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ChapterFour
May 2022 - Twenty-Seven Years Later
“What time is it there?” Alana stood in a pair of silk shorts and a lace bra, standing in the splendor of the May sunlight of her Paris apartment in the seventh arrondissement. She’d just blinked herself awake, fielding a call from her little sister, Julia.
“It’s seven in the morning,” Julia said, slightly exasperated. “You haven’t called since you got back to Paris. I was worried.”
Alana’s stomach twisted and growled angrily. Since her return the previous morning, she’d done little more than nibble on crackers, cheese, and baguettes while guzzling through one-half of a bottle of wine. Her body hated her.
“The trip was heinous,” Alana breathed, eyeing the tiny black birds that had woven a nest two balconies over. They chirped joyfully, like cartoon characters in a movie about French birds.
“Oh, Alana. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s fine.” Alana sniffed. “Asher should be getting back from Beijing sometime this evening.”
“And you’re sure it was a good idea to go back?”
Alana groaned. Back on the island of Nantucket, she and Julia had chatted endlessly about Alana’s decision to return to Paris and to her husband. It was true that Alana had stormed onto the island as an emotional wreck of a human, accusing Asher of manipulating her and creating an environment of cruelty over the years (especially since her modeling career had petered out). But married people got into fights all the time. That was just a fact.
Alana’s hunch was that because Julia was in the midst of her own divorce (from that terribly handsome journalist who’d left her and moved to Beijing), she just wanted everyone else to get divorced along with her. Loneliness could make a person do insane things.
“I’m sorry. I know. We’ve talked so much about it,” Julia said with a sigh. “I just wish you’d stayed a little bit longer. This big, old, creaky house is starting to feel a little too—”
“Big, old, and creaky?” Alana finished.
“Something like that.”
“Julia, nobody says you have to stay on Nantucket for the rest of your life.” Alana whirled around, her robe streaming around her as she headed back to the kitchen to inspect the stale baguette on the counter. “Why don’t you just finish editing Dad’s book and see how you feel? Heck, you can run your publishing house from Paris if you want to.” Alana let a beat pass before she added, “I can’t believe you spent all those years in the suburbs of Chicago.”
“Hey, Missy. We had a talk about that judgemental tone of yours.” Julia’s voice jumped around playfully, but Alana knew she was right. Her career as a model and wife of a big-shot artist, Asher Tarkin, had formed a crater between herself and the rest of the world. Slowly, she had to inch herself back toward empathy and love and understanding. She wasn’t so good at it yet.
She did love her sisters, though. Jesus, she loved them. She hadn’t fully understood how heavily she’d missed them until she’d appeared outside The Copperfield House in April, a weeping mess of a human, throwing herself into her sisters’ and mother’s arms.
“I just love him, is all,” Alana finished, her shoulders drooping. “Asher and I have been to the moon and back together. Side-by-side. I think I owe him another shot.”
“You know best,” Julia quipped.
“I’ve got to go,” Alana said, remembering, with a jolt, the big event of the day. “I love you, Julia. Thank you for calling.”
Nobody else had bothered to.
Alana nibbled the edge of the baguette, her free hand clacking its nails across the pristine kitchen counter, which had cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to fix after a particularly out-of-control party five years previous. The money had meant nothing to Asher, nor to her at the time. Asher’s life had bred them copious savings, so much so that they often struggled to understand the meaning of money any longer.
The apartment in Paris had been a necessity back in her twenties when the modeling contracts had rolled over her: magazine spread after commercial after billboard, and on and on into the sunset. While her friends’ modeling careers had petered out, hers had burdened forward, drawing her into her early thirties. At thirty-two, she’d dabbled in Botox and fillers and pushed her career another year, maybe two. But by the time thirty-five came about, a heavy depression had taken hold of her.
It was just the way her mother had always said it would be.
Once her looks faded, they were gone.
Just before Alana jumped into the shower, her agent, Marie, called her.
“Ma chérie! Hello! How was your trip back from America?”
“Oh, fine. Fine.” Alana kicked off her shorts and eyed her legs in the mirror. They jiggled slightly, screaming out:you are almost forty-five years old.
“Are you ready for your audition this afternoon?” Marie continued.
“Of course.” Alana’s heart thudded. “I haven’t had an audition in, what? Six months?”
