When he does pass, he isn’t looking any which way. He is only looking straight ahead, which should relax me.
But I don’t feel relaxed. Because he looks familiar to me. I can’t make out his face beneath his hat, his pulled-up jacket collar. I can only see the hint of his profile beneath that beard. But that’senough. It’s enough for me to know that I have seen him somewhere before now.
“That’s him,” Bailey says.
My heart starts pounding, and I force myself to take several deep breaths. I force myself to stay tucked behind that clothes rack for longer than I would like before we exit the store. I scan the street, our side of the sidewalk—the other. The man, familiar as he was, no longer in view. Which does and doesn’t calm me.
We keep walking, my hand on Bailey’s lower back, keeping her close. Until we turn onto Avenue Gabriel and walk halfway down the block, where we arrive at the small path to the hotel entrance, the red and black doors greeting us. I hold the door open for Bailey and we walk in.
La Réserve’s lobby is small and homey, like walking into a Parisian apartment building. It’s meant to feel like a Parisian apartment building; the reception area like a living room, a beautiful outdoor garden to enjoy breakfast, a library you could spend the afternoon in, brushed up against a small bar.
And then there’s the staircase, winding and solitary, which takes you up to one of only forty rooms.
Forty keys, as the receptionist who showed Owen and me to our room had said. That always stuck with me. Forty keys leading to just forty beds—no other hotel in Paris quite like it. You could go days without seeing the other guests. You could feel like you have the whole place to yourself.
When we walk into the reception area, there is no room number left for us. No one in the lobby to meet us. But I know where we are going.
At least I think I do. I lead Bailey to the staircase, behind the elevators. The large and winding staircase, that will lead us to room 202.
The room where Owen and I stayed for our honeymoon. Even seeing the gold plate on the door takes me back there. I remember it well: a cozy sitting area, and a silver soaking bathtub, large steel windows peeking out at The Grand Palais. The Eiffel Tower clear and promising from the side of the small balcony.
We’ll be back, Owen had said, sitting on that balcony that last morning.This won’t be the last time here.
So it’s no surprise that I’m thinking it. That Bailey turns to me and I know we are both thinking it. We are both thinking it’s him, finally him.
I knock on the door. And Bailey grabs my arm.
She doesn’t ask me if it’s her father who is about to answer. But I know that she wants to ask. A part of her wants to know what to do if it is him. That, I want to tell her, will reveal itself. But that’s not what she needs to hear.
So I lean in and tell her what she does.
“I’ve got you,” I say. “Either way. I promise.”
She nods at me, and I can feel her calm down. I can feel her find her center again, knowing mine is intact.
Why is mine intact? Especially at a moment where it would have every reason not to be. Maybe it’s that I know enough to know that Owen wouldn’t send us all this way unless it was to get to him. Or, at the very least, someone we love.
And I’m not wrong. Not about that part.
But when the door opens, it’s not Owen standing there.
It’s Nicholas.
Part II
Good luck to you, even so. Farewell!
But if you only knew, down deep, what pains are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore, you’d stay right here…
—Homer
Five Years Earlier
In New Zealand, He Learns Patience
During Owen’s first year in New Zealand, there was an unexpected cold snap. In Marlborough, winemakers get used to cooler temperatures—they ready themselves for the grapes to take longer to ripen—but this was something else. This cold snap came on fast and quick and didn’t dissipate. The grapes not ripening, frost sticking to the vines. The worst harvest they’d had in years.
The harvest, Owen’s first, nearly ruined.
