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“Let’s go to Manhattan,” Rose said, sounding more confident than she felt. “I’m ready when you are.”
“I’ll make plans immediately,” Sean said. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” she affirmed.
Chapter Eighteen
January 1994
Oren and Rose reached Paris on January 9, 1994. Rose was three months pregnant and called herself “happily married” in letters she sent back to Mississippi—some of which she wrote on the private plane that took them across the Atlantic and slipped into a yellow mailbox at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Her wardrobe was nothing she recognized—a series of taupes and whites and soft blues made of exquisite fabric.
Oren didn’t tell her that he owned his own place in Paris.
He kept it a secret, like so much of his life. But Rose was still of the belief that secrets between them were romantic. They brought a certain electricity to everything they did.
At the airport, Oren and Rose slipped into a taxi and whisked off to his place in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres on the Left Bank. The taxi driver opened her door, and Rosestepped out onto the sidewalk and raised her chin to see Notre Dame, little cafés with circular tables, gorgeously dressed people, and bakeries just about everywhere she looked. Rose hadn’t yet started to gain real weight, perhaps because she was only twenty-two and three months into her pregnancy, but she was ravenous. She made a plan to eat from every bakery in their neighborhood. She made a plan to really live.
Within that first evening with Oren, Rose was captivated enough by the city to ask, “What if we lived in Paris for the rest of our lives?”
Oren cackled. “Why not?”
The apartment was sensational. It was much smaller than the one in New York, but because it was Paris, Oren said he didn’t care. “What do we need all that space for, anyway?” There was a living room, a kitchen, a beautiful bedroom, a guest bedroom, a dining room, and a room that doubled as the library and study. Half of the books were written in French. Oren told Rose that he’d always wanted to get better at French, so Rose set to work learning so they could do it together.
“This is why I fell in love with you,” Oren said. “You’re the kind of girl to go after things. That’s why you left Mississippi.”
They lived that first week in Paris in a bubble of love, beauty, and joy. They ate everything. They slept in. Every late morning, Oren went out for croissants and fresh butter, and they ate in bed.
Rose felt her belly get slightly bigger. She felt sure she was going to pop from all this French butter.
“I want you big and pregnant and powerful and strong,” Oren said.
Rose’s heart cracked open with joy. She rememberedhow judgmental her own mother had been about other people’s bodies, including Rose’s, and thanked her lucky stars she’d found someone who didn’t care about that. Who wanted her healthy. Who wanted a big and bouncy baby.
Most afternoons, they walked along the Seine, as Rose had always read you were meant to when you were in love. They people-watched from cafés. Oren told her stories about growing up different fights he’d gotten into with Zachary, and Rose found herself sharing her own life in Mississippi—how difficult it had been to be the eldest of so many children and how she’d once begged her parents to “stop making more babies” because they were running out of food.
Oren took her hand and breathed, “You’ll never go hungry again. I’ll protect you and the baby forever.”
It was January 20th already. Oren’s friends were in town, and they planned to go out to Clown Bar, a sensational restaurant in the eleventh. Rose got ready in the guest room. She was getting better at matching the makeup of the French women she saw on the street every day. It was understated yet elegant. The dress she wore had an empire waist and flowed over the growing bulge so nobody could see it—not yet. But Rose was a little over three months along. Oren said it was nearly time to share with everyone. It was almost time to announce “the next generation of Graysons.”
Oren and Rose took a cab to Clown Bar. It was raining and black and damp. They got out and met Oren’s friends beneath a splendorous ceiling painted with old-fashioned clowns and detailed with gold. Rose was sure she’d met Oren’s friends Barbara and Scott at the wedding, though she couldn’t remember a single detailabout them. It was clear they came from money. They had that smell about them. And there was something in Barbara’s eyes that Rose had once recognized in Mrs. Walden’s gaze. She was judgmental. She didn’t believe Rose belonged. She never would.
Rose put on a false smile but felt her confidence shatter.
Rose’s intellect and background were often put to the test that night. Barbara and Scott had read everything and traveled everywhere. They could speak on Greek politics from 1000 BC or cuisine in the Napa Valley or Japanese television stations. Nothing was out of reach.
By contrast, Rose knew very little about anything. She’d read a great deal, especially since coming to Paris, but most of what she’d read had been fiction. There’d been a lot of Jane Austen. Her cheeks flashed with heat.
Sometime after the third course, Barbara left to have a cigarette, and Scott excused himself to go to the bathroom. Oren took Rose’s wrist in his massive hand and squeezed hard.
“You’re embarrassing me, darling,” he shot.
Rose felt it like a dagger. She stuttered and tried to pull her wrist away, but Oren was too strong. Anxiety filled her chest, and she found it difficult to breathe.
By the time Barbara and Scott returned, Oren had released her wrist. But there was a sharp red outline where his hand had been. It felt like a warning.
That night, Oren didn’t bring up his embarrassment. But the way he looked at Rose was different. She felt like a dog that hadn’t performed correctly at a dog show. She hadn’t caught the Frisbee. She’d disobeyed.
That night opened a portal.
