Tangled Ashes (17 page)

As he walked, Beck passed bar after bar, loud music and heavy smoke billowing out the doors as patrons entered and exited. There were sports bars and racing bars and Irish pubs and gay bars and dating bars. He’d never seen such a plethora of drinking establishments in the States, all crammed tightly into expensive pieces of real estate. It was easy for him to pass the first one without stopping. Jade’s comment about being chained to the bottle had cut a little too deep, particularly as it had come on his third day of abstention. Much as he wanted to prove to himself that he was not as chained as Jade had suggested, he knew that third day always came, and with it the inevitable capitulation to the comforts of the buzz. He
hated to admit it, but the best part about sobriety was the moment he decided to break it.

Beck wandered through the Latin Quarter with its assortment of small boutiques and exorbitant prices. He stopped at a café for the strongest espresso he’d ever tasted and bought a croissant from an expensive
boulangerie
.
“When in Paris,” right?
And then he turned a corner onto the rue de l’Esplanade and stopped dead in his tracks, staring awestruck at a rear view of Notre Dame Cathedral. It would have been impossible for a man in his line of work to remain unmoved by the fragile balance of power and grace in the cathedral’s flying buttresses and spires. It was, in real life, much grander than the pictures and documentaries he’d seen could have conveyed. The sheer magnitude of its presence on the edge of the Seine took his breath away. The stained-glass windows glinted in the pale noonday sun as the bells incredibly high up in its towers rang the hour. For a brief moment, nothing else mattered but the vision of architectural splendor before him. He shook his head in awe and crossed the street.

He walked by a row of small booths as he made his way to the front of the church, each one of them displaying a random assortment of books, antique postcards, porcelain figurines, and works of art. Much as he wanted to stop and browse, the cathedral drew him on toward its gargoyle-shielded entrance and the vast beauty inside. Beck entered, glancing at the signs that forbade photography and eating on the premises, and moved to the back of the neatly aligned chairs and benches that covered much of the cathedral’s floor. There was little light in Notre Dame other than the glow of candles and the sun’s weak rays slanting through the stained-glass windows that flanked both sides of the space. There was a reverent stillness—as if the tourists who milled in its aisles had been stunned into silence.

Beck followed the perimeter of the church, past crypts and monuments to the dead, under inestimable statues, and around
limestone columns. He stopped occasionally merely to absorb the atmosphere of serenity and security, emotions that were so unfamiliar to him that they made him mildly uncomfortable. He passed an empty confessional and tried to resist the ridiculous urge to step inside for a few moments, just to sit and still his mind. It was with a self-deprecating sigh that he finally gave in and pushed the privacy curtain aside. A nun hurried up to him.
“Non, non, non, monsieur,”
she whispered. “No priest, no priest.” Becker nodded and waited for her to walk away before taking a seat in the confessional and pulling the curtain closed. He leaned his head back against the carved wooden wall and closed his eyes, the exhaustion of the past few weeks catching up with him. The small space smelled of wood polish, and the curtain muted what few sounds reached him from the cathedral floor.

He sat there for long minutes, his mind drifting in and out of a deep rest, his spirit somehow soothed by the darkness and the intimate aura of grace that permeated the church. He thought briefly of addressing the God who was rumored to like that kind of thing, but it had been so long since his last prayer, so brutally long, that he knew it would border on blasphemy. If he didn’t have the words to address children like Philippe and Eva, how was he supposed to find his way around talking to the Big Guy?

Beck heard someone enter the other side of the confessional and pull open the partition. He could see only a vague shadow beyond the screen. The presence on the other side waited for Beck to speak, while all that flashed through his mind was the pressure to say something. He knew the words. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Weak words. Pathetic words. Rebellion descended on him with anger. Who was this priest? What good could
he
do for the demons that plagued Becker?

“How can I help you, my son?” came a soft voice from beyond the dividing screen.

The serenity that had blanketed Beck moments before erupted into full-blown rage. Not trusting himself to speak, he tore through the curtain and stalked out of Notre Dame on stiff, wooden legs, ashamed at the peace he’d allowed to soften him.

Becker must have veered off the beaten track as he made his way back to the Gare du Nord that evening, several beers warm in his gut and his mind filled with the architectural wonders of the ancient city. It was nearly 11 p.m. when he found himself staring at a long cobblestone street lined on both sides with Paris’s women of the night, hookers who stood in doorways wearing little more than fishnet stockings and shreds of cloth as the night’s temperatures descended toward freezing. The prostitutes called him and pouted at him and posed for him as he walked by. He saw a couple johns, both of them engaged in bargaining for the favors they desired, their language faintly slurred, their stance a little less than steady. Beck took a better look at the second john as he passed him. He seemed to be about forty. His cologne smelled expensive. He was clean-shaven and dressed for a respectable job. The man glanced at Beck and shouted, “What’re you lookin’ at?” Beck changed sidewalks and walked more briskly, eager to reach the streetlamp at the end of the block. A hooker called out to him, offered him a discount, told him she liked his shoes. By the time he reached the brighter light of the intersection, he felt dirty, guilty by association, and scared out of his mind.

Beck spent the next three days in frenzied labor. He stopped only for a few hours of exhausted sleep in the middle of the night, then got up again and resumed his work. The banister, carvings, and steps were nearly finished. He’d checked and triple-checked them against the remaining elements of the original staircase and was
fairly sure they would fit seamlessly. All that remained to be done was the staining and polishing that would give the new segments the same antique look as the rest of the woodwork. When he wasn’t in his office, Beck was lending a hand in every aspect of the labor being done around the château, climbing scaffolding, sanding floors, mixing wallpaper paste . . . whatever would keep him busy. And still the battle in his mind raged on.

The dining rooms were nearly finished too, with two and a half weeks to spare before Sylvia’s big party. The next item of business was to sand down the herringbone parquet and treat it again. The purpose here wasn’t to restore the wood to looking like new—Thérèse had decided that leaving it with some small signs of age and wear would only increase its visual appeal—but the new boards they had installed to replace the damaged ones needed to be blended in with the original wood, and the larger stains, some of them centuries old, needed to be sanded out.

Thérèse wasn’t in much better shape than Beck, though he couldn’t understand what had her so sullen. This should have been her favorite part of the project, the part when the heavy construction and renovation were finished and the interior decoration could begin in earnest, but she stalked around the castle giving one-word answers, shrilling orders, and making her displeasure known when things didn’t look the way she wanted them to.

There had been little communication between Beck and Jade since the saber incident. She had dutifully provided meals for him and been polite as she’d delivered them, but there hadn’t been any banter lately, no attempts to destabilize him by calling his bluffs as she had so many times before. She’d gotten another haircut—Beck had noticed that much—a short bob that framed her face. He suspected she’d had it dyed too—not that it was any of his business. It was just that with so little talking going on, all he had to occupy himself was observation.

The children, too, had been less than cordial, but he figured they weren’t much different than a beaten dog steering clear of people with sticks. They’d been hurt once by the big man they considered a hero, and they wouldn’t soon put themselves in a position for it to happen again. Beck realized the burned bridges that surrounded him—every single one of them—had been damaged by his own actions.

There was something else that had been plaguing him since his day in Paris. Something dark and sordid that had shaken his already-fragile equilibrium. He kept picturing the john bargaining with the prostitute on that ill-lit street in the city. The designer clothes. The appearance of confidence and charm. He’d seen a man who probably had all the earmarks of success yet had been reduced to paying hookers for company. The thought repulsed him, but no more than the easy parallel he could draw between that man and himself. The bottle was his gratuitous release, and he knew that when it failed to distract him and warm him, the Internet would become his fallback plan. Oh, he’d never spent hours on adult sites as some of his coworkers had, nor engaged in the salacious business of online depravity, but he’d taken a few glimpses of the alternate universe that provided escape for other wounded souls. Those brief brushes had left him feeling defiled. And yet—he knew it wouldn’t take much for him to join the ranks of those whose lives were captive to the perversion of their imaginations. One major failure. One jarring disappointment. One more crisis that couldn’t be medicated with overtime and rigid expectations. One day too many spent in self-imposed isolation.

Becker didn’t realize how deep-seated his fear was until he saw Jade alone in the kitchen one evening and submitted to the need to connect with her. He opened the door gingerly and gave her an “is it safe?” look. She turned from the grocery bags she was unpacking just long enough to acknowledge his presence, then got back to
work. Becker stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him, determined to bridge the chasm that had caused their silence.

“What can I do to make things right with the kids?” he asked.

Jade’s hand stilled, then resumed its activity. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I know I . . .” He searched for the words. They weren’t a natural part of his vocabulary. “Because I think I hurt them.”

Jade turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “One small step for man . . . ,” she quoted.

“Is there—” A sudden thought halted his question. He glanced at the clock above the door. “Wait, what are you doing here? It’s after your normal hours, isn’t it?”

Jade carried a bag of lettuce and a wedge of Brie to the refrigerator, showing traces of the tiredness he’d come to recognize. “I won’t be here until late tomorrow morning. I have an appointment and Mrs. Fallon is keeping the kids. I figured I should do the grocery shopping tonight.” She turned around with a saucy look on her face. “Is that a problem?”

Beck smirked in spite of himself. Jade was of that rare breed of people who somehow managed to be endearing even on their ornery days. He raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, no problem at all. You haven’t missed a day since I’ve been here, so . . .” He ran out of things to say. And yet there was still so much that remained unspoken and urgent in his mind.

“You could begin by apologizing to them,” Jade said. “That goes a long way with kids.”

“Okay.”

“And none of that condescending ‘Hey, sorry, kid,’ approach either. They know when they’re being manipulated.”

Beck gave it some thought and concluded that she was probably right. Still—a heartfelt apology? To a six-year-old? This might take some scripting. He drew himself up short at that thought. Who needed a script to acknowledge a failure?

“And the work is progressing well?” Jade asked, trying to make a smooth transition away from more delicate matters and somehow managing to make it feel awkward instead.

“It’s . . .” Becker didn’t have the courage to attempt trivial conversation. There was too much else that needed words put to it to waste them on status updates and the weather.

“I want you to know that I get it,” he said, using up a good portion of whatever courage he still possessed. He leaned back against the fridge. “I get the alone thing.”

Jade moved to the table and sat on one of the stools, head propped on fists, listening with the kind of sincere concentration that made him feel . . . heard.

“And you’re right,” he continued. “Do you know how much I hate saying that?” He smirked. “You’re right. I’ve got two moods: cynical and angry.”

Jade finally smiled. “And don’t forget stupid. Philippe would vote for stupid.”

“And stupid.”

Jade turned her palms toward the ceiling and shook her head in confusion. “Why? How did you end up with only those two?”

“I don’t know.” From the way Jade looked at him, he could tell she knew he was lying. “But the payoff. The payoff isn’t exactly what I hoped it would be.”