Anna was telling Laura about the beauty of being a new mother.“All of your priorities change,” she explained, reaching for another cookie.“Everything you thought you cared about, everything you thought that mattered, all flutters out of your head, and you become free in a way.”
“Free?”Laura looked surprised.
“Maybe free isn’t the word.”Anna wrinkled her brow.“But you’re free from everything you once thought that mattered.”
“Free of grad school,” Laura said, glancing at her mother.
“Maybe you’re free of too much inner criticism,” Scarlet guessed, although she was still child-free.“Maybe all this love pours out of you, and you have no time to think anything bad about yourself.”
Anna snapped her fingers.“That’s pretty close!”
Ella watched her daughter’s expression as she took in this information.She looked like she wasn’t sure if she believed it.And then, because she knew Greta wasn’t watching, she ate the very cookie she’d just decorated.Anna and Scarlet burst into giggles and did the same with their most recent cookie.
“At this rate, we’ll never be done,” Scarlet said.
“Girls!”Greta called from somewhere down the hall, “I’d better see stacks and stacks of frosted cookies!”
Scarlet called back with her mouth full.“We’re almost done!”
At this, the girls cackled louder, holding their stomachs.Ella grinned along with them, feeling like an outsider from their girlhood troupe.Oh, but she was grateful for their words of wisdom for Laura.As her mother, she knew she could only give Laura so much advice before Laura rejected her.Ella’s tactic was emotional support.Her approach was to be there.But she didn’t want to overwhelm her.
Plus, Stevie’s story about her own daughter terrified her.What if, one day, Laura looked at Ella and thought,no, I don’t want this, you’re not good enough?
ChapterFourteen
It was the surprise of Grayson’s life that Camille’s announcement that she was going to New York City with her father did what it did.News of it yanked Genevieve out of her hideaway in the country and back to Paris.Two days after Camille called her to tell her the news, Genevieve appeared at Grayson’s apartment, still in her horse-riding uniform from her life in the country, her hair in a stiff bun, peeling leather gloves from her fingers.She looked at him ruefully, as though she wanted to rip into him.And then, she abruptly crumpled and sat at the edge of the sofa, crying quietly.She really is beautiful, Grayson thought.Often heartless and terribly cruel, but she was beautiful.She always would be.Maybe it was a curse.
Grayson made her a cup of tea and sat beside her.
“I don’t know why she wants to move to America, of all places,” Genevieve cried, staring into the steam rolling out of her mug.“Paris is the best city in the world!I live here!All her friends live here!Why is she choosing you?”
Grayson rubbed his chest and thought about everything his daughter had told him since they’d reunited in Montmartre.He considered the breakups she’d gone through, the horrible friends she seemed to have, and the fact that everyone saw her in a way that she’d begun to resent.Paris had soured for her, making her feel less than, as though nothing in life was worthwhile.He knew that wasn’t Paris’s fault.Maybe one day she would return.
“I don’t think she’ll be in the United States forever.”Grayson didn’t want to betray Camille’s confidence and share too much about her life with her mother.“But you were the one who called me and told me things weren’t going well.Remember?Something has to change.”
“Yes, well.I wanted you to come back to Paris and stay in Paris,” Genevieve shot back.“Even if we couldn’t make it as a couple, I still wanted you to live down the street from me.I wanted to be able to call you when I needed you.I wanted to be able to rely on you for family matters.”She set down her mug and squeezed her hands together.“We raised a daughter together, Grayson.Sometimes it feels like you’ve forgotten that.”
Grayson was caught off guard by the honesty in his soon-to-be ex-wife’s voice.He couldn’t remember the last time they’d looked one another in the eye and said what was really on their minds.When had that stopped?And why?
“So you called me here to trick me into coming back?”he asked, hearing a smile in his own voice.He was teasing her, like old times.
“Well, no.Not really.And also yes.”Genevieve’s shoulders shook with laughter that seemed to surprise her.“Old habits die hard, I suppose.Oh, but Camille.She’s seemed so unhappy.And I don’t like the people she hangs around with.I don’t like that her life has no direction.Although I often wonder if my own life had any direction when I was her age.I got pregnant, and then you came back, and everything clicked into place.”She closed her eyes for a long time and held the silence.“You know what she told me last time I saw her?She said that you were actually doing something with your life.Something that mattered to people, to the world.It hurt me to hear that.To me, it seemed like you were gallivanting through Manhattan and saying a bunch of pretty words about the environment that didn’t matter.But to her?It seems like you’re about to save the planet.Gosh, I was so jealous.”
Grayson felt his heart expand.He was so touched that Genevieve had allowed him to know this that he didn’t know what to say.Of course, Camille hadn’t gone out of her way to be too kind to him.She was French, after all.But it was also true that Camille had let him know her location.She’d left a breadcrumb—a single breadcrumb—and he’d raced to her apartment in Montmartre.
“When are you going?”Genevieve asked, sniffing.
“We’ll leave on the sixteenth,” he said.“We’re flying commercial.”He announced it proudly.
Genevieve let out an ironic laugh.“I can’t believe you’re flying at all, after what happened to you last time.Your face was plastered all over the news!”
“Camille doesn’t want to spend Christmas on a boat.And she wants to get out of Paris as soon as she can,” he explained.“I don’t think I can blame her.”
“No.”Genevieve appraised him.She was quiet for a long time, leaving Grayson to stir in his own misery and fear.Then she went on.“I’ve made dinner reservations for tonight.The three of us.I want to celebrate our successful twenty-six years as a family of three before it fully dissolves.Camille has already been informed of our plans.”
Grayson let out a startled laugh.He’d always known that Genevieve enjoyed surprising him like this.She liked to pretend to have power over him in whatever way she could.But it sounded lovely to spend a night with his wife and his daughter.It sounded nostalgic and pure.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he said.
