“Is he French? Where did you meet?” said Lee.
“Oh, well…” said Regan, with a weak little giggle.
After a moment, during which Lee had been scrolling on her phone, Lee snapped to attention. “Oh, well,what?” she said.
“Well, we met online, if you must know,” said Regan, so defensively that Lee felt a flare of concern.
“Like…on a dating app?” asked Lee suspiciously.
“Oh my God, no,” twittered Regan. “On Facebook! Anyway, I’ve got to run. You’ll meet him! He’s real, I promise. And yes, he’s French!”
Lee’s plane touched down, decelerating on the runway. Her seatbelt pinched her waist, and there was a dull thudding behind her eyeballs. She chewed her last peanut butter cracker. When there was a ding, passengers all around Lee jumped to their feet to grab their overstuffed suitcases. Lee peered out at a rainy, gray day.
Of course, it was entirely possible that Regan was safe and might return home any minute. She might be in her Athens apartment already! But Lee felt uneasy. She would know if Regan were dead, wouldn’t she?
And who found romance on Facebook? It definitely seemed sketchy. But if François was not a fabulous new boyfriend, who was he—and what had he done?
10
Regan & François
One year earlier
Toward the end of thepandemic, it had seemed like such a great idea for Regan to triple-mask, face-shield, and haul her girls out of the country. Her ex-husband, Matt, the girls’ father, had gotten his new girlfriend pregnant, and as soon as Regan heard the news (from one of her school mom friends—not even from Matt himself!), she vowed that her daughters would never see that baby. How could she keep them from their half brother or sister? She could become an expat, that’s how, but where?
She’d signed up for a Vision Board Workshop at a nearby yoga studio. Along with a group, Regan had dutifully cut out magazine photos. “Just cut out the images that call to you,” encouraged the instructor.
This process was similar to the art Regan had been constructing for years—she’d called it “collage” as a young student and “scrapbooking” as a wife. Regan rescued what others saw as detritus: She always had. Charlotte had once despaired of Regan’s pockets full of littered receipts, dirty coins, used lotto tickets. But Regan would sit for entire afternoons arranging the trash and her own drawings, creating what she believed was art.
Regan stopped, rewound, and edited herself—creating art.Full stop. Why was it difficult to see herself as someone whose work—whose life—had value?
At the end of the workshop, Regan’s board was covered with photos of the Acropolis; the Greek Islands; a person painting; a fierce woman looking out an airplane window; and various handcrafted ceramics. She saw then that it was time to shed her downtrodden divorcée persona, get up off the yoga studio floor, and flee the country. She’d done the toddler years and put up with a bad man in her life for long enough. It was Regan’s time to shine.
That night, Regan googled “best places artist sexy.” The divorce agreement had given Regan her large Savannah home and monthly alimony. The house was worth a million dollars. Wearing her#1 Momsweatshirt and sipping a vodka–Diet Coke, she scrolled the list of possible lives:
Number One:Paris. Regan opened a tab and read, deciding it was too expensive and also, French women seemed off-putting and frighteningly suave.
Number Two:New York. Nope, nope, nope: not far enough from Matt and his Baby Momma, a young woman who had once been the girls’ teacher at Savannah Country Day.
Number Three:Mexico City. Regan paused, but nah. She’d never been to Mexico. It seemed overwhelming and she liked Mexican food a bit too much.
She had reservations, too, about numbers four and five, Berlin and Kyoto.
But number six was Athens, Greece.
Athens, Greece! The city where her weird and wonderfulfamily vacation had begun, a ten-day cruise from Athens to Barcelona. It was the trip that had ruined her life in the perfect way. Regan could envision herself striding past the Acropolis. In her imagination, she wore a cape of some sort with knee-high boots. One more Google search—“Zillow apartments for sale Acropolis Athens Greece”—and she was on her way. Regan called a realtor friend and sold her She Crab Circle property in a week.
While packing up her adult life, Regan allowed herself to keep photos, notes, and clippings of any kind that she could work into collages. She took breaks to peruse Facebook, where she followed artists she admired—visual artists mostly, many of whom worked in collage, but also some painters, ceramicists, and installation artists. She peeked into these strangers’ workshops with envy, commented on their new work, and then somehow ended up in the section called People You May Know.
One of the people she might know was named François. Such a sexy name, thought Regan, who had not had a boyfriend since her divorce, despite the school moms encouraging her to “get on the apps.”
In the People You May Know section of Facebook, Regan clicked on François’s profile picture. He was a handsome man with a white mustache and a crinkly cheeked smile. François was a mathematician at Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, south of Paris. Regan knew he might not be real, but she also knew hemightbe real. Why was François a person she might know? How did Facebook connect Regan and a handsome mathematician in France? Kismet, she decided, and requested his friendship. It all seemed innocent:Click!
Abloopsound alerted her to a note in Facebook Messenger—a note from François:
It read,Hello.
Hello,Regan responded.
