I ran for a few yards and reached rue des Saints-Pères in time to see her stop in front of our family home, Maison de la Lune. The house that she’d moved out of and closed down. What was Grand-mère doing here? And why lie to me about it? Why invent a friend who needed advice, or an appointment with a hairdresser or glove maker, if she was just going home?
It was then I noticed a man step out of the shadows beside the porte cochère. He was quite tall and towered over her as he bent to kiss her hand. His profile was to me, so when he rose, I could not see his face, but his hair was dark, like the color of a raven’s wing. His long fingers curled around the portfolio case he was handling with ease. His black coat was stylishly cut. When he moved, it was with an effortless grace. He looked like the kind of man my father would have said was comfortable in his own skin.
Together, the man and my grandmother stepped inside the courtyard, and the street doors shut after them.
They might be inside for a long time. Should I leave? It was a cloudy day with a chill in the air. There wasn’t any point in waiting, was there? What would seeing them exit tell me? What did I want to know?
I turned and started to walk away when I experienced a moment of dizziness. I put my hand on the wall of the building and stood still for a moment. I was facing the Maison de la Lune again. Looking at her walls, her steps, her windows. I wanted to be inside her, enclosed within her walls, sitting on the green velvet couches in the parlor and looking at the colors the lovely stained glass windows cast on the floor.
Maison de la Lune was the palace of my dreams. The elusive magical enclave that I’d never stopped thinking of since I’d left it when I was fifteen.
The h?tel particulier, as houses like Maison de la Lune were called, dated back to the mid-eighteenth century and was a type very popular in Paris. Built by noblemen as retreats, most were constructed around an inner courtyard and boasted lavish and well-manicured gardens. Ours was on the smaller side, and half of it had been turned into an indoor orangerie with a fountain, hothouse orange trees, and orchids.
While I was still deciding whether to leave or to stay, the porte cochère opened, and my grandmother came out. Alone. I waited, but the gentleman didn’t follow. How odd. Why was she leaving him inside?
Without glancing around, my grandmother walked toward the corner and turned north. Probably, she was going home.
Grand-mère had been vague about why she’d shut down the house. She’d said there were ancient pipes and structural damage, and to stay there was dangerous . . . that repairs were costly, and finding the right people to work on it, who wouldn’t take advantage of her financially, would take time. She said she was too distracted with my father’s death to see to it now.
I didn’t find it strange she would be restoring this old house. It was her lie that interested me. Now that I had started telling them, I was more aware of other people’s.
As soon as my grandmother was out of sight, I ran across the street, hoping the heavy door still took a long time to shut and lock. I was in luck and managed to slip through before the door closed.
Once inside the courtyard, I walked up to the house. Standing in front of it, I looked up at its limestone facade. What was Grand-mère hiding here? Why had she lied?
I had an overwhelming sense of belonging here, of being welcome. The same sense I’d had two weeks before, standing in the rain when I first arrived.
I lifted the bronze hand of fate and let it drop. The knocker should have been cold—it was, after all, a cloudy winter day—but instead it was warm to the touch.
Behind me, I heard footsteps and glanced around. A man and a woman whom I didn’t recognize were heading my way. There were six separate houses inside the courtyard, and even though there were often people coming and going, it wasn’t smart for me to be standing here. What if the Ferres saw me? They might say something to my grandmother, and then she’d know I’d followed her. I had two choices: either walk away so that it appeared I’d been visiting someone, or—
I lifted the knocker again and let it drop. A few moments passed. I heard footsteps, and then the door opened.
At my back I felt an odd little gentle push of wind, as if even the winter breeze knew where I belonged and wanted to help me inside.
I took a step forward.
“Yes?” A man was looking at me curiously.
I once read that there can be meetings between kindred spirits with whom you are so simpatico, your blood and your bones know it before you do. You come upon someone, and your very chemistry alters. You shift. Realign. Your senses become alert to sights and sounds and scents that eluded you just moments before.
“Can I help you?” was what he said, but I heard something far more complicated, a kind of harmony of chords and tones that resonated within me, and I was confused.
I could smell his scent: a mixture of amber, honey, and apples mixed with his own skin’s oils and the brisk winter air. Something deep inside me responded to the fragrance. I felt as if I could lose myself in it. Wrap it around me like a cashmere shawl and be forever warmed.
I did not even slightly understand the rush of sensations I was feeling. I’d never experienced this before. If I had understood what actually was happening, I might have turned and run, or so I’d like to believe. If I had, everything would be so different now. But we don’t have the ability to retravel time and change our decisions. I knew then and know still that no matter what the price, I never wanted to stop peering into those clear evergreen eyes and inhaling that heady scent. It did not occur to me to turn and leave. I wanted to be right where I was, to go inside and revisit the house I had never stopped dreaming of for the last ten years.
“Is my grandmother here?” I asked. It was the one question I knew would allow me entry.
“Who is your grandmother?”
There was everything ordinary about this meeting and everything extraordinary about it at the same time. I felt as if I were in one of Jane Austen’s novels, which my father had always made a little bit of fun of me for reading over and over.
The stranger was waiting for an answer. I needed to act normal if I wanted him to let me inside.
“My grandmother is Eva Verlaine.”
“You just missed her.”
“She said to meet her here.” My first lie of the day. I often counted them. A good day had one lie or less. A bad day had four or five.
“But she just left.”
I lifted the chatelaine I wore on my neck that included a gold watch. A gift from my father. Glancing at it, I said, “She said to arrive at eleven.”
He was leaning on the door with an attitude of insouciance that I didn’t like but at the same time was drawn to. “She didn’t mention it to me.”
“Perhaps she’s coming back to meet me.”
“When she left, she didn’t mention it.”
“Should she have? Wouldn’t it have been strange for her to have told you her plans?” I challenged.
“Do you want to come in?” He smiled despite my tone. And then he bowed and performed a bit of a flourish with his hands as if offering entry. “I shouldn’t be asking that—after all, it is your house, isn’t it?”
How to describe his voice? What words to use to explain a sound? I felt his voice. Fingers rubbing moss. Smoke curling. Wood worn and smoothed over time. His voice had darkness in it that hovered close to the ground, like a mist hanging over a lake deep in a forest at dusk. A bolt of sea-green velvet. A sensation as much as a series of sounds. It reverberated inside me.
When I look back on that meeting now, I think I fell in love in that moment.
He was waiting for me to answer, peering at me intently as if trying to understand my hesitation.