A Table by the Window: A Novel of Family Secrets and Heirloom Recipes (Two Blue Doors) (45 page)

Reservations for Two

The Provençal breeze tousled the ends of my hair as I tried to organize my thoughts. “I’m beginning to figure out what I want,” I told Neil, my voice echoing slightly over the cell connection.

“Oh?”

“When you hang up and listen to the message I was leaving, you’ll hear all about it.”

Neil chuckled, and I steeled myself. He had the best laugh. If I closed my eyes, I could see the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, the way his lips turned upward.

“You want me to hang up?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“So why don’t you tell me what you want?”

I shrugged and looked out onto the lavender waving in the breeze. “I want the impossible. I want to love my job, and I want to be with you.”

“Cool.”

“Cool?” I lifted an eyebrow. “What are you, fifteen?”

Neil sighed. “Sometimes I feel like it. Here’s the thing. We talked about this earlier—I have thousands of frequent flyer miles built up.”

“Aiming to get your name on the side of a plane?”

“Not yet. I’d rather use them. And I’m at a good place to pause at work. Do you want company?”

“What?”

“I’ll fly out there. You want us to be together? So do I, and spending time in Europe doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It’s not a vacation,” I told him. “There will be family members and family dinners and people with opinions. And that’s just starting with the French family.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then I’ll see you there.”

I snorted. “You don’t even know where I am.”

“I know you’re at Château de L’Abeille. I also know how to use Google.”

“Well … fine. Be all smart like that.”

“I love you, Juliette. I want you to know that.”

Joy blossomed inside my heart. “I love you, Neil.”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“I’ll see you soon.”

I spent the next thirty-six hours expecting to get a phone call, an e-mail, or a carrier pigeon telling me that it wasn’t going to work out. That Neil had been delayed, that he’d come to his senses.

Instead, I was setting the table for dinner when I saw a pair of headlights come down the long road toward the château.

“Either that’s the German guests who haven’t checked in yet,” said
Sandrine, watching the window over my shoulder, “or your
copain
has arrived.”

We watched together as Neil unfolded from his rental car, a Fiat like mine, and stretched his arms.

“Oh là là.”
Sandrine pressed a hand to her heart.
“Très beau.”

My heart fluttered and then burst with happiness when Neil spied me through the window, a grin spreading across his face.

I raced out the door and into his arms. “You came!”

“I told you I would.” Neil pressed a kiss to my forehead. “All you had to do was ask.”

We returned to discover that the table set for three had become a table set for two; Sandrine and Grand-tante Cécile had disappeared. Two candles flickered at the center of the table.

“I think Sandrine feels invested in our having a happy reunion,” I remarked dryly.

“I can live with that.” Neil tipped my chin upward and placed a gentle kiss at the corner of my mouth.

My fingers wove into his hair as I kissed him back.

We might have stayed like that forever if the sound of Neil’s stomach hadn’t broken the moment. “Sorry,” he said. “I ate a baguette after landing. That was a few hours ago.”

“Do you want to eat dinner?”

“It smells really good,” Neil admitted sheepishly.

We sat and portioned food onto our plates; Neil poured the wine Sandrine had left open, a rich, full-bodied Bordeaux.

I told Neil about my time with Cécile, how she’d remembered just long enough to tell me about Gabriel Roussard, the man in the photo—Grande-mère’s first husband and my grandfather.

“That’s incredible.”

“And Cécile confirmed that he was a Jew. That’s why her family wasn’t
happy about it.” I shrugged. “And then she got up to make tea, and when she came back, it was gone—she was gone, at least, the version of her that remembered her teens.”

“It’ll come back.”

I shot him a wry glance. “I don’t want to bank on her Alzheimer’s feeling cooperative. She may well not remember, at least not before we leave.” I shrugged. “I shouldn’t be greedy—I still found out more than I would have on my own. Anything more is gravy.”

Neil lifted an eyebrow. “I think I know you pretty well. I don’t think you’ll be satisfied with just a slice of the story. You won’t stop working until you know it all, from the filling to the crust.”

“That’s very poetic of you.”

“Thought you’d like that.”

“I’m impressed. And you’re right. I’m just … trying to pace myself. Set realistic expectations.”

That evening I baked a batch of madeleines for our evening visit with Grandtante Cécile. Neil and I brought the cookies to her sitting room on a tray, as well as a pot of strong black tea and an appropriate number of cups and saucers.

“Bonjour,”
said Cécile, putting her paperback novel down when she saw us.

“Bonjour,”
I echoed back, showing her the tray. “Would you like some tea?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and I breathed an internal sigh of relief. Cécile’s English came and went along with her memories. If she spoke English, she was more likely to remember.

We made small talk, and I gently reminded her who Neil and I were. After Cécile and I had each enjoyed at least one madeleine and Neil had eaten four, I ventured a question. “Where exactly did Mireille and Gabriel meet?”

“I don’t know,
chérie
,” Cécile said, shaking her head sadly. “Mireille kept
him a secret from the family for a long time. There might be something about it in the letters, though.”

I sat up straight. “Letters?”

“
Naturellement
. Mireille and Gabriel wrote letters after she returned to the château. How else would they continue their attachment?”

“Um … a telephone?”

“Too expensive … calls from Paris. And besides, Papa wouldn’t have it. Mail—she pretended to be writing a girlfriend she’d met in the city.”

“Letters, then.” I pleated my skirt between my fingers and tried my best to sound casual. “Tell me about them.”

Cécile’s eyes widened. “I knew she was hiding them, but one day I snuck into her bedroom and read them. They were
very
romantic,” she said, leaning forward. “Passionate. I was shocked, of course, but not as surprised as everyone else when she returned to the city to marry the man.”

Neil squeezed my hand.

“What happened to him?” I asked. In all likelihood, I already knew the answer. “How did he die?”

“Die?” Cécile’s face went blank. “Who told you that?”

“Well …” My voice trailed off. Come to think of it, I had no records. I opened my mouth to say as much, but Cécile interrupted.

“I had a letter just last week from Mireille. She’s with child, you know, and they just bought the loveliest flat. He’s dead? Are you sure?”

“No.” I patted her hand. “I must have been mistaken.”

“Never speak lightly about such things! And Mireille with child …” She shook her head. “They love each other so much.” Grand-tante Cécile leaned forward. “She’s quite large with child, you know. She says she’s not so far along, but it’s not the first time a woman has given birth to a large baby early,
n’est-ce pas
?”

I pursed my lips together to keep from laughing. “True,” I said. “So—Mireille and Gabriel are happy?”

“Très joyeux.”
She shook her head. “My heart longs for a man to look at me
the way Gabriel looks at her. Or,” she added, her voice coy, “the way this Neil looks at you.”

My face turned pink. Neil winked at me.

I tamped down the frustration inside me. Cécile remembered Gabriel for the first time in days, but only half the story.

I crossed my legs together at the ankle and tried to reorganize my mind into a new line of questions. “So, what is Gabriel’s occupation?”

“He is a pastry chef. Mireille assured Papa that he is a very important pastry chef, working at Maxim’s.”

“What is he like?”

“Handsome—
tres beau
. They look well together—he with his dark hair, Mireille with her blond curls.”

I smiled. I’d seen a photo of Gabriel; his resemblance to Nico was uncanny. “And they wrote letters. Did Mireille keep them all, you suppose?”

“She kept all the letters I wrote to her in Paris—she showed me. All tied up with a pink silk ribbon. She read them when she was lonely, she told me. I can’t imagine she would part with Gabriel’s letters.”

“Where do you think they might be?”

“The window seat in the garret, of course,” Cécile answered without pause. “It’s where she kept all her secrets away from Papa.” She leaned forward and took another madeleine from the plate. “These are very good. Mireille is such a good baker—I’d know her madeleines anywhere.”

“She’s very good,” I agreed, while a mixture of pride and sadness stirred in my heart.

Neil and I tidied up Cécile’s sitting room before we left; Sandrine arrived to assist her mother to bed. We wished them both a good evening and slipped out of Cécile’s rooms and toward the rooms my grand-mère had used in her youth.

The garret above Grand-mère’s rooms had once been used as servants’
quarters, but had since become the storage nook for stray linens, pillows, lamps, and old clothes.

Neither Neil nor I spoke as we picked out a path to the window. The window seat looked just as Cécile had described; I removed the chintz cushion and lifted the seat.

“Oh,” I breathed.

Letters. Bundles and bundles of letters.