The House on Hancock Hill (24 page)

D
ENNY
RAN
a hand over his buzz cut, an ingrained habit even though his thick hair had been cut short nearly a decade ago. I’d spent the night at his and Maddison’s house, and I tried not to think of it as a permanent good-bye. “You call me if you need anything, all right?” he said, slamming the trunk of his Jeep. “Keep in touch. And don’t make any hasty decisions. The bakeries will be here when you get back.”

“I won’t,” I promised him. “That’s why I’m doing this.”

“Okay. Well, have a good trip then, Jason. Send me a text when you land.” Denny stepped toward me and hugged me longer and harder than I expected. “Take care of yourself,” he said hoarsely against my shoulder, and with a last slap on my back, he was gone. I stood on the curb of Departures until his car disappeared around the corner, then picked up my two bags and went in search of a self check-in that could print my ticket.

I didn’t go to Boston. I didn’t go to Hancock either. Delta Airlines flew me to Amsterdam, and there I took the train to Brussels, the Thalys to Paris. At the Gare du Nord, I rented a Renault Clio, a car so small I felt like I was driving around with my knees pressed to my ears, and headed for Normandy.

European traffic was as frightening as I remembered, but I got used to it fairly quickly.

The first B and B I tried in Saint-Valery-en-Caux had vacancies. It was raining relentlessly, drowning out the beating noise of the tide against the shore, an impenetrable curtain of water that kept out all the world. I collapsed on the creaky, too-short bed, the sound of the rain a soothing white noise that lulled me into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When I blinked awake twelve hours later, it was as if I’d risen from a fog, a twenty-four hour dream, and I had to question my own sanity at somehow ending up in France again. Still, I was here now. Better make the most of it.

The shower was temperamental—and that was putting it kindly—and the weather outside wasn’t much better. Braving it anyway, I walked the few yards to the beach. The rain had relented, but gale-force winds snatched at my clothes like invisible hands, pulling me in all directions.

Violent waves beat against the rocks, spraying the huge chalk cliffs that rose formidably from the ocean with silty foaming water. It was cold and it was wet from the frothing surf spraying high, and as the wind pulled and pushed against me, I hadn’t felt this alive in months. A giddy, reckless part of me wanted to ditch my clothes and run into the sea. Adrenaline mixed with the taste of salt on my tongue as I imagined the impossible strength of the rolling water pulling me under. I knew the lakes in Michigan could be savage like this during bad weather, but I’d never seen it. Dad had told me once he’d seen waves up to thirty-five feet during a storm in the seventies, but he’d always told that story with this glint in his eye that made it impossible to know if he was telling the truth or not. At any rate, I’d never known the Portage Canal to be anything but smooth.

A mile past the farm on Hancock Hill stood a tree with one low branch, perfectly angled over the water. It was strong enough to carry the weight of a bunch of kids tying a rope around it, and swinging wildly into the air. Henry had always gone first. Back then, I’d never questioned why, but now I knew it was because he’d wanted to make sure the rope and branch could take our weight. I craved those seconds of freedom now, that feeling of hanging suspended in the air before hitting the water with a crash, not knowing which way was up. Johnny had found out the hard way how important it was to let go at the right time. Once, his back had been red for days. After we’d tired ourselves out, we would laze about in the water, floating around on our backs until the mosquitos came out. Then we’d have to race home for dinner, and Henry would always see me to my door, even though it was in the opposite direction of his house. I ran a hand over my face, feeling the minute grains of salt and sand scratch my skin. God, I’d been so blind. And if I had hoped to outrun his ghost here in France, I should feel disappointed. Images of the past popped up like mushrooms from the caverns of my memory. Such as the year Henry and I had found two black bear cubs. They’d nearly starved to death, and Henry had called his dad before we went near them. Dr. McCavanaugh and a ranger had come to pick them up in his truck. After they’d given us a thorough tongue-lashing for being where we weren’t supposed to be, he had allowed us to feed them with bottles until they were strong enough to be transported to Oswald’s Bear Ranch.

I remembered the look on Henry’s face as we’d held those cubs. It was the same look he’d given me during that almost-kiss in front of his fire while we were kneeling by Pat’s bed. Like kissing me would be a rare, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Maybe he’d suspected even then I would run off.

For days, I ambled around the small town, almost eerily empty outside of tourist season. On one of my solitary wanderings, I found a small bakery hidden in a backstreet behind the promenade, owned by an ancient guy. He didn’t understand my rudimentary French, and I didn’t understand his accent, but when I made him a batch of chocolate éclairs, he promptly offered me a clean apron. I think he told me he couldn’t pay me much, I think I told him I didn’t need paying, and three days later I’d moved into the tiny attic above the shop.

It had a living room that also functioned as a bedroom and a bathroom that slanted under the roof overheard, which meant I had to shave hunched over. The faucets had those chipped old marble handles, and the taps always gurgled air for a few seconds before an icy jet sprayed out. Hot showers meant running the water ten minutes beforehand, and if I wanted food, I had to use the bakery kitchen downstairs. I loved it.

F
OR
THE
first time in a long time, I enjoyed working again. Just baking, putting my mind to my craft and nothing else. The bills, the upkeep, the customer service—none of that fell to me. I opened the bakery early in the morning, and I mopped the floors every night even though Guillaume made it clear he wouldn’t mind doing it. For some reason, I could watch his bent fingers knead dough but didn’t want them curled around a broomstick, so I pretended I didn’t understand and swept along.

Tom called me a few times, and I always answered. He was hurt, at first, but it quickly turned into resigned bemusement. Over the weeks that followed, we fell into an easy friendship I wouldn’t have imagined possible before.

My stay in France sharpened the ache for Henry, though. While in Michigan, it had become a numb throb, but here I missed him like something vital, as if the salt of the ocean rubbed into the wound afresh. He became a memory that was painful to touch, like the bruises I’d carried on my skin when I was with him, but the sorrow was welcome now. I didn’t want to forget, even though thinking about the last time I’d seen him caused me physical pain.

How I wished I’d handled things differently. I should never have jumped on him like that. We should’ve talked first, because good as the sex was, we were much more than that. And I should never have let him leave the way he did. Tom had been awful, yes. No doubt Henry believed I’d confided in Tom all my worries and weaknesses while I’d kept Henry out of them. But I should’ve made an effort to explain. Here, in the clear blue-green light of this small ocean town, I couldn’t believe Henry had known about Taylor. He might be hanging on to whatever it was that had happened between him and Johnny, but he would never deliberately hurt me. The fact that he’d shown up within twenty-four hours of my hearing the news was proof enough of that. And yet I lacked the courage to call him and say so. It made me want to flinch away, the feeling a sharp twist in my stomach. I didn’t think I’d ever felt this lonely.

Guillaume taught me how to make real French petit fours. Brioche that would make pâtissiers the world over weep. I made cookies with absinthe,
bonbons pralin croquant
. He even gave me the secret recipe to his
macarons
. It was all divine. These recipes would make me a fortune stateside, and yet I knew once I left here—and leave I would—I’d never make them again.

T
HE
END
of April brought Niels, a Belgian chemistry PhD student with nothing but a backpack on his back and a smile on his face. He bought one of my baguettes and a sausage roll, we shared a bottle of Merlot between the pebbles on the beach as we watched the sun go down, and had sex under my roof where it was slightly too hot for comfort. Without air conditioning, sleep would be nigh impossible here in summer. The waves lapped at the shore, the open window bringing the salty scent of the ocean into our lovemaking, and to my absolute astonishment, Niels came three times while I fucked him.

“I didn’t even know that was possible,” I panted after he’d clung to me the third time, his legs still spasming around my waist.

“Not always, but sometimes it works for me,” he said in a lovely accent. “Come on, now you.” He clenched around me, and I moaned.

“Aren’t you overstimulated?” I asked while I drove in deep. Niels’ eyes rolled back in his head, and he clung to me tighter.

“I like it, go on, come.” Like the tide, we moved to the sound of the ocean, reaching and retreating as waves against sand, until my orgasm came over me with the sudden burst of the surf breaking over a dam.

He stayed in my little attic for ten days. I don’t know what he did while I worked, but I didn’t mind. This was a summer fling. Niels was a free spirit if ever I’d met one. There was no way I could hurt him like I’d hurt Henry.

More often than not, I expected him to be gone by the time I dragged my tired bones upstairs, but I was always pleasantly surprised when he was there, waiting for me. Sometimes stark naked, and one memorable time, covered in my homemade crème fraîche.

Niels made me feel carefree and young when he laughed during sex, wild and with abandon. He was smart and happy and beautiful, his ginger curls perpetually falling into his green eyes.

“Why do you travel,” I asked him one night after he’d rimmed me until I had tears leaking out of my eyes and then fucked me so hard, I whited out when I came. His chest was flecked with freckles, and I traced them lazily with a finger. “All by yourself, I mean.”

Niels smiled down at me. He had a slightly crooked mouth with one tooth that was uneven from all the others. His stomach was soft but not fat, and he had nice arms I enjoyed digging my fingers into. “I look for love,” he said simply.

“How’s that going for you?” It wasn’t supposed to come out mocking, but it did.

“I found love here tonight, didn’t I? You gave me a little, I offered in return.” He shifted and tapped my chest right above my heart. “Did I not make you feel loved tonight?”

He had made me feel something all right, but I didn’t know if it was love. “I don’t know if I’d be capable of that,” I told him, and he said, “Of course you are,” before promptly falling asleep.

At 3:00 a.m., he woke me. “I’m going to go,” he said. “Good-byes are never my favorite thing. But first I want to show you something.” I was still blinking sand out of my eyes when he jumped up, threw his pack over his shoulder, and tugged me out of bed.

“I’m not dressed,” I protested, but Niels just laughed.

“You Americans, so prude.”

Wearing nothing but my boxers and a pair of flip-flops, I was dragged down to the beach. The night was cool but in a refreshing way, and I shivered pleasantly. To be honest, the ocean always frightened me a little at night, and now was no different since there was no moon to light the infinity of it. Irrational like any fear of darkness, I supposed, but it nevertheless brought forth that long dormant fight-or-flight instinct. I hadn’t used my inhaler for a while, and it obviously wasn’t hiding in my boxers, but I didn’t feel I would need it. Niels was leaving, moving on in his search for love, and I envied him while at the same time, I hoped he’d find what he was looking for. I felt a little pang of regret, but then I’d always known it was temporary, this thing between us.

We stood in silence, the sand cold beneath my flip-flops and between my toes. Three times I had to suppress the urge to ask what it was he wanted to show me. The longer I stood by his side, no other sound than the back and forth of the waves nearly invisible in the darkness, the more I felt that familiar hurt spread. The ache was more pronounced again, that phantom pain, tugging at my lungs like I’d never be whole again. This time it had nothing to do with Dad.

It would be barely past 9:00 p.m. in Michigan. I wondered what Henry was doing.

Niels walked me back to the bakery and spoke for the first time since we’d left it. “I will remember you fondly, Jason, always.” I liked how he said my name:
Jay-sin
.

I kissed him on the mouth. “Thank you,” I told him and meant it with all my heart. I had a feeling I’d remember him too.

A new beginning was one of the most tempting escapes in life. To leave everything behind and start over elsewhere…. I’d considered it when I traveled Europe as a technically orphaned Harvard graduate. And was I really considering it again? The same life, just in a different place? Here, where no one expected anything of me, where I could finally begin to fill the spaces in between the hurt and distress my parents had left me with.

In the days that followed, I thought of Henry a lot, realizing I
had
loved him, that I was capable of it. I still did and most likely always would. Maybe it was too late—after all, what is one week in an entire lifetime? For me, apparently, it had been enough to lose an invisible but vital part of me. Something I never realized I had to lose to begin with.

It was creeping up on me. I could feel it—the end of my days here. It was almost time to go home.

With the end of May came a sweltering heat wave that made me miss my air-conditioned apartment. I thought about Michigan, about the green woods and the scent of dry grass. France smelled of lavender and rosemary, but I found myself yearning for something else. I didn’t want to miss the colors of the fall, the way the roads would be lined with every imaginable shade of red. The apple and cherry pies, the festivals in the parks.