Nell felt tears on her face. She wanted to rest on the rock, Brody’s hand on her foot, until the sun swept across the sky, until the others came looking for them, until it was time to go back to the inn and start again.
Later, Nell sat with her mother on the pebbly beach, watching the others swim.
“I can’t believe Carly would blow off the kayaking trip,” Olivia said.
“Give it a rest, Mom.”
“It’s just not like her.”
Nell and Carly had an ongoing battle about their childhood.
Nell was sure that her younger sister got all the attention: for her perfect grades, her science-fair inventions, her awards and her scholarships. Carly argued that Nell got all the attention every time she broke the rules, got caught, did it again. Olivia insisted that life wasn’t fair—sometimes one kid took up all the space, sometimes the other one did. Get over it. There’s enough love to go around.
So now Carly finally did something that should have pissed off her mother, and she was still getting all the attention. Nell felt like growling.
“So Carly needed a break,” she said. “Who cares?”
“Brody cares,” Olivia said. “He spent a lot of time planning this outing.”
“And we’re all loving it,” Nell insisted.
“Carly won’t give him a chance,” Olivia said.
Nell shrugged. “She’s a daddy’s girl.”
“Fine. It’s great that she loves her father. Brody isn’t competing for that role.”
“Mom,” Nell said. “Give her time. You can’t make us into your new perfect little family in one weekend.”
Olivia threw herself back on the beach, sighing loudly. “Why not?” she moaned.
“You’re impossible,” Nell said, finally offering her a smile.
“I’m glad to see you having fun,” Olivia said, lifting her head.
“It’s France,” Nell said. “It’s illegal to be unhappy in the south of France.”
She patted her mother’s leg, then stood up and started walking along the beach. She passed a family perched on the rocks, sharing a picnic. Someone’s boom box blasted music. “I Wanna Sex You Up.” One kid stood up and sang the song along with
the recording, his strongly accented English making the words sound comical, his hips jutting from side to side. The mom laughed, the sister threw a grape at him. Everyone cracked up.
Gavin flitted into her mind again.
Has your sister ever had a boyfriend who is good enough for her?
Why was he so interested in Carly?
Don’t think about Gavin. He’s long gone. He’s got a pretty French girl in the seat beside him and his hand’s inching up her thigh.
Nell kept walking. At the end of the beach she saw two teenage boys sharing a joint. They stared at her, their eyes half-closed, their skinny bodies stretched out on the rocks. One of them pumped his hand near his crotch. Was he asking for a hand job? She turned around, disgusted.
“Mademoiselle!”
one of them called.
She shook her head and kept walking.
Soon one of the boys was at her side, smelling of suntan lotion and sweat. He walked next to her as if he knew her, as if she had invited him for a stroll on the beach. He was her height but young, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He had a sly grin, long wavy hair, cat eyes. He’d be a lady-killer one day. Right now he was a punk.
“Leave me alone,” she told him. But he didn’t seem threatening. Just young.
“T’es américaine,”
he said. “I am sorry for my brother.”
He pointed back toward the other boy on the rocks. The lewd one with his hand now curled beside his crotch, a reminder of what he wanted. He was older, she guessed. A tough guy.
“You speak English,” she said. This brother was fine-boned, copper-colored.
He looked down, suddenly shy.
“T’es jolie,”
he said, raising his eyes.
“Merci,”
she told him.
“You want marijuana?” he asked, suddenly an eager puppy.
She laughed. “No,” she said. “But I’d take a beer if you’ve got one.”
He looked at her, confused. Too many words, too fast.
“Une bière?”
she asked.
He ran back to the rocks, his body electric. In a mad dash, he scrambled through their cooler, found a beer, raced back to her side. All the while his brother watched her with heavy eyelids, his tongue traveling slowly across his lower lip.
“Merci,”
she said when the boy handed her the cold bottle.
“Une fête,”
he said breathlessly. “A party
ce soir. Tu viens avec moi?
”
She thought of the song “Lady Marmalade.”
“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir.”
She laughed. His face darkened.
She raised her beer to him. “I’m busy tonight. But thanks.”
“Non?”
She shook her head.
“Non. T’as quel âge?”
“Dix-huit ans.”
He was lying. No way this lovely boy-child was eighteen.
“All those people over there?” she said, pointing to the far edge of the beach where she could see her mother, Brody, and Fanny standing and talking.
“Ma famille,”
she said.
“Un mariage demain.”
She knew some French, but now only random words seemed to come to her in sudden bursts.
“Ton mariage?”
he asked, looking painfully disappointed.
“Non,”
she said.
“Ma mère. Moi, je suis célibataire.”
Single.
I’m single. Solo. All alone. His eyes brightened as if she had flicked the switch.
“Tarek,” he said. “My name Tarek.”
“Nell,” she told him.
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on one cheek, then the other, his lips brushing her skin. “
Bonjour
, Nell,” he said. His smile stretched across his face.
“I’ll meet you here in ten years,” she said in rapid-fire English. “How’s that for a plan?”
“Je ne comprends pas,”
he said, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“So which of you is the real bad-boy brother?” she asked. “The sleazy guy on the rocks or you, sweet-talking me like this?”
“En français,”
he begged.
“I’m only allowed one stranger a weekend,” she told him. “Already had as much fun as a girl could have with the first one. But man, are you cute.”
“Trop vite,”
he said. Too fast. Slow down.
But she was already moving on. At the other end of the beach her mother was waving madly to her. Nell took a long gulp of the beer and handed the boy the bottle. Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. His eyes widened.
“Au revoir, mon amour,”
she said.
And she walked away.
G
avin sped along the winding mountain road, tires screeching around curves.
“Are we in a rush?” Carly asked.
“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he said.
“Where are we going?” she finally asked. She had swallowed her fear when he turned away from Cassis and headed up into the hills. She didn’t like fear. Back home, when she gave a speech in front of hundreds of people, she was cool, unflappable. Before then, exams were effortless, job interviews merely an interesting challenge. Even in high school, when she interned at Google and sat in on a meeting with Sergey, she didn’t break a sweat. He asked her a question and she nailed it.
But this guy, her big sister’s one-night stand, unnerved her.
Or maybe she was thrown off by her own behavior. A
change in plans. A wild adventure with a stranger. It made her heart thrum in her chest.
The hills were covered in a carpet of vineyards, the morning mist settling in the vines. They drove with the windows half-open and she could smell wet dog. Had there been a dog in the car?
“We’ll go to Marseille,” he said.
“What’s in Marseille?”
“We’ll find out,” he said.
“We should be back for lunch,” she told him.
“But you don’t want to be,” Gavin said, eyeing her.
“You’re right,” she said, and relief spread through her. She didn’t want to spend the day with her mother and her sister and all those people. She remembered her promise to Sébastien.
I plan on being completely immature
. Was it possible? Could she spend a day without a plan?
Oddly, her mind settled on a memory: She and Nell were walking along the Embarcadero with their father. They were little—seven and nine, perhaps. Nell kept running ahead and back like a hyperactive puppy. Each time she’d circle back she’d try to steal Carly’s scarf, a new striped scarf that her mother had bought for her birthday. Carly kept swatting Nell’s hand away. She felt agitated, close to tears. She wanted her father to yell at Nell, to tell her to stop pestering her. But her father was telling a long story about why he chose to become a lawyer and why Carly should be a lawyer. It had something to do with the love of a logical mind, but she couldn’t understand what that meant. She didn’t want him to think that something as stupid as a scarf could ruin a wonderful day. And then the scarf was gone, pulled from her neck in an instant, a sneak attack
from behind. She was sobbing, unable to move forward, and Nell was gone, the scarf wrapped tightly around her own neck. “What is it now?” her father said, with disgust. And then she realized: He didn’t like children very much. He was waiting for her to grow up and in the meantime she’d have his love and attention as long as she acted like a grown-up and not a child. But she couldn’t help herself; she railed against Nell, against the lost scarf, against the demands on her seven-year-old self.
Even then, she knew too much. She knew that Nell was a child and she was something else: a fraud, an impostor, a spy from the land of adults.
“We’ll blow off lunch at the inn,” Carly said boldly.
“If anyone complains, you can just say that I kidnapped you.” Gavin offered her a half-smile; he glanced again at her legs.
She pressed the back of her hand against the window, expecting cool glass. But it was already hot outside. It was hot inside. Why didn’t he turn on the air-conditioning?
“Does my sister know that you’re gone?” Carly asked.
He lifted his eyebrows. “She’s sleeping.”
She thought of the sounds of sex all night long. Could that be the smell? He didn’t take a shower. He was the wet dog in the hot car. She put her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. I don’t know what happens next, she thought.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Gavin asked.
“In a meeting right now. In two or three meetings. On conference calls with four or five countries. In negotiations with five or six companies.” She kept her eyes closed, smiling.
“Busy man,” Gavin said.
“And I’m driving to Marseille with a stranger,” Carly murmured.
“Your sister wanted to know me. You’d rather not know me.”
She looked at him. He was right. She didn’t want to know where he came from, where he went to college. Did he go to college? She didn’t want the stories of his scars, his tattoos, his tortured past. And yet, she wanted this: to drive in the car with him, too fast. To turn the corner and see something she’d never seen before. To end up in Marseille because she had no notion of what would happen there.
They turned the corner and the sea appeared, the shade of blue startlingly bright.
“Tell me one thing about you,” she said. “One astonishing thing.”
He was quiet for a while and she scanned the horizon. A few fishing boats out to sea, one enormous cruise ship, a whisper of clouds in the distance. A perfect day for an adventure.
“Once I tell a lie,” he finally said, “it becomes a truth. From that moment on, there is nothing truer in the world than that lie.”
“And can you remember if it’s a truth or a lie the next time you tell it?” she asked, watching him.
“No,” he said. “The lie disappears forever.”
She nodded. She was a truth-teller. Even in business she didn’t believe in lies. Wes told her once that she’d beat everyone else because the rest of the world spent all their time covering up their lies.
So what does it mean to tell a lie and then believe it for the rest of your life? Something flickered at the edge of her memory. Nell. The high school dance. The police.
“And you?” Gavin asked. “One astonishing thing.”
“I’d like to kiss you,” she said.
O
livia needed to shower and change—her damp bathing suit clung to her skin. But Emily and Paolo were at work in the kitchen, conjuring up dishes that smelled like summer. She wanted to help; she wanted to make sure that Emily was weathering the marital storm.
“Take this to the outdoor table,” Emily ordered, pushing a tray of wineglasses into Olivia’s hands and ushering her out the door. “Nell—you grab the dishes. Out with you both.”
So mother and daughter walked around the wooden trestle table under the arbor, setting the table for lunch. Emily had already laid out pale blue place mats and yellow cloth napkins. A row of shot glasses filled with sprays of wildflowers lined the center of the table.
“Imagine living like this every day,” Olivia said.
“You’d go nuts,” Nell told her. “You need chaos in your life.”
“I do not,” she argued. “My life isn’t chaos.”
“There’s a blowup at the theater every day,” Nell said. “You feast on that.”
“Wrong,” Olivia said. “I smooth out the ruffles. I want my life to look like this.” She spread out her arms. The arbor sat at the edge of the meadow, with the pool and the field of wildflowers stretching beyond them. Terraced vineyards encircled the property and off to one side was a forest of pine trees.
“Well, it does feel good,” Nell said. “This place settles the soul.”
Olivia eyed her daughter. She was showered, her hair tousled. She wore cut-off jean shorts and a black tank top and looked as if she could be eighteen rather than twenty-eight. But even without makeup, this freshly scrubbed version of Nell looked vaguely dangerous. As if trouble would find her even if she didn’t start it herself.
“What’s that on your wrist?” Olivia asked as Nell set a bowl on the table. A purple oval bruise, the size of a thumbprint, colored the underside of her wrist.
Nell glanced at it and then shoved her hand in her pocket. “It’s nothing,” she said.