that’s why I moved away from London? Because my marriage ended?”
His expression goes serious. “I don’t think I entirely knew why you left London, only that you were leaving shortly after I met you. And I enjoyed visiting you in Paris once you were there.”
“I had to get away from London. It contained all the memories of Jonathan and my time with him. There was only one place I wanted to go. I felt like Paris welcomed me with open arms. It helped me to heal.”
He runs a hand along my wrist. “Because it’s your home. It’s where you feel you belong. And you needed that.”
“Perhaps I did. The river was like my shrink.” I dip my head, a little shy, a little embarrassed. But it’s freeing, too, to tell him that.
“Is that so? You and the river talk to each other?” His voice is lighthearted. This is the Daniel who delights in fun and games.
“We have many, many conversations,” I say playfully, no longer embarrassed.
“Does it give good advice?”
“Sometimes it does,” I say with a coy shrug. “Sometimes it gives me stock tips. Sometimes it tells me who to bet on in the World Series.”
“Lucky you. I want to have your river. That’s why you’re such a financial wunderkind.”
I laugh as a breeze kicks up from the water, gusting through my hair, blowing it behind my shoulder. He reaches for the strands, tucking some over my ear. “Tell me more about why you loved Paris when you moved there a few years ago.”
As we both gaze out at the Rhône, I picture the Seine—the heart of my answer. “I loved to walk across the bridges. I came to know all of them. How they made me feel. What they could do for me. As I was trying to make sense of what had happened in my marriage, I’d think and walk. I’d wander across them, stop in the middle, rest my elbows on the railing,” I say, sliding down onto my elbows here as if to demonstrate. “And then I would tell the river what made me sad.”
“Did the river say anything back to you?”
His question is wholly serious. So is my answer as I say, “I would pretend it would reply. I’d pretend it was listening.” I take a beat. “Maybe that sounds foolish.”
“It doesn’t sound foolish at all. Sounds like you needed it. Like it helped you get through a difficult time. And I can see that rivers are like that. They’re not as daunting as oceans. They feel like they could talk to us, right?”
He gets it. He gets me. “Like they have something to say. They feel, too, like they’ve seen more interesting things than the ocean, don’t you think?”
He moves his hand in front of him, wiggling it back and forth to imitate the river winding through the city. “Rivers snake through cities. They spy on us. They know what we’re up to. Maybe they know our darker secrets,” he says as something black flickers across his eyes. Almost like he has a deep, dark secret, perhaps one he’s shared with a river. Then he’s quiet, possibly drifting off to thoughts of those secrets. I sense he still has them. I can hear their echoes in the words he doesn’t say, the way he sometimes quiets at the end of a sentence or a thought.
Leaving so much unsaid.
I’m not like that though. Now that I’ve opened up to him, I see no need to hold back. “My love of the river came from my parents,” I say with a contented sigh. “My dad was like that. He was the one who loved it and took me to it, and he was the one who said the river would talk to me.”
“You got that from him,” he says, wonder in his voice.
“I did.”
Daniel stares off in the distance across the Rhône, his profile inscrutable.
Is he thinking of his own family? I want to know what’s in that faraway gaze of his. I’m tempted to ask, when he turns back to me and says, “Do you ever see yourself living any place besides Paris?”
I shake my head. “It’s my home now. I’ve no reason to leave. What about you? What about London? For all intents and purposes, that’s your home base. Even though you’re really only there half the time.”
“I don’t seem to put down roots, do I? I’m constantly drawn to Paris though,” he says, his eyes going flirty, journeying over my body, letting me know that I’m one of the reasons he’s drawn to that city. My God, I hope I can keep being one of those reasons.
I want to tell him to stay in Paris. Don’t go back to London. Camp out, stay with me. But that’s dangerous. That’s so damn dangerous. We’re ending.
Even though the more we talk, the more it feels like we’re only just beginning.
“I suppose I don’t feel like I’ve had a home in a long time, honestly,” he says, his tone melancholy. “I don’t think I’ve really felt that way since my parents died. I’ve been all over the world since then.”
“College in the US with Cole,” I say, prompting him.
“Yes, then I lived in New York. And I’ve lived in Los Angeles. I’ve spent time in Las Vegas. I have a home in London, but I also like to be in Paris. I suppose I feel like I’m everywhere,” he says, a note of mourning in his voice. “And perhaps nowhere all at once.”
My heart squeezes at that wistful note from him. I brush my hand along his back. “Do you like that though? That nomadic life?”
He heaves a sigh, then shrugs. “Maybe it suits me.” He’s quiet again.
Is he wandering back in time? Is he a nomad because of his family? I’m torn between patience and pushing. He seems to like both. He seems to like when I take my time, but also when I ask him things too. Six of one, half a dozen
of the other. “Do you say it suits you because your family is gone?”
His eyes squeeze shut. When he opens them, they’re dark again, those blue irises like hard gems. “Nothing will ever feel like home again,” he says, his tone icy but at the same time full of self-loathing. The sound chills me and worries me. “You’re close with your parents, aren’t you?” He shifts the conversation with a question.
I go with the changeup. “My dad sent me a text this morning. It was a picture of his dinner the night before.”
Daniel’s grin is electric, buoyant, and wonderful. Like that’s the best thing I could have ever received. “What did he have?” He sounds deliriously giddy.
“He had a saag paneer. He loves Indian food,” I say.
“I want to see it,” Daniel says, and there’s that desperate tone again.
I take out my phone, click on the screen, then find my messages. I show him the photo of my father’s dinner. “Here you go.”
Staring at the picture, he works his jaw over and over. “It’s so pedestrian. It’s so everyday,” he says, soft and full of wonder. “That’s what I love about it.”
My heart lurches toward him. In his words, I can hear all the unsaid things. All the wishes. He wishes he had a text from his parents about what they had for dinner.
He hands me my phone, and I put it away. I slide a palm along his arm, rubbing it up and down. “You still miss them.”
It’s not a question. It’s a statement of this immutable fact of his existence.
He draws a deep breath, then expels it like he’s letting it go across the river, like maybe the river is inhaling his breath.
“I miss them every day.” He turns to me, looks me square in the eye, and drops a bomb. “When I was seventeen, they were murdered.”
25
Daniel
I haven’t said those words out loud in more than a decade. The last person I said them to was Cole when we were in university in the United States. When I was young, when I was still emotional, when I was still a wreck from everything that had happened.
My role in it, my complicity.
Cole listened, understood, and knew who I was. Who I still am. But no one else has ever needed to know. No one else gets to see me.
But Scarlett.
This is the effect she has on me. She’s weaved her way into my heart, under my skin, loosening all the iron walls I’ve built, all the bricks I’ve stacked sky-high, all the steel barriers that have kept my emotions locked up.
Because locked up is safer. Locked up is always safer.
When truths come out, when people are known, when love is revealed, that’s when it can be stolen, bludgeoned, and destroyed.
But Scarlett is my river. She makes me want to tell her things. She makes me want to share parts of myself that I don’t like sharing.
I want to tell her my truth, and I need to tell her. She deserves to know. But there’s more than that at play—I want her to know me. I want to tell her because I’m falling in love with her.
When you fall for someone, you don’t want iron walls and steel barriers. You want there to be bright windows and wide-open doors. For better or for worse, this is who I am. I can’t hide it any longer.
“Daniel, I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says, her voice full of emotion, her eyes full of sympathy.
But there’s no pity in them.
Good.
I don’t want pity. But is that what she’ll feel for me when she learns the rest of the story?
Time to find out.
I grip the railing, my knuckles going white as I curl my fingers around it. I will tell her the rest. I can say this. I stare out at the water, then rip off the Band-Aid of truth.
“They were murdered in our home,” I say, turning to her because I don’t want to say it to the river. I want to say it to the person I’m falling madly in love with.
Love is such a dangerous thing. Love drives people insane. It makes them mad. That’s what I’ve always believed, until I felt it for the first time with her over these last few days. Maybe, just maybe, love isn’t as dangerous as I’ve contended. Maybe love is safe. Maybe love can make it okay to utter unspeakable truths.
That’s all I want. I want her to know who I am. Why I am. “He was my violin teacher.”
The look that crosses her green eyes is one of sheer horror.
“That’s terrible,” she whispers. “And I know that’s an awful understatement. And there’s nothing I could say that will give it the weight it deserves, but that’s terrible.”
She doesn’t know the half of it, but I’m about to tell her. My God, this is so fucking hard, but it’s also so incredibly necessary. I reach down deep inside myself and test out the words for the first time in ages. “I asked them to hire him for me. I tracked him down. He was the best in the country. He had been my teacher for the last three years before he killed them. A crime of passion.”
“How?” she asks carefully.
“He fell in love with my mother. It was sort of obvious to everyone. We thought it was a crush.” Like it was yesterday, I remember the jokes.
William has a crush on your mother, my dad would say.
My mother would laugh it off. He hardly has a crush on me.
I’d chime in too. He must have a crush on her because she makes him tea and biscuits every time he comes over.
“That was it. A silly crush from a man twenty years younger than my mother. A mere twenty-five-year-old. Wide-eyed, awkward, and obsessed with music like I was,” I tell her, keeping my tone even, controlled. “A great teacher. He taught me how to become better, more nuanced, more precise. He taught me how to find emotion in the music.” I close my eyes briefly, squeezing them. When I open them, Scarlett’s gaze stays locked on mine. Her focus is intense and reassuring too.
Searching for more words, I come up short. She reaches for my hand, threads her fingers through mine, then runs her thumb over the top of my hand. She says nothing. She simply waits.
The river of Scarlett.
I begin the tale of blood.
“One night, he came over for dinner,” I say, taking my time with each word. It was a night I will never forget. A night that still blazes with cruel clarity. “He sat at the dinner table with us. We had chicken, a green salad, and asparagus.” I push out a forced laugh. “Such a simple meal. Some wine too, of course, for the adults.” I swallow past a painful, horrible lump in my throat. “We were celebrating. A concert in Vienna.”
Understanding flickers in her eyes. “Was that when you played Adagio for Strings?”
I nod, my heart thundering toward her because she remembers the music, the night. “We were celebrating. And he said that he forgot to pick up the cake at the bakery around the corner from our house.” I wince, bring my hand to my forehead, and drag it down my face, drawing a deep breath.
An image of William, his horn-rimmed glasses, his baby face, his simple but awkward laugh, taunts me. His words too. The last ones I heard from him before he changed my life.
I forgot the cake.
Another picture flickers in front of me. My mother flashing her warm smile, asking me to go fetch the dessert. “My mother said, ‘Daniel, why don’t you run down the street and grab it for William?’”
Scarlett winces when she hears his name. “And you went to get the cake,” she says, filling in the pieces, helping me as the tale turns bleaker and more grueling to tell.
I see it all unfolding.
The walk, the bakery, the familiar, jolly woman behind the counter who knew me by name. Who handed me the cake, saying, “For you, Daniel. Our superstar.”
I thanked her, turned around, and returned home, carrying the cake.
“A simple chocolate cake. That and me—that was all he needed to commit the crime.”
“You were only seventeen,” Scarlett says gently, her thumb still rubbing the top of my hand. “You were so young.”
I grit my teeth, staving off my emotions. “I was old enough
to know better.”
“No, you weren’t. He was your teacher. You trusted him. Your parents trusted him,” she says softly. “You had no way of knowing.”
I soldier on, hell-bent on finishing, needing her to know. “I went back to my house, unlocked the door, and called out to Mum and Dad. It was eerily quiet. No one made a sound. All I heard was a gasping coming from the other room.” The entire tableau of horror slams back into me. “I walked into the kitchen, the hair on my arms standing on end, dread filling my whole body. My blood turned cold as the gasping voice croaked, ‘Help me.’”
Her grip on my hand tightens, her eyes fluttering closed for a second before they open again, and she asks, “Was it your mother or your father?”
I press my lips together, draw a fueling breath, and shake my head. “It was William. He was the only one still alive. He’d stabbed them both with a kitchen knife. And then he’d turned it on himself and sliced his own neck.”
Scarlett’s entire body nearly doubles over, but she straightens quickly, clasping her hand to her mouth, gasping. “Oh my God.”
“He lived,” I say coldly. “He survived. I called the ambulance right away. They came quickly. They found me in the kitchen, covered in blood, crying over my parents’ bodies. And William, half alive.”
Her eyes flash with complete understanding, in all its awfulness. “The medics took him to the hospital and he lived?” she asks, like she needs to be sure of that one terrible fact.
“He survived the knife wounds to his own neck. My parents didn’t,” I spit out, the bile rising in me, thick and black. “I wish the bastard had died, Scarlett. Every day, I wish he had died.”
She takes my other hand, holding both of them, her voice fierce. “Of course you do. Of course you’d feel that way.”
“But he didn’t die,” I hiss. “He lived, and he went to trial. A year and a half later. I kept playing music—it was my balm, my salve. It was the only thing that didn’t hurt. And then the trial began. But the trouble was, the case was high-profile. Because of me. Parents of noted young concert violinist Daniel Culpepper.”
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