my neck aching and my eyes gritty as the plane touched down in Charleston. I took a deep inhale and tried to stretch my back, my shoulders stiff and sore. Having forgotten to close my window shade when we took off at seven this morning from New York, midmorning sun shone like a spotlight, making it hard to get my eyes open. Then the pain in my heart took over everything else, and the deep breath I’d just taken shot out of me like I’d been punched.
We taxied to the gate, and everyone around me hummed with the energy of excitement and anticipation. I rested my head against the window and let my eyes adjust, taking long, slow, breaths to ease what was happening inside me. Should I have left? Should I have stayed and fought for the father and daughter I’d fallen so hard for?
Madame had begged me.
Evan had begged me.
Dauphine had begged me.
My eyes burned as they flooded anew. I’d stayed with Dauphine five extra days, trying to give her some semblance of normalcy and joy after her traumatic experience that she still wouldn’t talk about.
Xavier and I had co-existed under the same roof. Strained family meals. Avoided eye contact. Awkward silences.
And then he had all but begged me. And I couldn’t regret the moment of weakness I’d had, allowing myself one last bittersweet goodbye.
The night before I left came back to me. Xavier, Madame, Dauphine, Evan, and I sat around the large worn wooden table under an arbor wrapped in trailing vines, eating make-your-own pizza baked in the brick oven in the garden. We’d also asked Astrid and Jorge to eat with us. Chances were it could have been the best pizza I’d ever eaten, but every bite tasted like sawdust. The evening air was thick with the leftover sunbaked scent of jasmine and lavender. The colors in the sky were fading to faint streaks of smoke and fire. The red wine had loosened my limbs, and I’d tried to laugh along and follow the conversation as it tripped back and forth between French and English.
We were clearing the table and Astrid and Jorge had just shooed Madame back to the house because it apparently upset the order of the universe to have Madame attempt to help. So she’d taken Dauphine by the hand to help her get ready for bed, and I was feeling useless. Astrid and Jorge took the plates to the kitchen, and Evan followed with a handful of glasses. Xavier went to grab the large wooden paddle that belonged to the pizza oven, and turned his back, scooping out the ashes into a metal bin. I looked away and across the yard toward the glowing blue pool. If I hadn’t spent the entire afternoon with Dauphine in the pool playing everything from Marco Polo to mermaids and gymnasts, I’d have done twenty more laps just so I would maybe pass out and wake up the day I was leaving.
Xavier had spent the day working under the fans of the loggia, and I’d felt the weight of his eyes on us all day. On me.
My flip flops made no sound on the worn stone patio as I stood and rounded the table so I could stack the remaining glasses to follow Evan.
Halfway through, I stopped to look up. Xavier’s stillness had caught my attention. His back was to me but as if he knew my every move. The tension was palpable. We were alone. We’d managed not to be alone since the night in the library.
He turned.
His eyes were the deep end, and I wanted to dive in.
I was still, rooted to the spot, as he set down the wooden pizza paddle to the side and came toward me.
He glanced briefly at the house, but I couldn’t let my attention go. Not for a second.
Gently he took the glasses from my hands and set them on the table with concentrated care. I flexed my hands open and closed, dropped them to my sides, and then brought them back up to cross my body.
Xavier frowned at my defensive gesture and circled my wrists, pulling them apart.
My breathing shallowed as his arms snaked around my waist and he gathered my stiff body close. He molded his frame to mine, and I tried not to breathe him in.
“I leave early for a meeting tomorrow. I will not be able to say goodbye to you, Josephine.”