“Dad … has a daughter?” I say numbly. It seems all I can do is echo Mom’s words back to her as a question. Nothing she’s saying seems possible.
Mom nods, and she draws in a deep breath. Her expression is full of pain and dread, but also—somehow—relief. “Her name is Eloise. She must be fifteen now.”
“Eloise?” I parrot. “Fifteen?” Randomly, I think of the book I loved as a kid, about the blond girl named Eloise who lived in New York City. “Fifteen,” I say again. I’m shivering, my teeth chattering, like it’s wintertime. “So—I was—” I sputter and stop, the easy math suddenly very difficult. “I was one when she was born?”
Mom nods again. She seems calm and untroubled, ready to answer all my questions. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” she tells me softly.
I tip my head back and peer up at the dark sky. If only there were some stars, some pinpricks of light to guide me. But there’s nothing.
I start pacing, up and down the street, as if being in motion will help. My head throbs. I remember the line of poetry I saw in Wren’s Emily Dickinson book: I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— As if my Brain had split—I understand it now. Completely. My brain has come apart, unable to hold all of this new knowledge.
“So, Dad—when I was growing up—while you were married—he—” I catch my breath. It’s like trying to put together the world’s most twisted puzzle. “All along, had these other people”—I can’t say the word family again—“living in France?”
“Yes,” Mom says patiently. She reaches out her hand to me, but I jerk away, still pacing. “I didn’t know about it, either,” she murmurs. “He finally broke down and told me, when you were eleven. I’d suspected something was going on. I’d suspected for years. But denial is a powerful thing. We see what we want to see.”
I stop pacing and stare at Mom. A mosquito buzzes in my ear, and I don’t care if it will bite me, if it will suck out all my blood.
“I knew then that our family couldn’t hold itself together anymore,” Mom goes on. Her arm hangs outstretched between us, like a pale, ghostly thing. “Not after that revelation. I told your father to go. And he went. To France. To … them.”
Them. What are they like? How do they look? I turn and stare out at the black river. I usually have a vivid imagination, but I can’t picture anything now.
“Do they know about us?” I finally ask, my voice hoarse. I glance back at Mom.
“They do,” Mom says. She coughs. “That’s why your father wanted you to come to France this summer.” She drops her arm to her side. “He wanted to tell you the truth. He wanted you to meet … them.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper. I feel chilled to the bone. Meet them? The prospect is horrifying. What would have happened?
“And that’s why I didn’t want you to go,” Mom says, speaking faster. “I didn’t think you were ready to know yet. I was—afraid.” Her voice breaks, and my heart seizes. Parents aren’t supposed to be afraid. “I wanted to protect you,” Mom adds quietly.
This time when she reaches out to me, I let her. She takes my hand, and squeezes. Her fingers are as icy as mine.
“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Mom goes on, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m still not sure you’re ready. I’m sorry it had to happen this way.”
Behind us, the restaurant door opens and people spill out, chattering happily. It’s absurd to think that Aunt Lydia and Max are back in there, with slices of birthday cake on the table, while Mom and I are out here, having this conversation.
Aunt Lydia knew, I realize. Of course she’d known, all along. And she’d almost let something slip that afternoon at Better Latte. That’s why she’d sort of been avoiding me since then. She was afraid she’d say more. She must have wanted to say more. She’d believed that I should know.
“My painting,” I say to Mom, hearing how raw my voice is. I draw my hand out of her grasp. “What was Aunt Lydia going to say about my painting?”
Mom’s face crumples. “Oh,” she whispers.
My stomach squeezes. I brace myself, even though part of me feels like I can handle anything now. Can’t I?
“The … painting,” Mom says haltingly, looking down at the wet pavement. “It’s of … Eloise. When she was a young girl.” Then she looks back up at me. “Do you understand?” she whispers.
I shake my head, even though I do understand. It’s shocking, actually, how swiftly I have understood, and how swiftly the pain of understanding has followed.
“My” painting is not mine anymore. I am not Fille. I never was.
It was always … her.
I bend at the waist and press my hands into my abdomen, trying to hold myself together. I open my mouth to cry but nothing comes out.
“When you—when you first saw the painting online,” Mom goes on, tears sliding down her cheeks, “and you thought it was your portrait … I never had the heart to tell you otherwise.” She catches her breath. “I’m sorry.”
I manage to straighten up, but the pain still shoots through me. Wave after wave of fresh hurt, like a Band-Aid that keeps getting ripped off. Even after everything I’ve learned tonight, this one revelation cuts the deepest. Or maybe it’s just the exclamation mark, the final point at the end of a very long and messy sentence.
“Do you understand?” Mom asks me again, and I realize I haven’t been speaking.
I nod, even though I have questions. So many questions. Like where Dad had painted Fille. And if Aunt Lydia was mad at Mom, for keeping all these secrets from me. My questions will never stop.
But I am also tired. So tired. My mouth is dry and my eyes are burning and my head aches. I don’t think I can bear any more questions—or answers—tonight.
Mom seems to sense what I’m feeling. She kisses the top of my head, and I lean into her, comforted, even though part of me simmers with fury toward her. Toward Dad. Toward everyone.
“Let me go inside and settle up the check,” Mom says, reaching up under her glasses to wipe her eyes. Pulling herself together. “Then we can go home.”
Home. What is home? I think vaguely, like I’m an alien again. Home is now a place where everything was hidden. And false.
“I’ll be back in a second.” Mom hurries into the restaurant, her heels clattering.
My phone buzzes in my purse, and I take it out to see a text message from Ruby.
Happy birthday, it says. I hope we can talk soon.
If the message had arrived ten minutes earlier, I would have surely felt something—relief, joy, annoyance, satisfaction. Now I only feel empty. Hollowed out.
I lift my gaze to the sky again. A handful of stars have finally appeared, tiny and bright. But their arrival reminds me of Ruby’s text: too little, too late.
Tuesday, July 18, 2:04 p.m.
I tear out of Dad’s house, my flip-flops slapping the cobblestones, my chest heaving with sobs. It’s stopped raining, but puddles splash up the back of my legs and stain the bottom of my blue dress. I don’t care. I just want to get away.
I run down Rue du Pain. The bakery and the pastel houses all blur in my vision. My instinct about bad omens on my first day here was right. Street of Pain, indeed.
If I had known—if I had known that Dad was going to lead me out of the kitchen, leaving Eloise and Vivienne to stare after us, and sit me down in the living room and gently tell me all those impossible things—I wouldn’t have gotten out of the cab that day. I wouldn’t have gotten on the plane in New York.
I called you, Dad had said, in the living room, after I’d started crying. You must have been at the airport, or on the plane. I chickened out. I wanted to tell you not to come. I thought maybe your mother was right, that you weren’t ready to know yet. And I was in Berlin, anyway. It made sense to postpone. But you didn’t answer the phone.
I didn’t answer the phone.
I whip past the cupid fountain, the memory of my ringing phone haunting me, chasing me. I didn’t answer my phone at the airport, and Dad had been on the ot
her end, trying to stop me from coming to France. If I had answered my phone, I would be okay. I wouldn’t know what I know now.
I’m stumbling and running up Boulevard du Temps, aware that the passersby can see that I’m in tears, that I’m unwell. I’m beyond shame or embarrassment, though. Dad’s words—his other words, the ones he spoke before I started crying, the ones he said quickly, like a slash to the chest—are replaying in my head, loud and ugly.
You see, Eloise is my daughter.
YOU SEE, ELOISE IS MY DAUGHTER.
YOU SEE, ELOISE IS MY—
I keep running, tripping over someone’s leash that’s attached to a poodle. The poodle’s owner snaps at me in French. I ignore them. The faster I run, the sooner I will get to Jacques. And the sooner I get to Jacques, the sooner I can say those words to someone else. I can vomit them out of my mouth so they stop blaring in my ears.
There’s a burning stitch in my side, and no breath left in my lungs, when I finally reach Café des Roses. The outdoor tables are wet and empty; everyone hustled indoors when the rain came down.
I go inside the café, where it’s not nearly as pretty or as charming. It’s small and cramped, and the windows don’t let in enough light. Framed, faded paintings of roses adorn the beige walls. The customers seated at the tables eye me warily as I brush past them, starting for the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen—
“Summer!”
Jacques emerges from the kitchen, holding a cake in his hands. It’s round and frosted white, and red squiggles spell out the words Joyeux anniversaire!
“Where were you?” he asks me, frowning a little. “I was becoming worried.”
I stare dumbly at my birthday cake. Oh. I’m late for my lunch. My sweet sixteen.
I look up at Jacques, and then he notices—the tears streaking my cheeks, the no-doubt-splotchy color of my face, the fact that my breath is coming out in wheeze-sobs. His dark-blue eyes widen in alarm. I remember something Ruby said once, that crying girls tend to freak boys out. That’s fine. Jacques can go ahead and freak out all he wants. He’ll never be more freaked out than I am at this moment. We can even have a contest.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” he murmurs, stepping closer to me. “What is wrong? Come,” he adds before I can unleash my answer. He balances the cake in one hand and reaches out with the other to take my arm. “First you must sit down, no?”
I shake my head but Jacques is already leading me to a small table by the window. Our table. There is a red rose in a vase, and two bowls of bouillabaisse. Picture-perfect.
Jacques sets my cake on the table, moving aside the vase to make room. I swipe at my wet cheeks with the heel of my hand and sink into a chair. Jacques sits across from me, smoothing the front of his white waiter’s shirt. He looks gorgeous, as always.
“The bouillabaisse probably got a bit cold,” he tells me apologetically, as if food matters at all to me right now.
I gaze down at my fish stew. My stomach rolls over.
“Eloise is his daughter,” I blurt out.
There. I exhale. I said it. But I feel no relief. The last word continues to pound in my brain. DAUGHTER, DAUGHTER, DAUGHTER.
Jacques frowns again. “Quoi?” he asks. “What did you say? I do not understand.”
“Join the club,” I reply, and then, in spite of everything, I begin to laugh. A real, full-on belly laugh, like what has happened to me is absurd and hilarious, not absurd and horrible. A few diners and waiters glance over at me, this insane person in their midst.
“Summer?” Jacques says, looking more alarmed than he did before. Actually, he looks overwhelmed—unsure of how to deal with the crazy American girl across from him. I bet he was not expecting any of this when we ate our crepes and strolled down the boulevard late last night, sticky fingers intertwined. I mean, neither did I.
I manage to stop laughing, and I press my palms against the tabletop. I breathe in, and out. Jacques watches me, waiting.
“Eloise,” I begin, the name sour in my mouth. The syllables are so elongated and odd, I think. El-oh-eeze. Jacques nods. “She’s my father’s daughter,” I say.
It’s a statement that makes no sense. It’s like one of those riddles I enjoyed stumping my parents with when I was a kid: What comes down but never goes up? (Rain.) What has hands but cannot clap? (A clock.) How can Eloise be my father’s daughter, when I am my father’s daughter? There is no answer.
Jacques himself doesn’t answer; his eyes only grow wider. So I continue. I tell him everything—how my dad, while married to my mom, met Vivienne, a fellow painter, in Paris. How he and Vivienne had a baby girl, Eloise. How my dad kept Eloise, and Vivienne, a secret from me and my mother, for years and years and years. How he shuttled back and forth between France and Hudsonville, living two lives, until my mom found out, and they split up. And how I’d known nothing, until today.
As I’m talking, I feel detached, like I’m recounting a story that in no way pertains to me. All these players—Dad and Mom, Vivienne and Eloise—are characters from science fiction, not real people. At the same time, I am very present in the moment. I am aware of Jacques sitting across from me, silent, both of our bowls of bouillabaisse untouched. I hear the French being spoken around us in the café, the sound of coffee being poured and of spoons clinking against delicate cups.
I am also aware that anyone sitting near us who understands English can easily eavesdrop on me. I’m making no effort to whisper, to hide what I’m saying. Let them listen, I think, anger flaring up inside me. Let them know that Ned Everett, the great artist, is a liar and a fraud.
“You remember my father’s painting?” I say to Jacques, my throat tightening. “The one we saw in the gallery?” I’ve saved the most painful part for last.
Jacques nods. “Fille,” he says. The first word he’s spoken since he said my name.
“Fille,” I echo. I feel an ache in my chest, and tears sting my eyes. “That painting is of Eloise when she was little. Not me, like I’d always thought.” My voice breaks. “I’m not Fille. She is.”
When Dad had explained that to me, in the living room, holding the sketch of Eloise in his shaking hands, I’d felt like the floor had split open and swallowed me whole. Like I’d ceased to exist for a minute or so. Because if it wasn’t me in that painting, then who was I?
“Oh là là,” Jacques says, and I realize that I have been silent, staring into my lap and fighting back tears. I look up at him. He makes a tsk sound and shakes his head, his eyes still wide. “C’est incroyable. I am sorry you have gone through this, Summer. And on your birthday?” He leans forward to take my hand. “Ma pauvre.”
I sniffle and squeeze his hand. I’m grateful for his sweetness and his sympathy. I do feel like a pauvre—a pitiful one. But I’m surprised that he doesn’t seem more surprised, or outraged.
“I must admit something,” he goes on, studying his bouillabaisse. “I had assumed that you and Eloise were related.”
“You—what?” I sputter, startled. I free my hand from his and collapse back against my chair. Outside, the wind shakes the leaves on a lemon tree and sends drops of water to the ground. A false rain.
Jacques lifts his gaze to me and shrugs one shoulder. “You two look very much alike,” he tells me, as if this is obvious. “The evening I met you?” He nods out the window, at the spot where we’d first spoken. “I thought you were her, from the back.”
I squint at Jacques like my vision is bad—like his vision is bad. “That can’t be,” I tell him. Then I realize that I’d made the exact same mistake, five years ago: I’d also thought that Eloise was me, in the painting. I feel a chill pass through me. “Why didn’t you say something?” I ask.
He picks up the toasted baguette wedge from his bowl and takes a bite. “In the beginning,” he explains, swallowing, “it seemed only to be a coincidence, that you resembled someone I knew. Then when I came to your father’s house and saw you and Eloise together … ” He trails off, shrugging again. “It
did not seem to be a coincidence anymore. I thought perhaps you were cousins, but that you did not like each other very much.”
“That second part is true,” I mumble.
I remember how, earlier, I’d dashed sobbing out of the living room, and into the kitchen, where Eloise stood in her nightgown, staring at me. Vivienne had sat at the oak table, her head in her hands. Dad had made it clear, when he tossed his little hand grenade, that both Vivienne and Eloise knew everything; I was the only one on the outside. As I’d wrenched open the door, I’d heard Eloise say my name but I’d barreled ahead, wanting nothing to do with her. Especially not now.
“Only you are not cousins,” Jacques points out, dipping his spoon into his cold bouillabaisse and taking a sip of the broth. “You are sisters, non?”
“Non,” I snap instantly. I shiver. Sisters. I refuse to go there. “Don’t say that,” I order him, knowing I sound much younger than sixteen. The frosting on my cake looks like it’s wilting.
“Okay,” Jacques says, holding up his hands in surrender. “Je comprends. C’est une situation très difficile. Très compliquée.”
“Oui,” I reply, gritting my teeth.
The situation is very difficult and complicated. And yet Jacques seems to be taking it relatively in stride. He reclines in his seat, draping his arm across the back of his chair. A tentative smile tugs at his lips, and I can make out the dimple in his right cheek.
I scowl. It could be that there’s a slight language barrier. Or a cultural barrier. Regardless, I feel a wave of frustration. I want to be able to rage and weep with someone.
“I am sorry,” Jacques is saying. For a second, I think he’s apologizing for his nonchalance. Then I see that he has taken his phone out of his pocket and is checking the time. 15:00. Three o’clock. “C’est dommage. I only had one hour to take for lunch, so I am late for my shift. I prefer to never be late,” he explains.
I feel a flash of panic. Although I’m upset with Jacques, I don’t want him to go. I can’t imagine sitting here, alone with my dark thoughts, amid the swirl of happy café chitchat. Nor can I imagine going back outside, into the unrelenting prettiness of Les Deux Chemins. The sun has started peeking out, and a bumblebee drones by the window.