“Sari,” he said, smiling indulgently. “Tell me the truth. Were you looking on Google Earth again?”

  She shrugged. That very small twitch of her shoulders was like a toggle, sending blood into her face. Her blush gave it all away.

  “For Las Vegas?”

  She gazed out the bus window. Despite what she’d said, Laurent knew her so well. He spent enough time at her house to know her habits. More than once he’d caught her zooming in on Las Vegas—the strip, with all the stark lights and casinos, the dancing fountains of the Bellagio. So it seemed easier to nod now—lie again—than tell him the truth.

  “Since you know your mother is there, why do you not write her?” he asked. “Care of the cirque? Or even of the horse farm. They both have the same name, n’est-ce pas? Clair de Lune.”

  “I don’t want to write her,” Sari said.

  “Then why do you keep looking for her online? She’s not there, on your computer screen. I wish I could find her myself. I’d tell her what she’s done, who she’s left behind.”

  “She knows,” Sari said, holding herself tight.

  Laurent was stirred up, and so was she. She partly wanted to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t quite do it. It was easier to let him think she’d been searching for her mother. Instead, Sari had aimed Google Earth, the cyber eye-in-the-sky, at an address she’d found on a card in her father’s bedside table: the same place he’d hidden that ribbon just two and a half weeks ago.

  11 Blue Heron Drive, Black Hall, Connecticut.

  The satellite image had shown a small house, surrounded by trees, very near the wide and rippling sea of marsh grass that was the Connecticut River estuary. So, Susannah lived near marshland, just like Sari and her dad.

  Zooming back, Sari saw that Connecticut was very near Rhode Island. Her grandparents lived on the farm in Narragansett, and her uncles and cousins lived in Westerly. They were practically right next door to Susannah. At least, compared to Sari all the way in France.

  “So,” Laurent was saying. “What new things did you see in Las Vegas?”

  “Un désert d’eau,” she said without thinking. “É’tangs, sansouire, et les îles dans le marais.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Lagoons, a plane of marsh grass, and salt-marsh islands? In Nevada?”

  She looked up, caught by her friend.

  “You were looking up Susannah, weren’t you?”

  “No,” she said stubbornly.

  “Are you to see her?” Laurent asked, ignoring her denial. “This summer, when you and your father go to Rhode Island to see your grandparents…will you drive to the marsh to see Susannah in Connecticut?”

  Sari gazed out the window and shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s better that she’s out of our lives, and we’re out of hers.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” Laurent said, amusement in his eyes.

  “I mean it,” Sari said again, just for emphasis.

  “I know, Sari. I know.”

  Sari stared out the school bus window at the trees and houses and marsh. Laurent thought he knew her, but this wasn’t like Avignon. It was daylight, so he was seeing blue sky, green grass, colorful houses. And just like every other day for the past five years, Sari wasn’t, and never would.

  Life on the ranch had always had its own rhythm. Springtime meant foals being born, horses being trained and penned, tourists returning to the Camargue. Grey had always spent the spring repairing the ravages of winter, looking forward to a busy summer both here and in Rhode Island.

  The young horses always went a little crazy in spring. They kicked at their stalls, pulled at the bit, tried to escape any chance they got. This year, Grey felt that way, too. His brief time with Susannah had turned him into someone new. He went through the motions of being a good father, taking care of the ranch, but all he wanted to do was be with her.

  That wasn’t going to happen, so he thought about her all the time instead. He found himself taking long solitary trail rides, taking Django farther and farther into the Parc. When that wasn’t far enough, he’d get into the car and drive. Sometimes, if he was in the right mood, he could almost believe she was in the car with him.

  She’d been right there, in the seat beside him. They’d driven east, so that’s what Grey started doing. The first time, he took the N568 as far as Fos-sur-Mer. The next day, he made it onto the A55. Caught in traffic, he remembered how he and Susannah had gotten stuck in Marseille’s morning rush.

  One afternoon he told Claude he was taking off. Sari’s history teacher had pulled her aside, told her she wanted to submit Sari’s essay on Avignon to the school paper. To Grey’s surprise, Sari had agreed—not only that, she had reluctantly let Laurent convince her to get involved for the paper’s last issue. It would mean working after school, and meant both kids would have a shot at becoming editors next fall. Grey was so proud of her, but almost more than that, he’d been relieved because it meant he’d have more time to himself.

  Being alone was his way of being with Susannah. They sent each other emails all the time. Grey checked his computer ten times a day, hoping there’d be something there from her. There usually was, and he’d write right back.

  They called each other a few times when Sari was at school, but that was hard. The phone made things worse. To hear her voice and not be able to see her, to listen to the silence between words and wonder what she was thinking…

  More than anything, Grey loved her letters. They came on fine blue stationery, embossed with a blue heron. She’d write about the marsh near her house, how it reminded her of being with him, how she’d walk through the reeds every morning just hoping he’d appear out of the mist on a white horse.

  He’d hold her letters to his face, knowing the paper had been in those beautiful hands of hers, hoping for a breath of her scent. It wasn’t enough, but it was all he had. He’d write back, trying to give her hope that someday everything would change, someday life would be different: Sari would grow up, get better. She wouldn’t need him this much forever. And when that happened, he and Susannah could be together.

  And Susannah would write back as if she believed him. She sounded so excited about Sari’s essay, about the fact she and Laurent were working on the newspaper. “Following in her father’s footsteps,” Susannah had written. “I can’t think of anything better!”

  In spite of the closeness Grey felt, reading and writing those letters and emails, his heart felt heavy. He wondered how long Susannah would wait. Years would go by, and even if she didn’t fall in love with someone else in the meantime, wouldn’t she drift away? His thoughts raced, trying to think of ways to make it all work.

  So the afternoon he’d lined up Claude to cover for him, he drove east again. This time he didn’t turn around when he got to Marseille. He kept going, along the white limestone ridge, through the pine-scented olive orchard, over the crest of the Calanques, and down the switchback road along the jagged fjord that led to Cap Morgiou.

  He parked the Citroën, grabbed his backpack, and scrambled down the steep steps cut into the white cliff. Bright flowers grew out of cracks in the rock; he wished Susannah could see them. The azure bay spread out between the steep headlands, and he stared out at it, reliving each moment of their day together.

  Walking into the Caratini dive shop, he felt his heart turn over. He’d stood right here, handing Felix his certificates. Susannah had been with him, excited and happy. A group of young divers stood at the counter, speaking French to a woman Grey didn’t recognize. Maybe Felix, Jeanine, and Jean were out on the water, leading a dive…

  He stood by the wall covered with photos. There must have been fifty, maybe more, all overlapping. Scanning them, he felt his pulse racing. He’d come to town to connect with Susannah. To sit at the café and write her a letter, and tell her he was here. But standing in here, knowing that the picture of her and Ian was hanging somewhere among all the other photos of happy divers, disturbed him. He looked over and over the wall, but he couldn’t see it.

  “May I help you?” asked the woman behind the counter.

  “Uh, no,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, smiling. “Would you like to dive?”

  “Not this time,” he said.

  “You’ve been before?”

  “Yes,” he said, backing away. “With a friend. We dove on the Cosquer Cave.”

  “Ah,” she said. “One of the most spectacular dives in the world.”

  Just then the telephone rang, and Grey took the opportunity to leave the shop. He walked along the quay, wondering why he’d come. Being here without Susannah felt so empty. His chest hurt; his heart felt bruised. Taking a seat at the sidewalk café where he’d sat with her, he stared at the water.

  The waiter brought him a glass of rosé. He pulled a paper and pen from his backpack, spread it out on the table, started to write.

  Dear Susannah, he wrote, I’m here in Cap Morgiou with you. You’re with me everywhere, but this is our place. You showed it to me. It was brand new, just like so many things I experienced with you, and now I feel it’s ours forever.

  A shadow fell across the paper, and he glanced up into a familiar face: Jeanine Caratini.

  “It is you,” she said. “When Amelie said a man had stopped in, speaking of the Cosquer Cave, I thought maybe it could be…”

  “There must be many people who come here for the cave,” he said, gesturing for her to take a seat. “Why would you think it was me?”

  “Because Susannah said you would be back.”

  “Susannah?” he asked, startled and happy just to hear her name. “How would she know? I didn’t tell her.”

  Jeanine was small and slender, with dark red hair and kind blue eyes. She stared at Grey, smiling gently. “When you love someone, you know them. You didn’t have to tell her your schedule for her to know you’d be drawn back here.”

  The words rang in his ears. Love someone. He stared up at Jeanine, wanting to ask if Susannah had said she loved him.

  Jeanine laughed, reading something in his eyes. “She didn’t spell it out, if that’s what you’re wondering. Her reason for calling said it all.”

  “Why did she call you?”

  “To ask me to take this picture down,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out the photo of Susannah and Ian. She set it down on the brown paper, beside his glass of wine.

  He stared into the picture. There she was, smiling into the camera, her eyes so bright and clear. Ian stood close beside her, arm around her shoulder, looking as if she belonged to him.

  “She called the day after she returned home to the States,” Jeanine said. “She told me that you both loved it here in Cap Morgiou, that you were certain to return, and that she didn’t want you to have to see this picture hanging on our wall. I should have thrown it away, but I’d just stuck it in a folder. Susannah is one of our favorite clients, and I don’t have another picture of her.”

  “Thank you,” Grey said, unable to take his eyes off Susannah.

  “You sent Monsieur Stewart for quite a swim,” Jeanine said, laughter in her voice.

  “I got carried away,” Grey said. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Oh, I’m certain you should have. Susannah wouldn’t love you the way she does if she felt you had acted unfairly.”

  “Excuse me?” Grey asked, stuck on the word “love.”

  “She was adamant about my taking the picture down,” Jeanine said, ignoring his meaning. “She wanted you to know he doesn’t matter to her.”

  “You knew them together?” Grey asked, looking up.

  “There was no ‘together.’ Both my husband and I knew that from the first time we met him. Surely you could tell, just from that one meeting. They are as different as two people can be. She is sweet and kind…he…” Jeanine shrugged. “Arrogant and very full of his own importance.”

  “But he thought they had something…”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Jeanine said. “It’s what Susannah wants that we care about. Right?”

  “Right,” Grey said.

  “Don’t worry about Monsieur Stewart,” she said. “I doubt very much that he will show his face in this town again.”

  “He managed to get out of the water okay?”

  “Oh, yes. He climbed out at the boat launch ramp,” she said.

  Then she checked her watch, said she’d better be getting back to the shop; she’d been upstairs, doing paperwork. He thanked her very much, and she shook his hand, said that he hoped to come back and dive again.

  “I’d like to,” he said.

  “That’s what Susannah assumed, that you would,” Jeanine said. “She told me that you’d had a very profound experience in the cave.”

  “We certainly did,” Grey said. “And I’d like to do it again, but I couldn’t without her.”

  “Then bring her back,” Jeanine said, her gaze fiery.

  Grey nodded. If only he could, if only it were that easy. He started to hand her back the photo.

  “No,” she said. “It’s yours.”

  “But you said you don’t have another of Susannah…”

  Jeanine smiled. “As I said: bring her back here. Then we can take a picture of the two of you together.” Without waiting for his response, she rose from her seat, and with a last pointed look at him, strode away.

  He watched Jeanine walk along the seawall, back to the wharf. The harbor was full of boats, many more than had been here even two weeks ago. The warm weather was here, and so were the tourists. Grey looked down at the photo. He gazed at it for a long time. Susannah had wanted it destroyed, but he couldn’t do that.

  Instead, he ripped it down the middle. He crumpled up the half showing Ian, and he walked over to the bar to throw it in the garbage. Then he returned to his seat, lifted his glass. He remembered how he and Susannah had drunk to Henri Cosquer. But right now, feeling the warm breeze and looking at her picture, that didn’t feel right.

  “To you,” he said to her picture.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Susannah tried to return to life in Connecticut, but the best part of her was back in France. She couldn’t really do anything about that either, except write letters as often as she could, check email constantly, and think about Grey all the time. She felt more like a college student—young and in love—than one of their professors.

  Helen was away, delivering a series of lectures at UCLA; Susannah took the opportunity to write up all the notes she’d taken on the trip: about Sarah, the Livre du Grand Voyage, the Cosquer Cave. In a separate journal, she poured her heart out about everything else, the things that would never be found in a scholarly paper: everything about Grey. She went out, saw friends, kept busy, but felt herself far away.

  One early evening she went for a walk behind the Renwick Inn, to see the light reflected in the river. By this time of May, the air was warming up, and new leaves were on the trees. The river glistened, golden in the last rays of the setting sun. She stared out at the river, seeing the butterscotch light play on the water’s surface. She thought of the Parc, of all the creeks and reeds, of how the landscapes were so similar. They were both fed by the same ocean, but they were so far apart.

  She sat on a rustic bench, lost in thoughts of Grey until the waning moon lifted into the sky, through the trees. It glowed, as white as ever, but it looked as if it had been torn in half, tipped on its side.

  The breeze picked up…a salt wind, blowing inland from Long Island Sound. Susannah felt it ripple through her hair as if it were coming straight from France. She remembered getting Tempest free of the quicksand, the way the moon had looked that night. Moonlight just pouring down…She’d felt it on her skin, just as she felt the breeze now.

  The moon that night had seemed to belong to her and Grey. And when she looked up now, seeing it rising higher in the sky, she realized that he had seen the same thing just hours earlier in France. And she knew that it was waning; the moon had been full, and soon it would disappear.

  Sitting alone on the bench, she felt the same thing happening to her, Grey, and Sari. They’d had their moment, but it was over…disappearing. All she wanted was to hold on to the feelings she’d had in France. But staring up at the moon through the new leaves, she felt everything ebbing away.

  In her office the next day, Susannah was surrounded by papers, transcribing notes onto her computer. Lost in work and thought, she barely heard the door open behind her.

  “Hello, Susannah,” came the low, elegant voice.

  Susannah glanced over her shoulder and smiled, so happy to see her mentor, just back from Los Angeles, tall and thin, with her white hair pinned up in a French twist.

  “Hello, Helen,” she said. “It’s good to see you…”

  “The same to you, Susannah. Why don’t you bring everything into my office, so we can catch up?”

  Susannah gathered the material she’d brought back from France, and walked down the hall of the anthropology department. It was long and dark, with sunlight slanting in through several open office doors. Susannah entered Helen’s office, and took her customary chair opposite the wide oak desk; she’d been sitting there for years, ever since their first interview, when Susannah was just out of grad school.

  Helen stood in a corner of the room, waiting for the kettle to finish boiling. Their meetings always included tea and shortbread, and Helen always arranged them herself. Susannah noticed her leaning on the table, favoring her weak leg; she got up and walked over.

  “Please let me get the tea today, Helen,” she said.

  “You know, I think I’ll take you up on that,” Helen said gratefully. “My trip was rather arduous, and I’m a bit tired.”

  Susannah nodded, noticing her pallor, feeling a ripple of worry. She heard the professor limping back to her desk, and finished making tea. She arranged it just as Helen always did: on a linen-cloth-covered silver tray. The cups and teapot were porcelain; the tea was loose Darjeeling, held in a silver strainer.

  “So,” Helen said after they were settled. “Tell me about your visit to the Bibliothèque in Arles.”

  “Yes, of course,” Susannah said, removing from the sheaf of papers the sketch she’d made of the cover: the title, the dragon with burning red eyes, and the gold cross blessing it all.

 

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