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“Slow down, child. Sit.” She gestures to another stool in the row. “The air was too fresh with promise not to come out. These bones may be aging, but the blood that runs through my veins is as young as ever.”
She may be well in her eighties, but I’ve got to hand it to Grandmama, she’s far from one foot in the grave. I pull over the stool, though I know this quiet moment can’t go on.
“I have to tell the others right away, madame. Everyone is so worried about you.”
“Just one more minute,” she replies. “I don't want them to worry for long, but I do just need a little bit of peace.” She takes in a deep breath. “It's been so long since I came out here. These grounds belonged to my grandparents, and then my mother and father, and then me. I still find it hard to believe that I'm a matriarch now, when I used to be the little one running up and down the rows of grapes…”
“Grandmama, I really think we should tell…”
“Just wait,” she interrupts, a bit forcefully. “Natalie, can you imagine what it’s like to be old?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, madame.”
“That’s the right answer. And be glad for it. Your eyes sparkle with questions of the future. You are desperate to be a woman different from the others, am I right?”
My voice catches in my throat. How can she know so much about me?
“You’re right. Not that I begrudge anyone back home,” I add quickly.
“But you have something to prove.”
“I have to prove that I can do it. That I can be someone else from who they expected me to become.”
“Ahhh,” madame sighs and twists on her stool. “The classic expectations of family and society. It is an old story.”
“But true.”
“And you wish to become your own woman, make your own way, leave all of that behind.”
“I’m trying.”
“There is no trying!” she whispers loudly. “There’s only living it. But you see, chère Natalie, what we want most to leave behind is what follows us most closely wherever we go. I also ‘tried’, but then I realized, while living the life I thought I wanted, that who I am could not change. I was in a battle that could never be won. Instead I had to accept.” Her eyes cloud over. “When we don’t accept ourselves, life forces us to. Tragedy, grief, loss…” She stops, the only sound remaining is a gentle breeze through the vines. “I've become nostalgic these days. I never used to be that way. Can't say I like it very much, this looking back on the past. I always wanted to look forward. But now so much of my life and adventures are behind me…”
Her voice trails off and though part of me is dying to let the others know I found her, she needs this moment.
“It's because of you,” she says, and a wave of guilt washes over me.
“Me? I'm so sorry. What did I do?”
She laughs. “You did nothing. It’s what you represent. It’s your spirit and your flaws. It's the sound of your mother tongue that takes me back to a different time. A period in my life when, like you, I thought I could have it all.” She looks up at the clouds. “How wrong I was.”
“But, Grandmama, you’re the one with spirit. From nothing, look at what you’ve built. An incredible legacy, the restaurant, these estates—”
“Oh yes, yes,” she waves me off. “All of this is true, and I don't regret any of it. But America… it was supposed to be America.”
With every word she speaks, I'm more and more desperate to know what on earth she's talking about. But her face changes, and a gentle frown comes across her lips. “Alright,” she says. “Let’s alert the others. Pretend you just found me.”
“Olivier! Sebastien! Tout le monde!” I jump up from my seat waving my arms like mad. “Over here, over here. I’ve found her!”
I hear a series of shouts, and they come rushing in this direction.
“You know how I learned English?” she asks me.
“No,” I say. “I don't have a clue.”
Olivier is barely more than a few rows away now.
“I was in love with an American but forbidden to marry him.”
