who was sound asleep. She had put Ian’s letter on her bulletin board. As she slipped into her own bed, between crisp clean sheets, Coco wondered what chapters would come next. With Bethanie cured, she could turn her attention to the business of living again. And wherever Ian was now, she hoped he was happy. She knew that she would always love him, and that he would love her, as best he could.
* * *
—
Coco dropped Bethanie off at her school the next day, where they celebrated her. Everyone stood up and cheered when she walked in, and they had made posters welcoming her back. When Coco walked into her office shortly after, she hardly recognized it. Leslie had done some redecorating, and hired three new assistants, who were already busy. They had spoken regularly, FaceTimed daily, and Leslie had sent her frequent emails. The business was continuing to grow, and Coco didn’t feel as though they needed her desperately. She talked to Leslie that morning about going to Paris to go back to school, and Leslie smiled broadly at her.
“Do it! You’ve had a hell of a year, you deserve whatever you want to do.” Coco was feeling the same way about it. She wanted to celebrate life after going through hell in New York. Bethanie’s recovery was a major victory, the only one that mattered.
She spoke to the admissions office at AUP, and although she was applying late, they were willing to let her start in January. She promised to send them her transcript from Columbia, and then she marched into Leslie’s office with a grin.
“I have a new client for you.”
“Really? Who? A VIP?” Leslie asked.
“Of course! Me! I want you to find me an apartment or a house in Paris for a year. I don’t think I’ll stay that long. I’m going to take as many credits as I can, to graduate. But I’d rather take the house for a year, in case we want to stay a little longer after I graduate.”
“That’s a tall order. I don’t have great contacts there, and I don’t speak French, but one of the new girls does. I’ll see what I can do.”
She was beaming when Coco came to work a week later, and handed her a folder with a description and photographs of a house in it. It was very sweet, small, and on the Left Bank, with three bedrooms.
“The difficult we do quickly, the impossible we do faster. What do you think?” Coco looked it over and then smiled at her and handed the folder back.
“I’ll take it.”
“Just like that? Don’t you want to go over and see it?”
“I don’t need to. I trust you.” It looked a little like the house they had found for Ian when he was consulting on his movie when he first came to London. It had the same kind of quaint fairy tale feel to it. Coco wrote a check for the deposit. She had already filled out the forms for AUP. And the day before her twenty-ninth birthday in December, she got an email telling her that she had been accepted as a second semester senior at AUP and with the credits she had, she could graduate in June.
She looked into schools for Bethanie, and found a small bilingual school, which sounded perfect, and they had room for Bethanie.
Coco celebrated her birthday with Bethanie and Leslie. She had a new man in her life and seemed happy with him. At forty-five, she was no longer looking for Prince Charming. She loved her business and was content with someone more human scale. He was a talented furniture designer who had been one of their clients, and had moved to London from Copenhagen a year before. When Coco met him, she liked him a lot.
Coco bought a Christmas tree and she and Bethanie decorated it. She was grateful for every day they shared. And the day after New Year’s Day, they left for Paris. Bethanie started school a few days later. Coco showed up for her first class at AUP with a bag full of notebooks and pens, and she felt like a kid again as she went from class to class, and enjoyed talking to the other students. She also felt like the old lady in the group. She was twenty-nine, and she looked just like one of them.
She dropped her books at the end of her second class, and a student in a blue and white striped sweater