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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

Not good marriage material. That was, interestingly enough, exactly how I had always described myself. I glanced sideways at Sébastien, who was trying not to laugh. He was the one who kept bringing up marriage, damn it. I looked back at his mother, my eyes starting to narrow.

Claudine gave me a broad smile, as if I’d just handed her the world and it was an oyster. “You’ve never heard that? In France, we say that someone who can toss a salad without spilling anything over the sides is bon à marier.” Good to marry.

“And vice versa,” Sébastien said helpfully. He grinned at me. “Want to see me mix it?”

I passed him the fork and spoon. Catching my eye as he took them from me, he abruptly smoothed his mouth into a flat, deadpan-serious line and concentrated on the salad as if his life depended on it.

“You’ve always been good at that,” Claudine sighed with maternal pride and what I considered a certain tendency to belabor a point, as Sébastien finished mixing the salad expertly, the tablecloth untouched. Everybody around the table was grinning now, except for me. I was remembering what twisted humor all those French movies seemed to have.

Claudine suddenly leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “It’s such a good thing you made it down this evening. This means you’ll be able to go with us on the old-car rally tomorrow!”

Naturally, I expected the worst. I generally do, even when activities aren’t suggested by a Frenchwoman who can use salads to eliminate the unworthy from her son’s love life.

Fifteen

The early morning sun was burning off the fog from the nearby riverbed when we headed out, Sébastien’s mother and stepfather Jean-Charles in front, his little sister Justine tucked with Sébastien and me in back, behind the second windshield of a 1928 Citroen B14 Torpedo convertible. Jean-Charles and his father had rebuilt this red Torpedo by hand from a rusty heap, along with five other classic cars.

Burly, grumpy, and amused, Jean-Charles turned out to be a perfectly sane driver when behind the wheel of a car decades older than himself. Justine pulled a blanket out from under the seat and spread it and its dust across our legs against the chill of the early morning wind. As dark-haired as Sébastien, Justine was a slim, naturally bronze, preternaturally graceful and patient thirteen-year-old. If I were dating an American, I thought, he might chew tobacco, but odds were good I could feel more sophisticated than his adolescent sister and weigh less than his mother.