I break down to the sound of his car revving through the gear changes.
He’s scared, he’sconfused, he’s been through a lot…I keep telling myself these things as I pull his door closed behind me.
I waited at his house for almost two hours, but he didn’t return and I’m not sure what to do. I want to try to talk sense into him, but I don’t know how much time or space he might need before he’s receptive to hearing me.
It’s possible that he’s tried calling or texting—I wouldn’t know as the reception is so patchy out here—but when I’m back in Mellie’s car and have traveled a little way down the lane, I pull over and check my messages. There’s just one, and it’s from Jackson. He’s sent me a picture of a very old and dirty-looking tennis ball along with the message:Do you think this is the one we lost when we were 15?!
I smile through my tears at the memory. We’d been bouncing a ball back and forth on the balcony and then for some reason we started hurling it at each other harder and harder. I remember squealing with laughter as I tried to catch his throws and then I pelted the ball at him so forcefully that it ricocheted off his hand, hit the glass door leading to the living room, and rebounded over the wall of the balcony. We looked for it for ages down in the rose garden.
I’ve spent so long thinking Jackson was the love of my life—and a part of me loves him still.
But what I feel for Étienne is bigger.
I can’t give up on him.
I try ringing him first, but it goes straight to voicemail, so I send a text. One word:Please.
It’s a plea to hear me, to see me, to speak to me, to find a way for us to move forward. I can’t take him at his word that this is over, not yet.
I head to his garage, but his car isn’t there. I drive around town, keeping my eyes peeled. I even go past Dion’s house, but Étienne’s GTi is nowhere to be seen. It occurs to me to ask Lise if she knows where he is, so I pull into a space outside Thermalisme, across the road from La Terrasse, and send her a text—I don’t want to disturb her while she’s at work.
She replies within minutes:He’s at my house. I’d give him some space.
Nausea engulfs me. He’s fled to the house where his late girlfriend lived. That’s where he wants to be—not with me, but with his memories of Eve.
He fell in love with her, even though he knew what was coming. If he’s capable of switching off his feelings, how could he let himself go through that? He knew that he would lose her. He knew that he was in for a world of pain. And yet he allowed himself to love her anyway.
But me? I don’t have a fatal disease. I’m not returning to another country at the end of summer. I’m young and healthy and I’mhere. I could be a part of his life. Why won’t he let me? Why won’t he let himselfloveme?
You really don’t remember, do you?
A cold flush washes over me at the memory of his words.Rememberwhat? What was he talking about? His scar? What about his scar? Three weeks ago he claimed he got it falling over, but it felt like he was holding something back.
I rewind to that conversation—we’d gone to Les Saules for breakfast via Dion’s place to pick up his car. I’d had that odd sense of déjà vu when I arrived at his house to see his GTi parked on the drive. It used to be his mum’s car. When we were seventeen it hadn’t been driven in years—it had been left around the back of the house to deteriorate—but at some point prior to that it would have looked clean and shiny. Is that how I remember it?
Déjà vu hits me again. I sit with the feeling. And once again, I think of Sandrine.
A strange awareness prickles over my body as a memory comes back to me of a scrawny dark-haired boy sitting beside me in the car, clutching a bloody tissue to his eyebrow. Jackson is in the front seat next to his mother and we’re pulling up at a house.
It was Les Saules, before the grapevines had run rampant over that side of the building. Sandrine was dropping the boy home from the château.
It was Jackson’s first summer in France and we were at the edge of the pool when a boy burst through the pedestrian gate and ran across the lawn toward us, blood and tears streaming down his face. I’d thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest.
Jackson and I shot to our feet as he reached us, sobbing something in French. Neither of us could understand a word he was saying, but then I caught the wordAl-bearand turned to Jackson.
“He wants your grandfather,” I said. “Albert?” I asked the boy, pronouncing it the French way.
He nodded his head.
“Go and get him,” I directed Jackson, but just as he startedrunning toward the château, Sandrine reappeared. She had been supervising us until she’d needed to go inside so she’d told us to get out of the pool—we were only seven.
“What’s going on?” she asked with alarm at the sight of the boy.
“He wants Grand-père,” Jackson said.
“Why? What’s he doing here?” She looked at him as though he was something she’d stepped on.
Sandrine spoke fast to him in French. He replied just as fast and even more animatedly, pointing down the hill, at the château, upriver.
