The Paris Key Read Online Free Page B

many years ago?
    No, of course not; far too much time had passed. This was simply what so many Frenchwomen looked like: slender, elegant, gracious—a flurry of adjectives came to mind, not one of which described Genevieve.
    Genevieve thought of herself as ordinary, clumsy, even evasive. She had inherited her mother’s thick auburn hair and deep brown eyes, but otherwise she felt run-of-the-mill, slightly shorter than average. Thirty-three years old, unhappy, and on the verge of divorce. It dawned on her, only then, that she was almost the same age her mother had been when Angela went to visit her brother in the Village Saint-Paul, a last hurrah before Genevieve was born.
    Was she unconsciously retracing her mother’s footsteps? That sounded like something Jason would propose, now that he was in therapy. Probably his life coach would suggest that Genevieve had never gotten over her mother’s death and that she was running away in search of answers.
    No kidding,
she thought. Could anyone who hadn’t lost a parent early truly understand the extent of the loss? Was it even worth trying to explain?
    Angela’s death was the brutal dividing line in Genevieve’s life: First she had a mother, and then she didn’t. The course of the devastation was swift, with only a few weeks from initial detection of the disease to her death. Not even long enough for extended family to be notified and called to her bedside. Her husband and children were still in denial when Angela’s remains were whisked away, leaving them stunned and mortified, awkwardly shuffling through their days, tending to the animals, not talking. Angela hadn’t wanted a memorial service; instead, she requested that her husband and children sprinkle her ashes at the base of the dusty old sycamore tree, the one that shaded the turkey shed. Nick suggested they plant a rosebush in her memory, but Angela had laughed and said no, that if the bush died it would be like her leaving yet again.
“The sycamore’s a better bet,”
she’d said with a smile.
“Nothing will kill that thing. And I’ll be perfect fertilizer.”
    Three weeks after Angela’s death Genevieve experienced the fresh new hell of Mother’s Day. During school Genevieve was allowed to read in the library while her classmates made cards, but she couldn’t avoid the fund-raisers selling carnation posies. See’s Candies, the local florist, even the grocery store . . . she had felt inundated at every turn by the push to celebrate the mother who had abandoned her by dying, who had left her with a yawning void in her life, a need that ran so deep and dark that Genevieve feared she would never reach the bottom, no matter how far she dared dive into the abyss.
    Yet another good reason to move to France,
Genevieve thought.
No Mother’s Day.
    Or . . . was there? Had they, too, been infected with this Hallmark holiday? Sometimes it snuck up without warning, like in her senior year of high school, when her father took her to Philadelphia for college tours of Penn and Drexel. Jim saw it as an opportunity to teach his daughter a little about history, insisting on shepherding her to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. While walking downtown they spied a plaque dedicated to Anne Jarvis, who had begun the tradition of Mother’s Day as a tribute to her own mother, and who then lobbied for it to become a national holiday.
    â€œScrew Mother’s Day,”
Genevieve had muttered under her breath, and Jim, her sad, stoic, somber father, who normally admonished her to watch her language, for once seemed to understand his rebellious daughter.
    He nodded thoughtfully and said,
“I’m with you, kid.”
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    A flight attendant came by and offered more champagne. Champagne in economy class: You had to love the French. But with the second glass, a gnawing uncertainty took root in