“You’re shaking,” he said.
My bobbing knee stilled, and my vibrating frame went rigid. “Sorry. I can’t believe he works here. We found him, but what if—” I couldn’t say the words, couldn’t bear to think them.
What if I was too late, and I’d lost him too?
Lucas offered my fingers a comforting squeeze, and every thought in my head focused tightly on his touch.
The hostess reappeared, and I pulled my hands onto my lap, suddenly terrified and wishing I hadn’t come. If I didn’t ask, I couldn’t know he was gone. If I didn’t meet him, he couldn’t tell me he didn’t want me.
An older woman strode alongside the hostess to our table, eyes homed in tightly on my face. She looked closer to my mom’s age than mine, beautiful and lean with sleek silver hair. Her porcelain face showed evidence of laughter and a lifetime of smiles. Her smart brown eyes suggested she missed very little of what happened around her.
I envied her gray cashmere sweaterdress and knee boots. Why did I wear pants?
Lucas rose to greet her, hand extended.
I popped onto my feet a second later, unsure what was happening.
“I’m Mary Allard,” she said. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a family dinner, and I hope you’ll stay. I hear we might have a loved one in common.”
My breath caught at the sound of her last name, and my knees buckled. My fear returned with a resounding whoosh. Logically, I had no reason to worry, but emotionally, my panic alarms had all sounded. The possibility of rejection crushed my lungs before Lucas finished making introductions.
The hostess poured glasses of water for each of us and left a carafe on the table.
Lucas and Mary took seats, and their eyes turned to me.
I drank greedily from my glass, then set it down with trembling hands. “I’m Sophie Bianco,” I said, mouth parched despite the recent drink. “I’m looking for my father, Sébastien Allard.” I set the photograph on the table, and Mary’s eyes misted with tears.
She pulled the photo into her hands and smiled gently at the image. “I was Bastien’s wife,” she said. “We were married for forty-one years.”
A ravine ran through me at her use of past tense.
“I’m very sorry to tell you we lost him last fall,” she added. Her clarification was a punch to my heart, and my head lightened with the knowledge. Sébastien was gone too.
“I wish it wasn’t true,” she said, voice cracking as she spoke. “I miss him every moment of every day. We all do.” She motioned to the restaurant. “He was beloved. And a very, very good man.”
Mary explained that Lucas had been in touch before our arrival. The staff had alerted her to our reservation, and she’d been nervously awaiting the chance to share her story with me.
Lucas smiled softly when I looked to him. Then he rose and excused himself, promising to return before our meal arrived. As if he hadn’t done enough already, he gave us the additional gift of privacy.
Mary watched him walk away, but I could only marvel at the woman before me.
Sébastien Allard’s wife.His widow,I mentally corrected. Something about her presence made Bastien all the more real, even if he was gone. Before, he was just an image from a photograph and a person from my mother’s past. Now, I sat here with his widow, and the thought raised gooseflesh on my arms.
“You have a good one there, too, I see,” Mary said, nodding in the direction Lucas had gone.
I tracked him, belatedly, with my gaze, allowing what she’d said to register. “Oh, we’re not—”
Her brow furrowed with confusion.
“We’re ...” I stalled again. What were we? Coworkers? Friends? Both were true, yet neither description felt like nearly enough.
Mary’s answering smile was warm and kind. “Well, you’ll figure that out in time,” she said. “Right now, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve always wanted a daughter.”
I blinked back tears as I told her everything about my own daughter, then a little about my mom.
“Bastien talked about your mother often when we were young, in the years before we dated,” she said. “The pretty American girl who stole his heart and carried it back across the sea.” Mary pressed a hand to her chest and looked toward the ceiling. She laughed. “Bastien had a flair for the dramatic, and a genuine zest for life. His passion was contagious. No one would deny it. He and I grew up together in this town, and all the girls wanted him. I was a few years younger and not on his radar until long after your mother had traveled home. I was just glad to be his friend. Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, he asked me if I wanted to go with him for a coffee. We were married six months later, and we stayed that way to his very last breath.”
“That’s beautiful,” I said. “Forty-one years is a lifetime.”
