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Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Blame Iton Paris
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  5. Book One
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-one
  27. Book Two
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. Thirty-six
  43. Thirty-seven
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine

There was a long silence. “No,” he said at last. “No, no one knows how long he will be in the hospital, and he could be in and out for a long time. Hopefully he’ll dance at our wedding. I’m his first grandchild, you know. He wouldn’t want me to cancel my flight. The last thing he would want would be for us not to get together because of him. He just loves you.”

Two days later, he came down the escalator into the baggage claim area, pale and excited. As soon as I saw him, I felt sick to my stomach again. A sudden sense of responsibility will do that to you, when you’re not used to it. I hadn’t had one for a long time; I’d been looking out for myself and no one else. But now I had taken a man out of his happy life, his happy family, his world that he loved, and lured him here. I had sort of liked the idea of myself as a luring siren up until now, when I started worrying about him smashing up against the rocks below. Any pain he suffered because of this decision, any unhappiness he felt, would be my fault. I wondered if Sébastien had felt the same way, when I moved to Paris for him that January, when he got to the airport to pick me up and I was crying. How hard had that been for him?

Sébastien wasn’t crying, though. He hugged and kissed me hard and for a long time, before he looked around the baggage claim area, trying to figure out what America was going to hold in store for him. He looked smaller here, partly because he was in such good shape compared to the people around him and partly, I think, because he himself felt suddenly so vulnerable. But then he grinned and kissed me again and hoisted his luggage with one easy arm.

When we got to our new apartment, there was a message on the answering machine from his mother. He called her back right away. His grandfather was dead.

“Mon père et mon fils, le même jour,” Claudine said, crying. With my arm wrapped around Sébastien’s waist, holding him, I could hear her through the phone. “I lost my father and my son the same day.”

“Maman,” Sébastien said softly. “Maman.” And nothing else, because what could he say? She cried and cried, and Sébastien pressed his chin into the top of my head and tears slowly soaked through my hair.