Before Ever After (12 page)

“I can’t.”

“Then tell me what’s going on out there.”

The guard took a deep breath. He walked back to Adrien’s cell and whispered through the door, “A mob—a large one—is gathering outside.”

The shouts of the crowd grew loud enough to be heard in Adrien’s cell. They demanded that the fortress surrender and give up its cache of gunpowder and arms. Adrien wondered if that was all they wanted. Their voices were ragged. Hungry. Perhaps for justice, or for something more. Would the people see him as a prisoner or as a man of privilege, a symbol of all they despised? Or did it even matter as long as they could find limbs to grab onto and rip apart? Blood, like wine, was intoxicating.

He worried about Antoine. If there was a swarm at the gates of the Bastille, the rest of the city might not be faring any better. He wished he had read at least one of Antoine’s Bibles. Maybe he would know how to pray for his friend’s safety and his own. He knelt. Outside, wood thundered against the ground, ripping him from his attempted plea.

The drawbridge to the inner courtyard had been cut. Adrien heard
the crowd storming over it. He shielded his ears from the gunfire and screams, but it was no use. They crept up his spine.

Then it went quiet, but it was not the kind of silence that lulled you to sleep. It was restless and sharp. It twisted inside him. He could feel the mob’s hate seeping through his door. If the silence meant a ceasefire, it was not going to last long.

The stairway to the north tower roared with the angry swarm. A fleeing guard told Adrien that the Bastille’s governor had surrendered the prison and opened the gates. Adrien held his breath. His door shook on its hinges as the mob rammed against it. It cracked but did not fall. They tried again. He shrank behind his bed. The door crashed down. The crowd swept into the room. Adrien squeezed his eyes shut, arms wrapped around his legs, ready to be torn apart. Then he was hoisted up, hovering above the crowd. He opened his eyes. The ceiling loomed closer. He frowned. He was either dead and had not quite made it up to heaven or he was sitting on someone’s shoulders. He glanced down. Antoine grinned at him from the cheering crowd.

Adrien stared at him openmouthed. “What …”

“I apologize for the delay. Some enterprising fellow stole the keys to your cell as a souvenir. I believe he also carted the governor away. I had to get some help.” Antoine smiled. “Now, dear friend, be a good symbol of the people and wave. Repeat after me.
Vive la révolution!
”

T
he stones of the Bastille grew smaller as the barge made its way down the Seine.

“Records show that the storming of the Bastille yielded a grand total of seven prisoners: two lunatics, four forgers, and one Irish nobleman imprisoned for debt,” Max said. “Adrien and Antoine had left Paris before history could jot their names down for posterity. This suited the two just fine since it was this very anonymity that enabled their safe passage to Scotland. Antoine left Adrien in the care of friends in the French Huguenot community there. Adrien, who had considerably mellowed with age, found country life rather agreeable. He married the daughter of a respected poultry farmer and settled into a long and rich life filled with chickens and children.”

The group applauded. The barge slowed and veered toward a quay.

“That was a lovely story, dear.” Rose patted Max’s arm.

“Yes, great story, Max,” Dex said, “but how do you know all this stuff?”

Max shrugged. “Trade secret—or then again, it could just be a load of rubbish.”

“What happened to Antoine?” Shelley asked.

“Antoine? I … well … I believe he continued to travel around
Europe.” Max turned to the group. “Campers, this is as far as the story of Isabelle’s family goes on this leg of the trip. You can spend the rest of the afternoon doing whatever touristy thing you fancy. Oh, and if you happen to come by an Eiffel Tower snow globe, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could pick one up for me. I’ll see everyone back at the house for an early dinner.”

P
aolo took a deep breath. “So Antoine was Max.”

Shelley nodded. She felt numb.

“That makes Nonno about two hundred years old and counting,” Paolo said. “It gives a whole new meaning to the expression ‘midlife crisis,’ don’t you think? I can totally understand why he would have wanted to hang out with Adrien.” He looked pleased with his analysis.

Shelley was not. She looked away. Paris had, like a flower, been safely pressed between the pages of her memory. Now it was drying out and crumbling under Paolo’s scrutiny. This was excruciating, but necessary, she thought. As was keeping a single petal of the past to herself. She held it close to her chest.

WHAT SHELLEY DID NOT TELL PAOLO

S
helley watched the barge pull away from the embankment. She overheard Max giving the Templetons advice on the best place to have lunch near the Louvre.

“Hey, I’m having lunch with Brad and Simon. Would you, um, like to join us?” Dex asked.

Shelley sighed. It was better than eating alone. “I …”

“Do you have plans for the afternoon, luv?” Max asked.

Shelley spun around. Max was standing behind her. “Well, uh … no.” She bit her lip and looked back at Dex.

Dex gave her a small smile. “I’ll see you later. Enjoy your lunch.”

“Brilliant,” Max said. “I’m seeing an old friend and I’d love for the two of you to meet.”

“An old friend?” The image of another gorgeous redhead popped into Shelley’s head. She winced. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”

“He lives up in Montmartre. Let’s take the metro. You’ll need to save your energy for the race.”

“Hang on.” Shelley cocked a brow. “What race?”

“Trust me. It will be fun.”

“I win.” Shelley gripped her burning sides. The race, as it turned out, was a sprint up the two hundred and thirty-five steps to the Sacré Coeur Basilica. The sprawling view of Paris’s radiating boulevards and monuments from the city’s highest point would have been breathtaking if she had had any breath left to lose.

“Congratulations, luv,” Max said, “but I think clinging onto my back for the last fifteen steps may be grounds for disqualification.”

Shelley tried not to look too sheepish. This wouldn’t have been the first time she had broken the rules this morning, she thought. She was certain that having this much fun talking about everything and laughing at nothing with a man she barely knew was illegal in some parts of the world. But she told herself that Max was just another train she could hop off of anytime she wanted to. Just not right at this very minute. She could do it tonight. Or tomorrow. There was plenty of time. Really. “Fine. A tie, then.”

“A tie it is. What’s my prize?”

“I think the fact that I let you drag me all the way up here to meet your friend should be reward enough,” she said. “We could have taken the funicular, you know.”

“But then I wouldn’t have had the chance to know how Adam felt, would I?” Max said. “I can now in all honesty say that I don’t blame him at all.”

“Adam who? And what aren’t you blaming him for?” Shelley’s face was flushed deeply from the sprint up.

“Eve’s better half, of course. I now know why he couldn’t help taking a big juicy bite out of that wickedly red apple.” Max stroked the side of Shelley’s glowing cheek.

“Is that so? Well, sir, I suggest you keep your teeth off my cheeks and your snake in your fig leaf. That’s a house of God we’re standing in front of, you know.”

“I’ll try my best.” He took her hand and cut a path through the sea of tourists surrounding Sacré Coeur. “Come on, let’s go inside. Pierre’s waiting.”

Shelley found sanctuary inside the basilica’s hall. The cacophony in the street faded as she breathed in the fragrance of incense and candle smoke. Her heartbeat slowed for the first time since she had met Max—only to start racing again when he rushed her toward the stairwell of one of the church’s towers. She winced as she stared up at the winding stairs. More freaking steps. This was an odd place to meet Max’s friend, she thought, unless that friend turned out to be one of the pigeons perched on the tower’s ledge. From what she was quickly learning about Max, this was not exactly far-fetched. She was panting when they reached the top.

“Ah, here he is,” Max said. “Shelley, I’d like you to meet my dear old friend, Pierre.”

Shelley glanced around the empty tower. The loss of oxygen from all their climbing, she decided, must have either made her blind or Max delusional.

“Saint-Pierre, that is.” He pointed through the dome’s window at a small church standing on the slope beside Sacré Coeur.

“I see …” Shelley stuck her head out the window. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Saint-Pierre. Max has told me so much about you. Though
I have to say that he did give me the impression that you were, well, much more
alive
. But no matter, some of my best friends are town houses. I even have a charming old rail station for an aunt on my mother’s side.”

Max laughed. “Let’s head over there, shall we?”

“Head over there? Are you telling me that we climbed all this way just so that you could point to where we were actually going?” Shelley’s cheeks were still blazing.

“Of course not. We climbed all this way so that I could see if you could get even more rosy and delicious.”

The street in front of Saint-Pierre was deserted except for the three tourists who had just left the small church.

“What’s so special about this place, Max?” Shelley asked. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a well-kept secret.

“It’s pretty hard to compete for attention when you’re literally standing in the shadow of such a flashy neighbor,” Max said. “Still, I thought that Paris’s oldest church was worth a visit.”

Shelley stared at the eighteenth-century stone edifice and wondered if he was mistaken. Surely there were churches in the city that were older than this one.

Or not.

Her doubts were erased the second she set foot inside the stark medieval hall. She could hear its age.

Shelley had first come to the conclusion that age was a sound when she went hunting for a place after she first moved to London. Most of the places she had seen were white shoe boxes that reeked of fresh paint and lemon air freshener. This was, after all, the easiest way to make a place feel shiny and new. But all the Lysol in the world could never change how a home sounded.

New places snapped, crackled, and popped. The flick of a light switch was crisper, the toilet flushed with a fury, and the drawers slid open with the whoosh of an Olympic bobsledding team. New apartments were like yapping puppies in a pet store, jumping over one another to be picked.

Older places were more restrained. Each sound they made was
thoughtful and deliberate: the slow, echoing plops of a leaky faucet, the falsetto creak of a floor plank, the soft sigh of a breeze through a jammed window. She had chosen the oldest apartment she could find. It was quiet, but not nearly as silent as Saint-Pierre.