Outside, it was still dark. Rosalyn glanced at the clock: six in the morning, and she was wide-awake. How strange that jet lag should affect her this way. California was nine hours behind France, so her body should think it was nine in the evening. Probably she’d be dead on her feet in a few hours, just as the French were beginning their workday.
What now? Going back to bed was out of the question; in fact, she felt strangely energized.
Rosalyn bundled up in layers and her big coat, hoping to ward off the cold. She wound a scarf around her neck and head, then pulled her orange wool hat down over her ears. The hat had beenknitted by one friend, the scarf and her gloves crocheted by another. As she pulled them on, she thought to herself—not for the first time—that painting was surely the least useful of all the arts. Knitting and crocheting made it possible to give the tangible gift of warmth.
It amazed Rosalyn that she still had friends at all. Those few patient souls who waited for her to come back, to return to her old self. She wondered how long they would wait, and suspected they should not make the effort. Rosalyn was beginning to doubt it would ever happen; her old self had died, had disappeared just as surely as Dash.
One foot in front of the other.
Literally, in this case. Feeling overstuffed and unwieldy in the unaccustomed layers, she left the building and stepped carefully, fearful of slipping on patches of ice.If I fall, I might start rolling and never stop,she thought wryly.I’ll become the subject of a limerick: There was a young woman from Napa...
Her snow boots crunched as they set down on the cold, hard earth. Otherwise, the silence was broken only by the occasional barking of a dog or the distant rumble of a car engine. Fog transformed the landscape into countless gradations of gray. Her breath came out in clouds, joining the mist.
The village was still silent, still shuttered. A few homes glowed gold from within, but there wasn’t a soul on the street. Pity there was noboulangeriein town. Didn’t bakers start work at four in the morning?
In the center of the village was a tiny plaza dominated by a stone monument inscribed,“Mort pour la France,”and dedicated to villagers who had died in the two world wars as well as in the Algerian war. Rosalyn took a moment to read through the long list of names, most young men, most in their late teens and early twenties. A statue of an eternally serene and vigilant Mary, her palms facing out, watched over the plaque. Overhead, a holiday garland sagged,defeated by the rain, and one shiny red Christmas ornament lay cracked on the cobblestones.
Pinpricks of sleet stung her cheeks. She shrank into her coat, breathing through her scarf, reveling in the warmth of her own breath. The ground was spotted with patches of snow—not the pretty white powder of greeting cards, but dirty, hard, and crusted over. The weather felt strangely fitting, reflecting as it did her bleak interior world. The typically sunny, mild climate of Napa, topped by cartoonishly blue skies and puffy white clouds, often felt like a cruel jab, mocking her pain.
A hand-lettered sign in the window of the town’s lone grocery store stated that the shop was closed for the holidays and would reopen on January 2.
The tour of the village didn’t take long. Emma hadn’t been kidding when she said there wasn’t much to Cochet. Aside from the main square with its monument, there was an old stone church, the store, an auto repair shop in the garage of an ancient-looking house, and an elementary school. Otherwise it was simply a clutch of small homes, surrounded by fields of grapevines.
On the outskirts of the village there were no streetlights, and though the sky was lightening, it was still dark out. Rosalyn had always liked long winter nights, even when Dash was alive. She reveled in the mystery and possibilities of the dark.
At the moment, though, she wondered whether she was foolish to walk along the highway in the predawn duskiness. There was no shoulder to speak of, much less a proper sidewalk, just the pavement with deep ditches on either side. The fog sank into an otherworldly mist, hanging low to the ground. Maybe it was the jet lag, but Rosalyn started to feel entirely isolated from the world: not a soul knew where she was or what she was doing. She could disappear into thefog, let it swallow her whole, obliterate her physical presence just as the life she had dreamed of had been erased.
The sound of an approaching engine awoke her from her trance.
Startled, Rosalyn escaped the road by leaping across the ditch, landing on a narrow footpath that ran along the rows of staked grapevines. Only then did she realize the sound was coming not from the highway but from within the vineyard. A very old truck slowly made its way down a rutted, muddy lane that ran along the vines, its headlights illuminating the area just in front of it. It came to a halt with a rattle of the engine and the squeak of old brakes.
A tall man climbed out of the cab, leaving the truck’s headlights shining. He wore a wool knit cap, fingerless gloves, and a heavy parka over jeans. His big rubber boots sank into the mud. Unheeding, he strode into the vines and crouched down, as though inspecting the plants.
One side of the man was lit by the harsh light of the headlights, the other by the mellow glow of the sun, which was just beginning to rise. Clouds of mist eddied and flowed in the glow of the headlights, hovering above the earth like a swirling ephemeral blanket.
Suddenly the man stilled, then looked around, still crouching. When he spotted Rosalyn, he slowly straightened.
Belatedly, Rosalyn realized that she might be trespassing by standing to the left of the roadside ditch, on the edge of the vineyard itself. She was too far away to see the expression on the man’s face.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it.
“Bonjour, madame.”
“Bonjour, monsieur,”she replied.
“Ça va? Est-ce que je vous peux aider?”He asked her if everything was all right, if she needed help. His voice was deep, resonant.
“Oui, ça va. Pardonnez-moi.”Yes, it’s fine. Excuse me, Rosalynanswered, trying to remember how to say, “I’m taking a walk.” After a moment, she blurted out:“Je suis au promenade.”I am on a promenade. That probably wasn’t the proper way to say it, but she hoped it made sense.
Rosalyn thought the man frowned, but she couldn’t be sure from this distance. She doubted he encountered many strangers strolling along the highway in the predawn hours. In Napa, some of the homeless tramped up and down the highways for days and weeks and months at a time. Was that the case here in Champagne as well? And if so, did this farmer imagine Rosalyn was a wanderer making her way along the vines? She liked that idea, somehow. Playing a part that wasn’t her, catching a glimmer of a life she didn’t lead.
Finally, Rosalyn waved an awkward good-bye, leapt back across the ditch, and hurried back toward town.
Chapter Eleven
The sun rose higher in the sky with each step. On impulse, Rosalyn stopped by the central square and picked up the cracked Christmas ornament, then pinched off a few small sprigs from an evergreen tree.
Back in her room at Blé’s place, she arranged the evergreen branches on the table and placed the ornament in the center, like a Christmassy bird’s nest.
