Forty
Aunt Evelyn placed a hand on my arm to steady me. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
Had I known it would take almost dying to cure me, I might have jaywalked earlier. It was like a part of me, the part I could never tame, died on that Paris street corner.
Wiping my eyes, I refilled my teacup before stepping outside to observe a crowd of people pass. All the while, I sipped my tea, without pain, and without worry. My aunt followed me out, smiling as she watched me finish the cup.
“Do you want to walk around town drinking tea to make sure?” she asked.
“I’m tempted to,” I laughed. A sound straight from my soul, loud, joyful.
For the first time in my life, I truly felt free.
Red threads were everywhere, connecting people near and far—a tapestry of silk strings sewing souls together. In the ocean of couplings, two people, though, were unconnected: my aunt and me. My excitement contrasted with her growing dimness.
I came to Paris and got more than what I desired, yet my aunt had not.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling, Auntie?”
“Because I chose this.” She waved her arm to encompass the whole neighborhood. “I went in with eyes open. I took the risk, and thought I could do it. Now, I’m not so sure.”
Her voice broke. Without any hesitation, I hugged her. She rested her head against mine, leaning in for support. I loved her and wanted nothing more than to see her happy.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to help you,” I said, squeezing her close. “By the time I leave Paris, everything will turn around.”
“If only I had your confidence. I was so sure this would be my time, that I earned the right to choose what I wanted.” A joyless laugh escaped her lips. “I’d been foolish in thinking there was still a chance, but it’s too late. Sometimes, dreams are meant to stay outside the realm of reality. Yearning for the stars won’t bring them to your fingertips.”
She had given up, but I refused to allow her dream to die.
Though I wasn’t needed at the store, I stayed and kept her company. The tension in our relationship was gone. No longer instructor and pupil, we were now just aunt and niece. However, tension had given way to a lingering sadness, which plagued my aunt. My tasting her teas brought her momentary joy, but she soon returned to her morose state.
I yearned to see the confident, strong woman I’d admired that fateful night at the restaurant. She had been resplendent then, challenging her old love with her presence and her words. Now, the fight had abandoned her, leaving exhaustion and resignation in its wake. Gone were the glorious golds: she now wore muted grays.
It wasn’t fair; I had what I wanted, she didn’t. We fell into an odd waltz: I dampened my happiness, she masked her sorrow.
The prospect of meeting Marc for dinner raised her spirits a little. I still hadn’t heard from him, aside from the drawing I carried in my purse. I missed him.
When the shop closed and Uncle Michael returned from his meetings, I retreated to my room upstairs in relief. My failed stint as a cheerleader left the bitter taste of disappointment on my tongue. I dialed Auntie Faye’s number.
“Hi, Auntie, did you send the picture?”
My aunt was in her salon. The ambient noise filled the background, making it hard for me to hear her. “Yes, it should arrive tomorrow morning. What’s the rush?”
I ignored the question. It would lead to too many follow-up demands. “Did you find anything else out?”
“Mr. Renaud has many admirers. So many desperate women. The worst is his close friend’s sister, Leticia Chirac. She has been after him for years. One time, she bribed the concierge of a hotel he was staying at in Zurich to get into his room. It caused a scandal. She was waiting for him on his bed, naked. Allegedly. One of the maids found her when he called to have someone check if he had left his briefcase in the room. Everyone involved was fired. He travels with his assistant now.”
“Creepy.” I shuddered. “Does this mean he has a bodyguard then?”
“You mean his driver and assistant. Mr. Leo Lieu. Ex-marine. Ninth-degree red belt in jujitsu. He’s a distant relative of Ning’s husband. I asked George, and he said they met once at a family reunion in upstate New York.”
I might be able to use this. Uncle George had always doted on me, and dropping his name on the bodyguard might give me access to Girard. Enlisting him in my matchmaking scheme was a stretch, but at minimum, I hoped that the vague family connection could grant me an audience before he put me in a chokehold.
“Linda wants to know when you’re calling. You know you don’t want to keep your mother waiting. Call her after you get off the phone with me.”
“I will. I promise.”
“How is Evelyn doing?”
Miserable and defeated. “She’s with Uncle Michael now. He’s visiting from Munich,” I said instead. “We’re going to have dinner soon.”
“Good. We’re worried about her.”
“You sound like you miss her.”
“I do. We all do. She’s one of us, even she can’t deny that.” There was a pause and a sigh. “Go call your mother.”
“Yes, Auntie. Thank you again.”
I hung up.
Before I could call Ma, I needed to figure out how to downplay the accident. She would worry regardless, yet I had to mitigate the damage as much as possible. The best-case scenario happened: I was alive and free of the curse. And I had a romantic prospect. If I could get her to focus on the latter, maybe she’d gloss over the former.
I dialed Ma’s number and crossed my fingers that she was in a meeting and I could leave a voice message.
No luck. My mother picked up. “Vanessa, why haven’t you called? Are you avoiding me?”
“It’s been busy here. I need you to do me a favor: please don’t freak out.” I then detailed what happened in a gush of words, an inundation of trivial facts in a shower of syllables. It was the preferred tactic of a guilty child caught in the act. “And I’m about to have dinner now with Uncle Michael and Aunt Evelyn. They’re going to meet Marc.”
Ma created a series of exasperated noises that made me thankful I was 5,571 miles away. “You almost died and you didn’t even call your mother!” Her scream made me pull the phone away from my face.
“I am okay. Only minor scrapes. My suitcase took the brunt of it. I’m fine, Ma, really.”
“That’s not the point. I’m also upset with Evelyn, but that’s between me and her.”
I didn’t want to be privy to that conversation, nor the current one, where my dear mother needed to be placated like an angry deity. “She didn’t want to alarm you. She talked to the doctor and knew I was fine. Calling you would have freaked you out when the situation was handled. She probably asked them to keep me overnight, and I was discharged the next day.” The last part was a lie, but my aunt needed all the points with my mother that I could give her.
“Still.” The decibels decreased as her outrage subsided. “You both should have told me sooner.”
A message flashed across the screen. It was an incoming call from Marc.
“I have to go. It’s Marc. I have to take this.”
“Fine. We’ll talk later.”
As I hung up and switched to the other line, I felt a foreboding sense of dread, not from any kind of preternatural ability, but born from the repeated experience of being stood up.