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In which—oh hell, just read it and find out.
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After Garland left I slid down a few steps and leaned back on my elbows to admire Paris from atop Montmartre. The sunset had left the city blanketed under darkening clouds of pink and purple, and it was beautiful and peaceful, minus the growing roar of a thousand sirens heading my way. The sirens were so loud I didn’t even hear the red Vespa pull up a few feet behind me.
“Edwin Green,” Parker Haddaway said, and I spun around in disbelief.
“What are you—why’d you—how?”
“Ever the wordsmith,” Parker said with a wink, and offered her hand to help me to my feet. She was back in jeans and her old army jacket, and I noticed for the first time “Bloom” on the name tape. It was her dad’s old jacket. “Where’s Garland?” she asked.
“In the church,” I said. “Wait, how’d you know we’d be here?”
Parker pointed at the radio in the dash of the Vespa. “The news said you guys were headed back to Paris.”
“So you just drove around until you found us?”
“Yeah,” Parker said, then held her phone up and added, “or I may have enabled your Find a Friend app. So why’d Garland want to come back here?”
I smiled and shook my head at her blatant disregard of my privacy and said, “After you left Saint-Lô, I went to the church, Notre Dame, and I spoke to this old nun who was friends with Madeleine. She was waiting for him, Parker. Madeleine was waiting for Garland to come back and ... remember when Garland told us the army listed him as killed in action after his crash, and how it took years to straighten out all the paperwork?” Parker knew where this was going. Her smile faded and she nodded and I said, “A soldier tried to help Madeleine find Garland, but he ... when he ... she thought he’d died.”
“And ... he thought she’d died,” Parker said, and I nodded. After a moment Parker asked, “Did you find out what became of her? Of Madeleine?”
“She became a nun,” I said. “One of the singing nuns here, at Sacré-Cœur.”
“The ones Garland would come listen to,” Parker said, completing my sentence.
I nodded again and we were both quiet for a moment before I said, “She’s dead ... she died six years ago.”
Parker wiped a tear from her cheek and said, “That poor man ... I’m glad he at least made it back here.”
“Me too,” I said.
The police were getting close now, I could tell by the red lights bouncing off the white-washed cathedral behind Parker. “You’ve got to go,” I said. “Why’d you even come back?”
Parker smiled. I never got used to her smiling at me. “Garland was afraid I’d hurt you,” she said, “and I told him that was the plan. I didn’t know how to save you without breaking you a little.”
The first police car slid to a stop at the bottom of the hill, and the handful of tourists still sitting on the steps realized something was about to go down and they might not want to be around for it.
“I’d almost made it to Belgium.”
“Huh,” I said, turning back to Parker. She was sitting on her Vespa again with a hand held out.
“I’d almost made it to Belgium when I realized I didn’t want to do this without you. I think ... I think I love you, Edwin Green. And I don’t know where we will go or what we’ll do, but we’ve got a small fortune and the rest of our lives to figure it out.” She looked behind me down the hill as dozens more police cars arrived on the scene and she said, “Come on, we’ve got to go. Now!”
“Parker, I ...”
“Not the time for romantic proclamations, Edwin Green. You can tell me in Belgium. Now come on,” she said, slapping the back of the Vespa.
We like to think we’ll have ample time to make the big decisions in life. Where will I go to college? Who will I marry? But sometimes we’re upside down on an emotional roller coaster, sleep deprived beyond all coherent thought, and we’ve got five seconds to make the call. I told you I was a cautious person. That I rarely made a decision, any decision, without thinking two or three steps ahead and considering all possible negative outcomes. And though I spent the last week making a lifetime of rash decisions, in that moment, when all I wanted to do was climb on the back of that Vespa and tell Parker Haddaway that I loved her too, my mind flooded with a thousand and one reasons not to run away and live a vagabond life in Europe.
“Edwin?”
“Parker,” I said, “I—”
I didn’t say it, but I didn’t need to, she knew I wasn’t going. And if this hurt Parker Haddaway, if it caused her even the slightest emotional discomfort, she did not show it. She just put on her helmet, cranked her Vespa, and was gone before I had a chance to say anything else.
My regret was instant. I watched her speed off around Sacré-Cœur and out of my life forever, then I sat back down atop Montmartre as dozens of machine-gun-toting men rushed up the hill toward me. They were shouting things I didn’t understand, and I buried my head in my knees and begged them to take me home.