Page 77 of The Substitute Fiancée

The ease with which I’m getting used to him. To us.

Because I know that the more I settle into this happiness, the more painful it will be to lose it.

*

My phone rings on the morning of the 24th. I answer, still half-asleep.

“Hi Sam, we’re downstairs. Do you have time for a coffee?”

I recognize Andrew’s voice immediately. I get up, cross the loft to the intercom, and look at the camera screen.

My heart jumps.

Andrew is there. And, slightly behind him, my mother.

“I’m coming,” I reply, my throat tight.

I leave Alexander a quick note—he’s still asleep—and head down to the street. The cold December air hits me.

Andrew hugs me warmly. My mother, meanwhile, presses two awkward kisses to my cheeks. A mechanical gesture, devoid of warmth.

She never knew how to be affectionate. When we were children, Andrew and I were left with a nanny while she spent her days organizing receptions and galas, striving more to be an irreproachable wife than a loving mother.

I don’t believe she’s vain or cruel. She’s simply a woman perpetually seeking her husband’s approval. It happens.

To please him, she was always more tender with Kristel, her stepdaughter, than with her own children.

I learned to live with that reality, swearing to myself that I would never neglect my own children to beg for a man’s love.

And then there’s Andrew. When our father tried to stop me from studying art, he was the only one who stood up for me. Thanks to him, my father eventually gave in.

“You look like you’re doing well,” he says as we walk toward a café.

“Because I am.”

He smiles, genuinely happy for me. It makes everything easier.

We sit by the window. The moment I sit down, my mother attacks.

“How could you do this to your sister?”

I tense. Andrew turns sharply toward her.

“Mom! If that’s what you came to say, there was no point in coming at all.”

She bites her lip, offended, and looks away. A heavy silence settles. I stare at my coffee cup. What could I possibly say that would change anything? Nothing.

Andrew breaks the silence, pulling a small package from his bag.

“I have a gift for you.”

I open it carefully. Delacroix: Horses and Felines. Watercolors, drawings, paintings. The reproductions are stunning. Exactly the kind of book I love.

“Thank you, Andrew. It’s perfect.”

In return, I hand him the package I brought: a watercolor of Montmartre I painted for him. Since he moved to Lyon, every Christmas, every birthday, I give him a view of Paris. A café, a bridge, a stranger in the street. A piece of home.

“It’s beautiful, Sam,” he says, studying it closely. “I’ll hang it with the others.”