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She tells me about how Grandmama spoke through tears to a man named Henry.
“I don’t know anyone named Henry,” I say. “My grandfather was named Jacques. Who’s Henry?”
“Well, if you don’t know, then I’m certainly not going to be able to answer that question. Do you know anything about a bound book in her former bedroom?”
“What kind of book isn’t bound?”
“Good point,” Natalie says. “But I got the sense that this one would stand out.”
Seems Grandmama has been keeping secrets.
“Have a seat,” I gesture to the edge of the pool, "We have a mystery to figure out.”
She lowers herself delicately, removes her shoes and spins her legs to dip them in the water. “Oh, it’s warm.”
I lift myself to sit beside her at the pool’s edge. “Solar panels.” I point to the roof. “Most of the house runs on them. We’re beautifully positioned here to have both rain for the vines and sun most of the year round.”
She takes in a deep breath and lets it out as an even longer sigh. “This is the life,” she says.
“You see why I wish I could be here more often. Life is certainly not like this all the time,” I tell her. “You’ve seen what my life in Paris is like.”
“Sure.” She shrugs. “But just for now, can’t we pretend that it’s always like this? Cool spring evenings with a warm pool under the stars. Crickets singing and owls cooing. I never dreamed I’d get to experience this part of the country. And this is my punishment.”
“Not punishment,” I correct her. “You are repaying a debt. And believe me, you are earning it. Grandmama is not an easy charge.”
“She’s definitely not. She’s got feistiness to spare. But I think I might be starting to get through to her.”
“What gives you that indication?”
“She said both please and thank you to me today.”
I gasp. “That is special. I’m not sure I’ve heard Grandmama say either of those words in years.”
“And she hasn’t broken a teacup in two days.”
“That is also worth celebrating.”
“It might also be because she ran out of teacups.”
I smile. “Have you always had such great comic timing?”
“Ha,” she laughs. “Excuse my bark, but comic timing is just about the only thing I’ve ever had. When you’re not the kind of girl who wants to get married at nineteen and have kids by twenty-one, there isn’t much else to do where I come from, except be funny. Because if you’re not laughing—well, I don’t want to think about the alternative.”
“Sounds stifling.”
She sighs. “You don’t know the half of it. It’s not that I begrudge my upbringing nor the town of Sage. But there wasn’t much of a place there for a girl like me.”
“What kind of girl are you, Natalie?” My heartbeat accelerates as I say it, because I want to know more and more about her.
I want to know everything.
“Barefoot and pregnant at twenty-two didn’t hold any allure for me. I’m not one to judge,” she holds up her hands, “not in the slightest. But no, that was never the choice that I wanted to make. People thought I would outgrow my big dreams. ‘Flaky Nattie’ they called me for imagining anything else. They figured my high school boyfriend would become my husband. But he was only my boyfriend due to a process of elimination. He was the least dirtbaggy and had interest in something other than tailgating, football, beer, and four-wheeling.”
“But four-wheeling is fun.”
“Sure it is. When it’s not the only thing you do. But that was the problem with back home. There were the things that everybody did, and then there was nothing else. The fact alone that I wanted to come to Paris, that I would entertain the idea of leaving America on purpose, it blew people’s minds. I let a lot of folks down, following in my cousin’s footsteps. People believed that I thought I was too good for them. But it didn’t have anything to do with them. It was all about me and making a place for myself in the world when nobody else thought I could. For them, it was a silly dream of living in Paris among the Parisians. For me, it was a need to transform from a backcountry caterpillar into a French butterfly.”
She waves her arms over her head and flutters as though she had wings.
