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“I can’t speak to him now,” Grandmama whispers. “It feels as though many things I’ve worked my life to build are slipping through my fingers.” She sighs and taps my knee. "You'd better get going. I have a feeling the atmosphere in this house is going to become tense."
"You do? Why?"
"I've always known what happens in these four walls. And you, my dear, have upset a well-oiled machine. Habits and expectation are not easily broken, and not without a fight. As for Henry…" She looks deeply into my eyes. "That secret remains between you and I."
"Yes, Grandmama."
"Is that clear?" she insists, her cheeks hardening.
"Very clear, Madame."
She nods and waves me away, dismissed.
“Wait, Natalie?” I reopen the door. “Could you ask Andrée to bring me tea? Tell her I promise not to throw the cup unless she forgets the milk.”
I’ve only just shut the door behind me, hearing the click of the handle, when a sharp voice jolts me out of my skin.
"Will she see me now?" Olivier says quickly, scaring the life out of me.
A squeal escapes my lips, and he pushes his finger into my lips, gently pressing me against the wall. "It's just me." He removes his finger, but his body is leaning against mine, his breath cascading down my face, and I dare to look into those beautiful emerald eyes.
I have no words because the sensation of him so close reaches down to a part of me I haven’t felt in a very long time. Just another moment to feel him like this, pressing into me, pressing against the wall. I close my eyes to imagine what it might be like if this could be us every day.
But when I open them, I see his green eyes have caught fire. He’s looking into the deepest part of me, the one I’ve only just rediscovered. My breath comes out quick, as though afraid to break the moment, and that’s when I see dark circles under his eyes and his rumpled hair, details I hadn’t seen when he’d entered Grandmama’s room. I was so concentrated on the story of Henry that even Olivier couldn’t hold my attention.
“Woah, Olivier. What’s happened to you?”I brush my finger over his cheek where dark circles have taken hold. He closes his eyes for a moment and then reopens them, looking only a touch more relaxed.
“Didn’t sleep much,” he says. “But for good reason, and now I know. I know what needs to be done. At least, I know for my own life. The restaurant is still swimming in my head, and I can’t seem to shake it. But if I can make right, on one part of the story, perhaps the rest will fall in place. Or perhaps not. But I need Grandmama to be in the right state of mind for it.”
His mixed-up words are charged with nervous energy.
“You’re not making very much sense, Olivier. Maybe you should rest.”
“Rest? No. No time for rest. Don’t you see?” He runs his hand along the side of my cheek, and I shiver. “I’m at the cusp, the very beginning of a whole new story. Come.”
He runs downstairs, but I can’t handle the emotional whiplash of Grandmama’s tragic story of true love and Olivier with his tired eyes full of…
Desire.
But it’s not that regular kind of desire. No, it’s more than that. Life is infused in him as he runs back up the stairs to the place where my feet have been nailed down.
“Natalie, please.” He smiles wide and the fatigue flees from his face like he’s a little boy again. A little boy in spirit, but a very grown man in front of me.
His rumpled hair suits him, and I’m beginning to understand that there is a wild side to the man I used to think was just a straight-laced, stuffy boss. He walks up to me, his eyes alight, and takes my hand.
“Come,” he whispers, and pulls me with such firmness that I have no choice but to follow. Not that I would have refused.
When we reach the back garden he lets go of my hand and breaks into a gentle jog. I can easily keep up, though I’m sure I don’t look anywhere near as dashing as he does, cantering through the gardens like a stag.
“I spent much of last night thinking back to my childhood here,” he calls back to me. “The days when my parents instilled me with the values I hold today. But I thought to myself, how?” He stops and I catch up. “How did they teach me what would become my dedication to family? My commitment to excellence? My drive to see my promises through? It’s not like they ever said that to me directly. Do you know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean.” I remember back in Sage, all the conversations in the kitchen, Mom and Dad laughing, the stories of their youth and all they got wrong, and what they would have done differently if they could have. That was much of my childhood, spent living and learning in the kitchen. It was how they showed it. The life lessons were in the words they didn’t say.
That’s how I knew that I shouldn’t lie, that they valued truth above almost all other things. And that’s why, even though it broke their hearts, they nodded when I said I had to follow my heart and go to France.
Mom had plenty of reasons why I should stay. Texas is a big state. The United States of America is a big country. I could go north, she’d said. ‘Those Canadians are pretty wild too, and some of them even speak French!’
She said it with such hope in her eyes.
