Closing her eyes, Nora could almost smell the intoxicating aromas of freshly baked baguettes, croissants, and pastries wafting through the streets in the earliest morning hours until they were replaced later in the day with the seductive smells of French cuisine: butter, garlic, simmering sauces, and always cheese—strong and pungent or creamy and sweet.
The air was often rich with the essence of fresh coffee, inviting her to stop at a sidewalk café and sit while French life passed by. Nora smiled at the thought now. She loved to sit sipping a café au lait, feeling like a Parisienne.
This trip might be just what she needed. She always tried to sound happy and upbeat when she spoke with Chloe, but if she was honest, this year had been a struggle.
Her freelance copyediting and memoir ghostwriting business was covering costs. That wasn’t the problem. The reality was, lately she’d found it a challenge to tell other people’s stories. She always loved encouraging others to record their histories and appreciated the importance of it. But recently the joy was fading, and she recognized it was due to a general malaise within her.
Worst of all, she was suffering from a bad case of writer’s block with her latest romance manuscript under her pen name, Belle de Beauvoir. Her own words were somewhat a problem. She struggled to find them recently.
She hated to admit she felt invisible and irrelevant, like some of her friends expressed and other aging women she often read about. But she did. Thank goodness menopause had finally passed. It seemed after turning fifty there were so many other issues, like knee and hip replacements, other illnesses, and the challenges of dealing with troubled zillennials moving back home or caring for aging parents. She was glad none of those things were in her life at the moment, but it was a toss-up amongst her friends as to whose lives might start to fall apart.
Loss had become a quiet companion; her parents and several other dear ones were gone. Some mornings it was the first thing to greet her and, in time, it taught her how to love what remained more fiercely.
Three of her best friends were dealing with challenging health issues. Cancer was the worst, and Nora had spent many hours sitting with her friend, Laura, as she had undergone debilitating chemo treatments. Gloria’s double knee replacement had not gone well; she still struggled to walk without a walker or cane and was in terrible pain. Margie had suddenly developed some kind of neurological problem affecting her balance and was dealing with ongoing tests, scans, and other regular doctor appointments. All three of them were depressed.
Not to mention the toll the divorces and strained marriages around her exacted on her own sense of happiness.
And now Nora was feeling low but had refrained from mentioning it to her friends. She went again to see the grief counselor she’d visited in her early years when she’d dealt with Jeremy’s loss. She wondered if that was the problem: on her own, she was doing more grieving than healing.
The advice she received from the counselor was simple: It might be time to move on from feeling Jeremy’s presence so intensely.
“It’s been seventeen years, Nora. He will always be in your heart but not beside you every day. You need to look beyond yourself now and recognize being in your fifties presents an exciting new chapter far more positive than you are describing. Jeremy won’t be on this journey. This one is up to you. You need to accept it. All I’m hearing right now are negatives. You’ve told me how Jeremy would have wanted you to be happy. Keep holding on to those words.”
She’d left the counselor’s office feeling even worse. In the ladies’ washroom, she wiped tearstains from her cheeks. The face looking back at her in the mirror seemed crumpled with anxiety. How could she stop relying on Jeremy’s spirit to keep her happy?
She tried to follow the counselor’s advice. She read books, listened to podcasts, went out with her friends, and watchedUnder the Tuscan SunandA Good Yearrepeatedly. Nothing worked.
At the other end of the spectrum from her close friends with problems, her friend Cynthia had sold absolutely everything and moved to a small coastal village in Italy. Her regular emails and photos made Nora question why she herself wasn’t planning an adventure like that. Really, there was nothing holding her back from making a move like Cynthia had. Nothing.
If only she was impulsive.
She let out a long sigh as she took a break from packing and went into the kitchen to boil water for tea. Sipping from her favorite china cup and saucer set that once belonged to her mother, she thought some more about her inability to be decisive. Then she called Cynthia.
“Pronto!” Cynthia answered in a cheery voice.
After a few minutes of Cynthia entertaining her about her new life and Nora catching Cynthia up on gossip in the Girls’ lives, Nora blurted out her indecision about dog-sitting in Paris.
“Nor, stop being a worrywart! Biting the bullet and moving here was the best thing I could have done. I was in such a slump after my divorce, as you know. I’ve met interesting people here. Lovely, friendly locals, and a bunch of expats. I wake up happy every day. Of course, I miss the gang, but I bet you will all come to visit. Just do it, my friend! You’re going for six weeks, not forever!”
ChapterFour
Five days later,on November 27, Nora was on her way to Paris. Using some of her Aeroplan points, she’d upgraded to Premium Economy. At the airport, she purchased a neck pillow and hoped for a good sleep on the way over.
Things had already worked out better than expected. Gloria’s sister, who lived in Toronto, had jumped at the chance to rent Nora’s house for the six weeks. She was thrilled to be there to help Gloria and spend the holidays out of the city.
Three days earlier, Chloe had called with an urgent request for Nora to put her ice skates and wool socks in a box and ship them to her. “We’re going to a skating party on New Year’s Eve. No arguing. Just do it.”
So she had.
The Girls had taken her out for a bon voyage dinner earlier in the week and been so excited for her. She tried to hold onto those vibes as she sat waiting to board the plane.
“We want at least one full report a week and daily postings on Instagram.”
“You are the queen of taking photos, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Yeah! Pictures of your apartment! And Paris, Chloe and Oli, and the dog.”
“And hot French guys!”
