Hello, my dear friend,
Well! You don’t do things halfway, do you? Little did I know, when I was forcing you to go to Europe, that you would ingratiate yourself into a situation at a château out in the country, of all places. Maybe Sebastian and I should come visit you there?
So, I talked to Marjorie at Addison Avenue Books, and she talked with her people.
They didn’t exactly go for your idea. They don’t like the idea of your derelict carousel forming a chapter in the book.
Instead, they’re interested in the possibility of making it into a different book entirely! Apparently a lot of people like abandoned things (see? It’s not just you), and they think that with the photos, it could be really interesting. They want to see some examples. One thing: They want you to include the old man and his dog. Classic.
You’ll still talk to me when you’re a bestselling author, right?
The e-mail went on with some chatty details about the local farmers market and a show she had seen at Oakland’s famous Paramount Theatre, making Cady feel like she had been chatting over coffee with her best friend.Onlyfriend, really. It made her smile, but it also made her miss Olivia with a visceral yearning.
It wasn’t just the ease of the language that Cady longed for, but the feeling of being understood without speaking.
Cady read through the e-mail message twice, and the part about the book three times. She sat back in her chair and gazed out at the alley beyond the window. Two elementary-age children walked past on either side of their mother, talking excitedly while she smiled and nodded, Madonna-like, exuding eternal patience. A hunched-over old woman held on to the arm of a middle-aged man who had two baguettes tucked under his other arm. An orange tabby perched on a windowsill across the way; Cady watched while the feline focused on the same passersby she did, its wide, intelligent green eyes taking in... what?
A book.An entire book about the dilapidated Château Clement and the process of restoring its damaged carousel. Could she pull it off?
One worry immediately gnawed at her, deep down. She was only now earning Fabrice’s trust. Was it possible that he would cooperate, or—more likely—would he see it as the ultimate invasion of his privacy? He was so prickly.... How could she even approach the idea with him?
“You’re the American?” came the raspy voice of an old man standing next to her table.
Cady had become so accustomed to strangers in Saint-Véran being nice to her that she wasn’t on guard. But this man was agitated, swaying slightly on his feet. Her Oakland defensive stance came out.
“And who areyou?” As she asked the question, she realized he was the man who had been sitting at the bar, hunched over his beer.
“Where do you get off, putting ideas in my boy’s head?”
Cady wasn’t catching every slurred word, but she assumed that was essentially what he was saying. It dawned on her that he must be speaking about her new assistant.
“You’re Johnny’s father?”
“Yes, I am. And I would thank you to leave him alone. He’s idiotic enough without your American ideas in his head.”
“Could I ask what ideas you’re talking about?”
“He told me you think he ought to go touniversity.” He said this last with a snide, prissy emphasis.
“He seems intelligent, and sensitive,” Cady said. “University isn’t for everyone, but if he wants to—”
“This is none of your business. Who are you, anyway? You think you can come to our town and start meddling in other people’s business?”
He called her a name:salope.She had learned this one by occasionally filling in at the French-American school during recess. Literally, it meant “slut,” but it was often used to mean “bitch.” Which was probably typical in English as well.
Cady’s first thought was to return the favor, calling up a couple of choice words in French—aconnardor acrétin; also learned on the playground at school, sorry to say—but she thought better of it. Instead she adopted a flat affect and listened to his bluster until he wore himself out. It was like sharing the bus with someone who was off his meds; he wasn’t seeingher, but reacting to something in his own head.
After a few minutes the man stumbled increasingly over his words, and there was more time between insults, as though he was running out of steam.
“Andres,”came a new voice. Jean-Paul rushed into the café, planted himself between Cady and her attacker, and went off on the man. Unfortunately, this gave Johnny’s father renewed energy.
They argued loudly until Jean-Paul finally grabbed the older man by his upper arm and hustled him out the door. Andres cast a few more choice words—and the samebras d’honneurobscene gesture his son had used the other day—in the general direction of the bar, then reeled down the street.
• • •
“Nice to run into you again,” Cady said after Jean-Paul came back into the café and ordered a beer. “What a coincidence.”
“Hubert called me.”
