TEXT MESSAGE:
Saturday, Jan. 23, 11:45 a.m.
Melanie: Holy crap check your email
Antoine emailed me
Antoine’s email, which we quickly translated into English, landed in our inbox just hours before we set off on our trip.
Hello,
I am the son of Mrs. Maria Duval. You tried to contact me several times. My mother does not want to get in touch with you unless it’s through her lawyer.
I would ask you in the future to stop contacting my wife or children. Contact me but do not involve my family anymore.
I’d appreciate if you told me what you want from me.
Cordially,
Antoine PALFROY
The timing couldn’t have been worse, as we were planning to knock on her door as soon as we arrived in Callas. We were thrilled to have made contact with him—Maria’s very own son—but we worried that we had gotten off on the wrong foot by bothering his wife and adult children, who we thought might lead us to him or his mother. Antoine’s stern warning to leave Maria alone surely gave us second thoughts.
This was just the beginning of the day’s drama. As we wrestled with Antoine’s email, we grew increasingly concerned that we were going to arrive in France unable to speak with anyone around us—not to mention with Maria. Julia Jones, the French-speaking colleague who’d made the last round of phone calls for us, was scheduled to meet us in Callas. Much to our dismay, she lost her green card the day before our scheduled departure. We worried that she wouldn’t be able to leave the United States without it. At the same time, a massive winter storm was brewing across the East Coast, which threatened to throw a wrench into her travel plans even if she was allowed to get past airport security. Without Julia, our expensive trek to France could all be in vain.
Then we began to worry about the two of us being able to make it there, especially since we were both coming from different cities. If we’d been able to watch the day unfold on a movie screen, the dramatic narration may have gone something like this.
Of the two intrepid female reporters, Blake had always been the free spirit. So while type A Melanie sat at her gate hours in advance, Blake wasn’t quite as prepared. Thanks to unusually long security lines stretching around the Denver airport, as travelers from across the country were being rerouted because of the storm, she began her journey by missing her flight to Chicago, where she had been set to rendezvous with Melanie before the long red-eye flight to London. Melanie was already in the air as Blake pleaded with the gate agents to let her on her plane, which was still sitting on the runway. When Melanie landed and turned her phone on, she received a rapid-fire series of frantic text messages and emails from Blake alerting her that she’d missed her flight and would be flying straight to London. Melanie’s stomach sank. She was already becoming increasingly nervous about the whole adventure, and she had been looking forward to seeing Blake, to hopefully put her own nerves at ease. Now, as she ate her cold airport falafel before boarding the dreaded plane, she wished she could just turn around and head back to sunny Los Angeles.
About eight hours later, Melanie landed in London, with just a few hours remaining before the short flight to Nice. Still there was no word from Blake. Worried that Blake had been waylaid yet again and not wanting to enter international security and risk leaving for Nice without her, Melanie paced back and forth in front of the winding lines, much to the chagrin of the airport employees, who kept telling her she was going to miss her flight. Finally, mere minutes before Melanie was about to give up and head to the gate alone, a panicked Blake came running full speed around the corner—attracting the attention of most people in the busy Heathrow terminal.
The two journalists barely had time to say hello to each other before the employees ushered them into the line. They were almost through the security checkpoint when Blake was pulled because she’d forgotten to remove her toiletries from her luggage. Instead of requiring her to remove them and try again, the security worker seemed to take pride in going as slowly as possible, looking carefully through every single one of Blake’s items—as Melanie looked on in sheer terror.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Blake was cleared and the two of them sprinted to the gate, boarding the flight to Nice just in time. They settled into their uncomfortable airplane seats and breathed a sigh of relief. The worst was over.
• • •
A few short hours later, we landed in the beautiful city of Nice, ready for our hour-long drive to the hotel.
We could see the bright blue ocean as our plane landed, and after navigating through all the French signs in the airport, we made it to the rental car desk. Luckily the agent spoke English and told us he had one of the best vehicles for us. At our designated spot in the garage was a giant black Peugeot SUV. Our rental cars on past reporting trips had typically been cramped sedans, so we were impressed that we’d managed to score this vehicle with our modest budget for the trip.
As soon as we got on the road, we figured out why.
As tiny cars whizzed past us, our own vehicle was barely able to fit in the lanes of the main street leaving the airport. And as the roads got narrower on the way out of the city, we began to worry that we would hit cars trying to pass us or sideswipe parked vehicles and the large concrete walls bordering the right side of the road.
The drive started out easy enough despite the size of our car, all the signs in French, the endless roundabouts, and a dashboard that showed us our speed only in kilometers. But then our GPS began navigating us through winding mountain roads. At first we were in awe of the beautiful views around us. Soon, though, the sky got darker and darker and the hills got steeper and steeper, making the drive increasingly treacherous.
In retrospect, we can’t help but laugh about what this must have looked like. Two American women driving alongside French cliffs at a snail’s pace in a gigantic SUV that took up almost the entire narrow road. But at the time, it was terrifying. It was pitch-black outside, and every time we took a corner, we were afraid we would hit another car straight on.
We had no idea how fast we were going. It felt like we were flying until we noticed a line of cars piling up behind us. (We would later convert our speed of 60 kilometers an hour and realize we were moving along at less than 40 miles per hour.) On multiple occasions we tried to look for a place to pull over to let the other cars pass, if for nothing else but to get their bright lights out of our rearview mirror. With nowhere large enough to fit our car, though, we just kept going.
Those three hours of driving felt like days. Finally we pulled into Draguignan, a town neighboring Callas, where we had been able to find an affordable hotel at the last minute. There we met Julia, who we were so relieved had made it to France, and Jordan Malter, a producer from our video team who was there to document our search. Wearing the same clothes from the past thirty-six hours and looking especially shell-shocked after our harrowing drive, we greeted Julia in the hotel lobby to head to a much-needed dinner. Unlike us, she actually looked like she belonged in the South of France. Wearing a chic peacoat and black heels with her dark brown hair in a stylish bob, Julia looked ready for a night on the town. We just wanted a bottle of wine.
As we scarfed down some pizza at a nearby café, one of the only places open on a Sunday evening, we recounted our hellish journey to Julia and Jordan in painful detail. Rather than commiserate with us, they looked at each other in confusion, saying the drive they’d taken on the large French highway had been pretty simple. “Didn’t you guys go through any tolls?” Julia asked.
That’s when it hit us. As we had tried to figure out how to switch our French-speaking GPS to English, we’d selected the “no tolls” option, thinking French tollbooths would make an already foreign drive even more confusing.
Instead, we’d almost killed ourselves before we even got to Callas.