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"I was absolutely there for her."

He smiles down at the cookie, softer now.

"She was spending the summer with her aunt in Villefranche, painting every day, taking commissions when she had to, speaking French so fast I only caught every fourth word. She said the light there was different. Kinder. That the sea made everything look like it had been brushed with glass." He looks up at me. "She loved that place before she loved me."

My throat tightens.

"She told me once that if she ever had a daughter, she wanted her to grow up speaking French and knowing there were places in the world where life could be beautiful and slow and full of color. Places where you didn’t have to earn joy. You could just stand in it." He smiles. "She said maybe that daughter would live there one day. Maybe she’d paint there too."

My eyes sting, but I blink it away.

"So you eloped," I say softly, because I know this part too.

His grin turns boyish. "We did."

"Three weeks later."

"Twenty-three days," he corrects. "Your mother wore a cream sundress she bought from a shop in Nice, and I wore the only linen shirt I owned. We were sunburned, under-dressed, and had exactly enough money left for the train fare back and a bottle of cheap champagne."

"And almond cake," I say.

"And almond cake," he agrees. "From a bakery with blue shutters. Your mother said if she was going to run off and marry an American she’d only known for three weeks, there should at least be good cake."

I laugh through the ache in my chest.

He looks at me then, warm and certain in a way that feels like a gift.

"That’s why she always wanted you to see it, honey. Not because it was fancy. Not because it was Europe. Because it was where her life began. Ours too. It was the place she felt most like herself." He reaches for another cookie. "She used to say the Riviera taught her that beauty wasn’t frivolous. It was necessary."

I swallow hard.

"And she wanted that for you," he says. "A place where you could become more yourself, not less."

After an hour, dinner roll-call means I need to let him get back to his friends. Dinner tonight is lasagna and bingo—his favorite night of the week.

He gives me a big squeeze, and I tell him that I’ll be back tomorrow to see him.

In my car, parked in the Brookhaven lot, I sit with my hands in my lap and try to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do now.

"You’re going to sit there and tell me he fired you? For what?" Penelope Matthews, GM for the Hawkeyes hockey team, and someone I hold near and dear to my heart. She’s looked out for me since day one when Phil hired me. She’s pacing her kitchen like a caged animal, gesturing wildly with a slice of pizza. "What possible reason could he give?"

"Redundant," I say flatly. I’m on her couch with a bottle of cider, watching hockey on the TV—which is somehow funny and tragic at the same time.

"Redundant?" She laughs—a harsh, bitter sound. "You do your job better than anyone on that floor. I’ve seen your organizational systems. That’s not redundancy; that’s excellence."

"Well, apparently it’s also unnecessary," I say.

"If I had an open position for you, I would hire you in a minute. You know I would."

I nod. "I know. Don’t worry about me. I’ll find something."

Her mind moves a mile per minute, and then something clicks. "You’re coming to the auction next week."

"What? No. I don’t even have a job there anymore."

"Cammy has an extra ticket. You’ll go as her date."

Cammy Wrenley. Penelope’s administrative assistant and one of my best friends.