The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (40 page)

This confession surprised me. I was stung by it for a moment, but there was Abbot. How long had he been suffering, holding on to what he thought was a dark secret? “Abbot, it’s okay to tell me that,” I said. “Have you felt guilty about it? You shouldn’t. It’s okay.”

He said, “But then I thought that maybe you would have
picked Daddy, too. That’s what I thought tonight. If you had a choice … you would have picked him, not me.” He curled away from me and started sobbing.

“No, Abbot, no,” I said, and I lay down on the cool floor next to him, wrapping my arms around his small ribs. “First of all, the world doesn’t make us pick, and second of all, Abbot, I would have picked you. Daddy would have picked you. It’s an instinct in parents. Once the baby is born, you both know that you’d give up your life for that baby. That’s the truth. And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not flying away from you,” I said. I wrapped him in my arms and rocked him back and forth on the cold stone. “I’m not flying away.”

hree rangers arrived on the scene like miners, lights slashing the darkness from their headlamps on their helmets. They were young and strong and knew the mountain extremely well, just as Julien had said. They arrived with a stretcher, checked out Abbot’s ankle, cleaned up his knees and hands. They decided it was only a sprain, a nasty one, but nothing was broken. Julien spoke to them in French, explaining the situation, and I was relieved. I was too exhausted to rehash things. I was still reeling. Abbot had run away. He’d almost been lost. I needed to focus on him and nothing else. Not Julien. Not even Charlotte and Adam. Elysius and my mother would take over. I’d made a promise to go home. I was sticking to it. I spoke to Henry in my head—
Abbot is alive, safe. His heart beating. I’m taking us home, Henry. We’re going back home
. Two of the rangers fastened safety straps over
a thick blanket, immobilizing Abbot’s leg, and tucked a rolled blanket under his head. Abbot stared up at the cloudless night sky, calm, peaceful. The two stretcher-bearers counted
un, deux, trois
, and hoisted Abbot to hip level, and they were off, chattering away to each other in chipper French that I was too tired to translate. I trusted them. They were experts, after all. The third ranger held my arm, helped to keep me steady. I was thinking about swallows and the voice of a ghost in the chapel and my son, not lost, not gone, whole and safe. I kept saying to myself,
Home, home, home
.

When we got to the bottom of the mountain, in the light thrown from the house, I saw everyone collected in the yard—Charlotte, Adam, Véronique, the guest who’d jumped in to help. Julien had already phoned ahead, telling them that Abbot’s ankle was fine—only bumps, bruises, a sprain. Oddly, Adam Briskowitz looked the most upset of all. He was sitting on the ground, knees up, head in his hands.

Véronique opened her arms and hugged me. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “He is home. He is good.” I wanted to tell her that she was wrong.
This is not home
.

She released me. “Thanks, everyone,” I said, and then to the rangers especially,
“Merci. Merci pour tout.”

The rangers unhooked a sleepy Abbot from the stretcher.

“Do you want me to carry him to his bed?” Julien asked.

I shook my head. “I can do it,” I said. I was still blaming Julien even though I knew it wasn’t fair. I lifted Abbot, and he wrapped his arms and legs around me. I’d have thought he was too big for me to carry like this, or just about, but maybe
I’d gotten stronger that summer, hauling paint up and down ladders, ripping weeds from the ground. Abbot held tight, and we headed for the house. I heard Julien saying some final words to the rangers. Charlotte jogged ahead of me and opened the back door.

I walked into the brightness of the kitchen. “Charlotte,” I said, “will you get a bowl of warm water and a washcloth?”

“Yep,” she said, and she darted off.

I carried Abbot up the steep stairs then into his room. I felt the pain of my own bruised knees, the palms of my hands burning. I set Abbot gently on his bed. The bed had two pillows, so I used one to prop up his swollen ankle, then covered him with the sheet.

“We’re home,” he said.

“Not really, not
home
home,” I said. “In fact, while I was searching for you, I promised myself that if you were safe and sound, we would pack up and go back home, to the way everything was before, immediately. I think we can be home in a matter of days.” Elysius and my mother would be arriving any time now. They would take over with Charlotte. Abbot and I would retreat. I thought he’d be relieved.

But he stared at me, wide-eyed, as if suddenly afraid. “No,” he said. “That’s all wrong. I want you to be happy!”

“I
am
happy!” I said. “We found you, Abbot! You’re safe!”

He rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. “The swallow wasn’t happy in the box. The box stunk, and it didn’t want to eat dead flies. The swallow wanted to fly away.”

“Abbot,” I whispered, and lay down, put my head on the
pillow. “I already told you that I’m not flying away from you. Remember? And I promise you that I won’t.”

Abbot and I were nose to nose. “I want you to fly away a little,” he said.

“You want me to fly away a little?”

He nodded.

“You want me to fly away a little and then circle back?”

He nodded again. “Julien is good,” he said. “He’s a good guy.”

I was completely startled. “You want me to fly away with Julien and circle back?”

He nodded again and then pushed his nose into my nose and said, “Bing bong.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. He was just a child. I was the mother. I was the one who had to keep him safe. I couldn’t do that with Julien around. I’d proved that I wasn’t capable of handling that kind of distraction. The world was too dangerous. It wanted to take people from me. We were going home. We had to. In fact, all I wanted to do was start packing. Normally, I’d push my nose into his and say, “Bing bong.” But I couldn’t. “We have to go home, Abbot,” I said. “I’m sorry. We just do.”

He closed his eyes, shutting me out.

harlotte walked into the bedroom with the soapy water and the washcloth. She helped me get Abbot cleaned up. We worked together in almost complete silence. We undressed
him to his underwear, wiped down his face, arms, and legs, going gently over the scrapes on his hands and knees. He winced but didn’t whine much. He was too exhausted to whine. By the time we were done, he was nodding off to sleep.

“He’s doing pretty well, considering,” Charlotte said, holding the bowl, its water now clouded with dirt. “I tried to run away once and only made it as far as behind a sofa. He’s a bold kid.”

“My heart’s still in my throat. I can’t shake the feeling that I almost lost him,” I said.

“Don’t forget to take care of yourself,” she said, pointing to my bruised knees, one of which was caked with blood and dirt.

“I will.” I dropped the washcloth in the bowl and held out my hands. “I’ll take it downstairs.”

Charlotte handed me the bowl, and I started for the steps.

“Wait,” she said.

I stopped and turned to face her. “What is it?”

“They’re coming, Elysius and Grandma, and I lied when I said that I didn’t have a vision of the day-to-day in a perfect world.”

“What does it look like?”

“I want to stay with you and Abbot.”

“I’m a disaster area, Charlotte. A complete mess!” This was the wrong time to ask anything of me.

“You need me, in a way, I think. Don’t you?” Her face was
serene and hopeful. Hadn’t she proved that I needed her already? Charlotte was steady. She was calm in an emergency. She was patient and strong and, most of all, sure of herself. “And I need you. I only want to be with someone who’ll see it as fair. A give and take.”

“But what about Adam?”

“We’re not ready to play dress-up at marriage. I mean, it’s an institution and all. We’d like to date. Have at least one kind of normal thing.” She paused. “He’s all shaken up. I don’t know what it is. Something about Abbot running away made him freak.”

I looked at Charlotte’s wide eyes, her dimpled chin. She was a kid, really, only sixteen, but she was already smarter than I was in some ways. Charlotte had said that she had felt sure of things here from the very start. I wanted to feel sure. My own vision of returning to the past was already deeply shaken—by Abbot and now by Charlotte. My father had said that she’d already chosen me, and he was right. If Henry were here to help me, I’d have said yes. I’d have hugged her and whispered, “Anything, anything you need at all. We’re here for you completely.” But I was alone, barely hanging on. I looked down at the bowl, the sudsy, dirty water shifting within it. “I can’t say yes, Charlotte. There are too many moving pieces. I think I’m packing up tomorrow and looking into flights. Abbot and I need to go home. We can’t prolong this, this …”

“Don’t leave me here with them! You can’t! You need my help and I need yours.” She was the one to hug me, the water
from the bowl sloshing over its sides, and for a moment, I felt warm and safe—still gutted, still lost and shaken, but for a moment, safe. “Think about the whole idea,” she whispered. “Will you?”

I nodded.

“Goodnight,” she said, and headed off to bed.

I was frozen there. Charlotte was so sure of herself. Why wasn’t I? I heard myself saying,
Here I am, Henry, trying to do the right thing, and I’m pretty sure I’m doing it all wrong
.

walked down the stairs and there in the kitchen, standing by the sink, was Julien, waiting for me. His face was streaked with dirt, his shirt muddied from Abbot’s hands, one leg of his pants ripped at the knee. He folded his arms on his chest and sighed. “Your mother called my mother. She and your sister were delayed in Marseille. They’ve had dinner and are getting a hotel for the night. They’re tired.”

He was beautiful dirty like this—dirty from having searched the wilds for my son. He was so beautiful that I wasn’t sure what he was saying. I loved his full lips, his teeth, the slight upturn at the corners of his eyes. I wanted to walk up to him and rest my head on his chest, and if I had done what my mother told me to do—to feel, connect, allow decisions to form—I would have done just that. But I knew that it wasn’t possible. I had Abbot’s permission, but that wasn’t what I’d been waiting for. I couldn’t afford the weakness that falling in love demanded. I was tired of losing and being
lost. I must have looked dirty myself—and dazed, too. “My mother and Elysius are what?”