“Two,” I say, riffling through my purse for my wallet. “Julien, who’s thirteen. And Lucie, eleven.”
“How are they adjusting to LA?”
“Well, I think. Julien has already made a ton of friends, and he’s got his sports. She’s a little trickier. But she has ballet, and that’s her entire world.”
“Sacha has adjusted so well, I’m afraid he won’t want to come back. And even though he can be incredibly difficult, when he is not at home, I’m lonely.”
It strikes me then: what it must be like to live in that museum of a house. Just her, the butler, and the Ironman husband. And I haveto wonder if she is happy. Or if she is just a princess held captive in a castle. Rapunzel. With a bob.
Our waiter eventually makes his way over and we pay the bill. And as she wraps herself in her gorgeous green coat, she smiles and says, “You still haven’t told me what happened with Élodie.… You will.”
She does not mention the assault.
IX.IN THE BUBBLE.
PARIS.
MARCH. 2015.
My head is deep in the foie grasmi-cuitrefrigerator at La Grande Épicerie, the famed gourmet market at Le Bon Marché, on Friday afternoon, when Julien FaceTimes me. It’s just after seven in the morning in California, and my thirteen-year-old son rarely calls to engage in casual conversation, so naturally, I imagine the worst.
“Everything okay?”
“Eryx invited me to go home with him after school and spend the night at his dad’s place in Malibu. And Papa said I couldn’t go until I checked with you first, because you don’t know his parents. So if I text you his dad’s number could you call him to make sure it’s okay and then I can go straight from school? Please say yes.”
He says all this while pacing through the rooms in our tree house. The camera randomly capturing walls, the ceiling, his latest Lego creation on his desk, the corner of his face.
I extract three packages of partially cooked foie gras before navigating the rest of the aisle. Goose liver. Duck liver. Paté aplenty. It’s a foodie’s paradise here, and yet my attention is six thousand miles away.
“Julien. Slow down. Who is Eric?”
He pauses, his face absurdly large in the camera. Bronze skin, amber eyes. A new pimple on his chin. “Eryx. Barlow. My friend at school. You don’t know him. But just text his dad, okay?”
“And say what exactly?”
“Euh!” he says. “That it’s okay if I sleep over there. Please, Mom. It’s me and Topher.”
“Who?”
“Just talk to Papa.” He begins moving again. I watch the scenery behind his head shift. Through his bedroom, down the hallway, into the kitchen. I spot the top of Lucie’s head at the island, a cascade of curls bowed over a bowl of cereal, and I get a pang in my gut. She is so far away from me.
“Hey, Ladybug.”
“Hi, Mommy,” she says without looking up.
Before I can see her little face, Julien passes the phone to François, and Lucie falls out of frame.
“Bonjour, ma belle.” My husband’s hair is sticking out in twenty-two different directions. A week’s worth of stubble lines his jaw. He wears bedraggled annoyingly well.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“One more day?”
“One more day. No problems holding down the fort?”
“Pffft.” He does that universal French thing with his mouth, the gesture that could be interpreted a hundred different ways. Today, it means “easy-peasy.” I think.
“So what’s the problem?”
