“Why is he so mad at you?” Cady asked.
“He didn’t bring me what I wanted. So I fired him.”
“And then the grocery store fired him.” Cady unpacked the brown paper bag from the trout farm.
Fabrice eyed the packages as they came out of the bag. “The trout woman talked you into buying too much.”
“She didn’t talk me into anything; I bought just as much as I wanted to buy. And anyway, I’m paying for the groceries today, so don’t worry about it.”
“Mais ça coûte les yeux de la tête.”Which literally meant that it cost the eyes from the head.
She took a deep breath, gesturing at him with a knife she had picked up to wash. “Look, old man, this is my first and probably only time I’ll ever be in France, and I was at a Provençaltroutfarm in themountains. So if I want to buy myself some smoked fish, then it’s nobody’s business but mine.”
He raised his eyebrows as if to saySheesh, and turned his attention back to his newspaper.
“Could I ask you something?” Cady asked.
“Seems like that’s about all you do.”
“You’re forever reading the paper. Why are you so interested in the world if you won’t take part in it?”
“The paper gets delivered. I didn’t ask for it, but as long as it shows up, I might as well read it.”
She smiled. “Today the fish woman told me about the town called Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. You mention it inLe Châteauas well.”
“It’s a famous place. Pétrarque lived there. He wrote some of his most famous verses while there.”
“He was a poet, right?”
“You don’t know Pétrarque? He is credited with inventing romanticism.”
“I didn’t realize there was ever a time without romance.”
Fabrice snorted in an almost-laugh that delighted Cady. “I meant in literature. It was in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse that he wrote his most famous lines, for his beloved Laura: ‘The waters speak of love, and the breeze, the oars, the little birds, the fish, the flowers, and the grass all together beg me to love forever.’”
“And did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Love forever?”
“Yes. Yes, he did,” Fabrice said in a somber tone. “Nowwhat are you smiling about?”
“You,” said Cady, heating water for coffee. “You act like a cranky old grump, but you’re such a romantic underneath it all.”
He snorted. “You remind me of... someone I knew when I was a teenager.”
“This was during the war?”
He nodded.
“Jean-Paul mentioned that you worked with the Résistance.”
He inclined his head, just barely, a far-off look in his eye.
“I saw some plaques in Paris; I wasn’t sure what they were about, but Madame Martin told me they were in memory of guerrilla fighters with the Résistance.”
He nodded. “I fought in combat only at the very end. A terrible clarity occurs when a person has nothing left to live for.”
