"Qu"est-ce que tu fais, Sebastian?"
He nods and then gets up.
"Your soup is getting cold, circus girl!" he shouts up the stairs. "Vite, vite."
Then Sebastian looks at you. "Funny, eh? Kids."
"You got any brothers or sisters, Henry?"
You set down your spoon.
"I had a brother," you say. "But he died when he was a baby."
"Sorry," Sebastian says.
When Delphine comes down Sebastian is washing lettuce.
"The soup is cold now," her mother says.
"I had to pee."
After lunch, Natalie stacks plates in the sink. Sebastian takes a pack of cigarettes from the drawer. Delphine sees them.
"Non, non, non, non, Sebastian! No smoking, remember?"
"In the house, Delphine-no smoking in the house."
"You shouldn"t smoke, Sebastian!-it could make you die."
"Let"s take a walk," he says, touching your arm. "I"ll show you around."
Sebastian steps into a pair of Wellington boots and hands you a heavy black walking stick with a silver owl at the top.
"Found this in the house when I was renovating."
Delphine wants to come but her mother takes her upstairs.
You step out the front door into a country lane. The hedgerows rise up on each side. Blackberries stud the leaves and branches. There are birds flying high above you.
"So you were Rebecca"s boyfriend in Athens?" Sebastian says.
"Yes, exactly."
"Natalie still gets upset about it."
You nod in understanding, then walk in silence for a kilometer or so.
"Forgive me for asking this," Sebastian says. "But is there another reason you came here?"
A few white cows on the hillside eat their way across pasture. The air smells of gra.s.s and manure.
"To see if she had family."
"Not to fall in love with her all over again?"
You say nothing because it"s true. Then your mouth is full of words, and impulsively you confess to Sebastian that Rebecca was pregnant.
He stops walking and touches your arm.
"With your child?"
You nod.
He seems more disturbed than you would have thought.
Neither of you move.
After a few moments, Sebastian seems like he wants to ask you something, but then shakes his head.
"What"s done is done," he says. "I"m glad you told me-it won"t go any further, I promise."
You walk for a long time without speaking.
The road gets very narrow. Sebastian explains that it was built for horses and small traps. Then he points out a truck stop cafe where Natalie and Rebecca worked when they were teenagers.
You remember the journal but say nothing. You don"t know what to think and consider that you will never know whose child Delphine really is-that you"ll never know whose feelings they were. To find out could cost the happiness of a little girl who is loved and knows nothing of the tragedy that defines you.
"When I arrived here," Sebastian explains, "the village was almost deserted. There was no work for the young, really, and so the elderly either died alone in the village or moved to nursing homes in the cities, closer to their kids."
"But how did you end up here?"
"By literally crashing into it-into a stone wall, actually."
Sebastian stops walking and drinks in the air with long, deep breaths.
"Earlier that day," he went on, "I had taken drugs in a quiet corner of Gare du Nord in Paris, and then, in a sort of calm stupor, I climbed into a Mercedes that some foolish t.w.a.t had left running outside the station.
"Does that surprise you?" Sebastian asks.
"A little," you say.
He is walking quickly now. You walk alongside him, listening, searching his story for a wisdom you can relate to.
"I drove and drove, not knowing where I was going, but just driving. Then I must have turned off the highway and begun driving through the countryside around here. And then at some point, I crashed into a wall in the village."
"A few hours later at dawn I awoke covered in gla.s.s and partially crushed by the stones that had fallen through the windshield. And if you think all that is far-fetched, then listen to this, Henry. I stepped from the car and fell in love."
Sebastian stops walking again and spreads his arms.
"With all this dereliction, I found myself enchanted."
Sebastian is much older than you thought-forty-seven.
He has a brother with Down syndrome that he wants to move in with them eventually. Then you both come upon an abandoned barn. The walls are slanted gray stone with hanging moss.
Sebastian leans on a gate and lights a cigarette.
Chickens dot the yard, pecking around a battered Mercedes they"re using as a coup. All the windows are missing. The front end is also completely smashed in. A sign on the top says: TAXI.
PARISIEN.
Sebastian laughs.
"The shiny paint gives it away," you tell him.
"Chicken s.h.i.t will take care of that pretty soon," he laughs. "That part of my life is long gone."
Sebastian walks you around the barn, pointing out birds" nests, beehives, low bushy green squares covered with wire that mark the beginning of his organic vegetable business.
"Anyway, to cut a long story short, I bought a derelict house for 15,000, did it up, and then opened a little cafe, which I only do now in the summer-Delphine is the waitress, if you can imagine that-I have an old espresso machine and of course Coca-Cola and fizzy drinks for the kids. And I met Natalie when one day she came into my cafe when she was down from the Paris suburbs with Delphine, trying to sell her grandfather"s house. But the house couldn"t be sold."
"Why?"
"Mold-it"s close to a lake and somehow the water has seeped underneath and the whole place is f.u.c.ked. But it"s a big part of her life, you know-it"s where she and her sister grew up, so even though it"s a wreck, it would upset her to get rid of it completely-so it"s just standing. I"ll take you to see it if you want."
You nod, but then you think you wouldn"t like to see it.
As you step through tall gra.s.s toward a gate, you decide to burn the journal. You"re still not sure who wrote it. You"ll never be sure and don"t care anymore.
Delphine is a happy child-and truth is just a lie that everyone believes.
Sebastian holds the gate open and tells you about the British Spitfire plane he found in the woods behind the house. He said that it was hidden there by the Resistance during the war after it crash-landed in a muddy field. Once his organic vegetable business is in full swing, he"s going to buy the parts for it and get it airborne, teach Delphine how to fly, he says.
After crossing a few gra.s.sy meadows, you see Sebastian"s tall house in the distance. The shutters are painted white. Clouds drift beyond the roof.
"Did the house come with the cafe?" you ask him.
"That"s a secret," he laughs. "We didn"t buy it from anyone-we just live in it."
"Do you know who it belongs to?"
"I do," Sebastian says. "A family that left after the war for Paris because they were collaborators."
"Do you know anything about Rebecca"s mother?"
"I do, as a matter of fact," Sebastian says.
"Is she in Paris?"
"Yes. How did you know that?"
"Rebecca told me."
"Natalie doesn"t know," Sebastian admits.
"Know what?"
"That I went to see her."
"Is it true she abandoned her children?"
"It is-and it"s lucky for them she did."
"Why?"
"She"s got something-a mental thing-same as what her mother had."
"Rebecca"s grandmother?"
"Yeah-she killed herself in the lake when Rebecca"s mother was a little girl."
Chapter Fifty-Eight.
The next morning, you wake and go downstairs. It"s getting cold. Fall is coming. A bright nest of fire crackles and spits in the stone fireplace. Sebastian is outside splitting wood with a long-handled axe.
A cat stops eating and looks up at you. Before you can pet it, you hear purring.
You decide to take a walk before breakfast, to stretch your legs and feel the morning wash through you.
You don"t want to see Natalie anymore. She"s a stranger dressed in the clothes of someone you once loved. It"s impossible to love someone after they"ve died. And that"s why it hurts so much.
Maybe tomorrow you"ll go back to Wales.
You step into your shoes and leave quietly by the back door. You turn the handle very gently. The morning air is cold. A shallow mist lingers low across the fields.
You pa.s.s Sebastian"s vegetable patch and climb over a gate into empty pasture.
Then you hear, "Oh, Henry!"
You look over a short hedge.