“Rainer Maria Rilke said something similar: ‘Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.’”
Their eyes met and held.
“Do you believe that?” Rosalyn asked.
“It’s as useful a philosophy as any other. Rilke also says that wewould not be able to live the answers, so we should live the questions. Something along those lines.”
Live the questions.For some reason the phrase reminded Rosalyn of her therapist’s insistence that pain wasn’t optional but suffering was.
“There is an English section over here,” Jérôme said, leading her into one corner and running his hand along the spines.
His hands were large and brown, the fingers long and capable-looking, calloused from farmwork. Rosalyn leaned toward him, close enough to smell his scent, something green, like the earth. Who knew naked grapevines carried a fragrance? She noticed the way his honey-colored hair curled on his tanned neck, had an urge to lean closer, to put her mouth right there, on that spot....
Rosalyn reared back, shocked at her own reaction.
“You know, I—I have to run,” she said. “I’m sorry. I totally forgot I was supposed to return a very important e-mail before bed.”
“Don’t you want to take a book with you?”
“Thanks. I’ll take this one.” She grabbed the nearest book in English. “I don’t have time to find more right now. I’m sorry. Thank you so much for dinner.”
And she hurried out, compelled by cowardice, just like she had that one time, the last time, at the hospital.
Chapter Thirty-nine
That night, Rosalyn dreamed she was back in front of the medicine cabinet in the cottage in Napa.
This time she tried to slam the door closed, but something was blocking the way. When she looked to see what, she found Dash tucked inside—Dash, but not Dash. He reached out for her, swollen fingers grasping, as she backed away, reliving the betrayal of running from his hospital room, unwilling to go with him but forever after steeped in regret and remorse and fear.
Rosalyn awoke crying, awash with the awareness of death.
Three a.m.Dash died at four twenty-seven in the morning. She stared at the smooth ceiling ofChambre Chardonnayand did the math in her head: In an hour and twenty-seven minutes, it would be nine hundred thirty-nine days since Dash died.
Her sheets were damp with sweat, and she shivered.
She remembered one rare occasion when she had been at a wine event and come home later than Dash. He was already in bed, asleep, but when she slid under the covers, he turned and reached for her,spooning her, sharing his warmth. It was the safest feeling in the world, being held in his arms as she let sleep take her.
Later, it was she who cradledhim, slipping carefully into bed so as not to wake him, when he’d lost so much weight that he felt skeletal in her arms, a bag of bones. She lent him her warmth then.
Perhaps she had given him all of her warmth. Perhaps she still was.
?Rosalyn gave up on sleep, turned up the heat in the room, and took a long, hot shower, feeling the reflexive guilt of a native Californian for wasting water, but doing it anyway.
One of the techniques she used when grief threatened to consume her was to concentrate on mundane things. The scent of the shampoo. The slipperiness of the bar of soap. The small sky blue crackle-glazed mosaic tiles lining the shower stall. Slowly, she allowed her mind to wander, prepared to rein it in should it stray too far into the minefield of grief. She wondered if Emma had to hold her leg outside the stall to shower without getting the cast wet. She imagined Blondine arguing with Gaspard as they had built this newgîte, the frown on her face as she picked this towel, the determination to create a large shower that would please demanding American tourists.
This American, at least, was grateful.
Rosalyn quickly dried off and dressed, noting the rough grain of the thick towel, the softness of her favorite blue jeans and sweater, the warmth of her wool socks—then opened her journal and started to draw.
She thought of theséchoirs, the barbed wire that hung young soldiers out to dry. She drew a sketch of herself like that: injured, bleeding, stuck. She thought of the look on Dash’s face in the nightmare. The baby in her locket.
It was too much. She shut her journal and turned back to Émile’s letters.
September 2, 1917
My dearestmarraine,
Just a brief note because it has been too long since I wrote last. I know you will be overjoyed for me when you learn that I have secured another pass to visit my dearest Lucie. My wife.
