You Can’t Plan for What You Can’t Plan For
The last time I was in Paris, I was with Owen.
We were there for a belated honeymoon, almost a year after we got married. We spent six nights there, just the two of us. Bailey was spending a week at Interlochen, a performing arts camp in Michigan. A camp for which she had to audition—a camp she would have moved into if Owen had let her.
We dropped her at camp and then went straight back to the airport. Straight to France from there.
It was the longest Owen had ever been away from Bailey.
The longest the two of us had been away together alone. It was much-needed time alone together, especially when those were the days Bailey could barely stand to look at me. I remember our last exchange when I left her at Interlochen was me telling her that I couldn’t wait to hear all about her experience there, and Bailey just staring at me blankly.Sure, she’d said.
Now, Bailey eyes me, and I know she is making the same calculation. Especially because she saw it too. Just yesterday. She saw the folder on the flash drive, markedO&H Honeymoon. She knows we spent it in Paris.
I motion for her to come sit beside me, on the same side of the small table, as I power on the laptop, inserting the flash drive.
And I go immediately to that photo album.
I don’t need the photo album to remind me, but the photographshit me just the same: that first day, walking through Luxembourg Gardens, letting the fresh air and rich coffee fight off the jet lag. The next day at the Musée d’Orsay. There’s a photograph of one of Picasso’s paintings,Ulysses and sirens. Did we see that in Paris? I don’t remember seeing it in Paris…
But I do remember that night, and the perfect dinner at Le Voltaire on the Left Bank: omelets and french fries and ice-cold martinis, the moon showing off over the Seine. Owen included a photograph of me holding that martini, smiling at him in the way that only Owen made me smile.
I pull up the last photograph, a knot rising in my throat as Bailey zooms in, Owen and I coming into sharp focus. We were taking in the sunset on our hotel balcony—the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Owen kissing my neck, while he held the camera out, capturing both of us. When it was both of us.
And I remember the conversation we had later that night. It was that night, I’m fairly certain. He asked me if I could imagine living there. He confessed that he’d had a secret fantasy to move to Paris when he was in college. He imagined spending his days on the Left Bank, teaching at the Sorbonne. He’d even studied French, had become proficient, just in case it turned into more than a dream.
I look up and meet Bailey’s eyes. But I won’t let myself say it out loud—not to Bailey. I won’t let myself think it. Not until he is actually in front of us again. Not until I know whether it’s real.
This could be the place where he’s figured it out.
How we get to be safe.
I must have fallen asleep.
I’m not entirely surprised I did. I didn’t sleep at all last night.What is surprising is that it’s the shaking of the plane that wakes me. The shaking of the plane as we are descending—almost, in fact, on the ground.
Bailey is asleep next to me, her head on my shoulder. I rub my eyes, still groggy, and look out the window as the wheels touch down.
I feel a drumbeat starting in my head, loud. It makes me uneasy.
Because I should have been ready for it. I should have been waiting for it. I look over at the flight plan. According to the map, it’s not New Jersey that we’ve landed in. Not Teterboro as planned.
It’s Miami.
I feel that in my chest, the drumbeat getting louder. Miami is the home of Fisher Island. Home base of the organization.
The last place—the very last place—I want to be. The last place I want Bailey to be.
“What’s going on?” I say.
I say it a little too loudly, Sally looking up from where she is sitting in a jump seat in the galley—Bailey stirring awake.
I’m up, out of my seat, Bailey staring up at me.
“What’s happening?” she asks.
I don’t answer her. I look out the window, trying to scan who is heading toward the plane. There’s a fuel truck (is it really a fuel truck?), several airport personal trailing behind it. They are all coming our way. The boarding stairs to the plane are not yet down, but they will be down any moment.
They will be down any moment unless I do something.
