Confessions: The Paris Mysteries (3 page)

We celebrated Gram Hilda’s awesome yet
mysterious gifts and challenges at Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, a world-class restaurant that had been awarded the maximum number of Michelin stars, and it might have rated more.

I’ve been to top restaurants before. I’m from
New York
. But this place was at the pinnacle of its own category.

My instant impression was that the ornate Louis XV–style dining room was like the inside of a jewelry box. The room was lined with embroidered screens. Crystals hung from wires above our heads, and there was table art on the ivory linens.

I noticed everything, but my mind was in a James
Rampling death spiral, thinking over everything we had said and done, wondering again how James could have made so many promises and then abandoned me—entirely.

Truth is, this wasn’t my first collision with the unexpected and incomprehensible. My life history is shot through with bizarre events, tricks of fate, blind alleys, rabbit holes, and bonus rounds, but yesterday I had been with someone who I thought loved me unconditionally. A
partner
.

I thought my life had
changed
.

And now it had changed in a totally different way. We were financially secure, and this was such a relief, I doubt my brothers even noticed that I was underwater, drowning.

Hugo, for instance, a wildly uninhibited eater, ordered one of everything on the astonishing menu of exquisite dishes.

He confided to our waiter, “I’m very rich.”

Our waiter, very smooth in a black jacket, white shirt, and bow tie, laughed and suggested to Hugo that he come to the chef’s table in the kitchen, where he would be served a portion of everything he wanted.

The rest of us stayed in our seats, and over the next hour we were served outrageous delights: caviar, steamed langoustines, guinea-fowl pie, dishes flavored with “precious herbs and spices.”

I merely picked at the delicacies, but I forgot about James for a few exquisite moments when I tasted the OMG
wine
. A Lafon Montrachet, it only cost about
two thousand dollars a bottle
.

“Cheers, Tandy,” said my twin brother, holding up his crystal wineglass. “I really mean it. Cheers, not tears. Please let go and enjoy this spectacular night. Nothing will ever be exactly like this again.”

I was wrong when I said my brothers didn’t know I was suffering. Harry, sitting on my left, knew. I touched my glass to his and said, “Write me a song.”

“I can only write what I’m feeling. And that’s happy.”

“That could work,” I told Harry.

Matthew was sitting to my right. Fresh out of jail after being accused of double murder—an accusation I’d had a pretty big role in disproving—he was beaming. I made the mistake of wondering out loud what it would be like to live in Paris, and in true big-brother fashion, he doggedly staked out the opposing position.

“Tandy, you wouldn’t like it here. I’d even say you’d be miserable. You’d have to wear black all the time and diet constantly, like all Parisian women do. And have you seen the young French men? Messy. Scruffy. And they smoke. All of them.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Matty,” I growled. “And now you’re making me mad.”

Matthew laughed and held up his hands, saying, “Don’t get mad, Tandy, please. Oh, listen up. I have an announcement.”

As he spoke, dessert was served, and Hugo flew back to our table. Matthew clinked a silver fork against a wineglass, and when we were all staring at him over little pots of chocolate, he said, “Uncle Jacob, Tandy, little bros. My contract with the Giants has been
renewed
. So
woo-hoo
, right, guys? I’m playing football again! I’m going back to New York—”

Hugo yelled with all the air in his lungs, “Noooooooo!”

He got up on his chair and threw his arms around Matty’s neck. “Don’t gooooo.”

“I’ll call you every night,” Matthew said. “I promise.”

“You’re going right
now
?” Harry asked. “Like
tonight
?”

“My flight takes off in three hours. I love you all. Now tell me you love me, too.”

I was going to miss the hell out of my great, larger-than-life big brother. We told him so.

Wow.
Something amazing just happened.

We made Matthew cry.

Late that night, I lay sleepless,
sandwiched between goose-down blankets and silk sheets in a huge canopied bed, maybe the same bed Gram Hilda had slept in once upon a long time ago. I’d gotten past hating James Rampling and had moved halfway back to loving him again.

I couldn’t help it.

I could still feel his mouth. I could still remember the way he looked at me. I was starting to think I’d been unfair.

Maybe James
hadn’t
left me because he didn’t love me.

He’d said he’d left me because he
did
. And there was good reason.

The last time I’d seen James, six long months ago, it had
been under circumstances both different from last night and somewhat the same.

We were alone together, but instead of lying entwined inside a small one-star hotel in Paris, we were walking in the damp sand of the Hamptons. The sea breeze was blowing through my hair, and James and I were cooling off at the edge of the ocean, not quite ready for the bed in the cottage just behind us in the dunes.

We hadn’t known each other very long, but we were getting close, kissing, sharing secrets, finding out how alike we were—when headlights came out of nowhere and pinned us where we stood. And thanks to my parents and his father, that had been the last I’d seen of him, until yesterday.

So maybe what James said in his note was all true: that his father was the devil, and I wasn’t safe. If I loved James, I had to trust him, right?

But would I ever see him again?

The sky was dark, and there was only the faintest moonlight coming in through the window, just as it had when James and I clutched each other in the small bed at just this time in his room last night.

I thrashed around in the enormous, luxurious bed, but there were almost too many pillows. And so I used them well, packing myself in between them so that it felt like James was holding me every way I turned.

I wound my hair around my fingers, twisted it at the nape of my neck. I opened the top buttons of my pajamas, threw the sheets and bedcovers off me. My skin was hot and tingling, and I was thinking about James.

I wondered if he was lying in bed somewhere thinking about
me
.

I reached for James—and I got
my arms around pillows. Only pillows.

My eyes flashed open, and with a sickening wave of disappointment, it all came flooding back: the whole twelve-hour drama of dreams fulfilled, just before they crashed, burned, dried up, and blew away, leaving me with a million questions that came down to this one: Why?

I patted the nightstand until I found my phone. It was a few minutes before six. It was just about this time yesterday morning when I’d stumbled out of the hotel as though I’d been hit with a piano and walked home alone, wondering what had really happened with James. Why had he abandoned me? Where had he gone? Would I ever see him again?

If he had left me, could I just accept that it was over?

Or was I going to torture myself with whats and whys for-freaking-ever?

I sat up in bed and looked around at Gram Hilda’s room with its pale-peach-painted walls, wood-burning fireplace, and antique Aubusson carpets. I shook James out of my head long enough to think about this extraordinary many-roomed stone house, which, like Gram Hilda herself, was an intriguing mystery.

Well, I’ve never met a mystery I didn’t want to solve.

I climbed down out of the big bed of many pillows and rooted around in my suitcase. I dressed in a pair of jeans, an NYPD T-shirt, and low-top Converse. Just in case, I grabbed my handy glow-in-the dark LED flashlight.

Jacob had told me that Gram Hilda’s house had been kept just the way she had left it, the maintenance being borne by the estate. When Hugo turned twenty-one, we could direct the board to keep the house or sell it.

Meanwhile, we could use the place as we chose, except for Gram Hilda’s private workroom. That was totally off-limits.

My door opened silently. I left my room, paused a moment, then stepped out into the large hallway. There was a bedroom door in the middle of each of the four walls and a narrow staircase running right through the
center of the hall. Satisfied that I was the only one wandering through the house, I took the stairs up to the third floor.

The staircase ended there, emptying into a smaller hallway just under the mansard roof.

There was only one door on this floor, and when I tried the knob, it was solidly, profoundly locked. But for every lock, there’s gotta be a key.

I scampered downstairs to the main foyer and found Jacob’s jacket hanging in a closet. I rummaged in his pockets until I found a set of keys, then—a little bit shocked at myself, and a lot exhilarated—I darted back up to the locked door. I picked through the key ring and finally found one key that appeared to be the right size for the lock.

I was wrong, so I pawed through the keys again. My second choice fit perfectly, and when I turned the key a few times, the tumblers tripped.

I opened the door, and I’ve got one word for what I saw:
Whoa.