Page 48 of The Lies We Leave Behind

48

Nice, France 1950

“Ice cream?” Willa asked, staring at her cone, a drip making its way down the back of her pudgy little hand. She was always sticky. Always smiling, her pale blue eyes reminding me of another time, another place, another human I’d loved almost as much.

“Ice cream,” I repeated, nodding at her pronunciation.

She spoke mostly French, something that happened when you lived in France, attended a French school, and had little French playmates. I did too these days, after struggling our first couple of years in the country. I was teaching her other languages too though. The language of my adopted home, and sometimes the words of the country I was born into as well. But not as often.

“C’est bon?” she asked, and I nodded.

“It is good,” I said.

“Good,” she repeated, her little pink lips puckering around the word before she took another lick of the gelato, some of it ending up on her nose.

We sat back then and stared out at the sea, the sun sparking off the gentle waves, another day nearly done.

The move here had been necessary, my heart needing distraction, my mind needing peace. I’d always had happy memories here and figured, why not make more? Why not give my child the life I’d always dreamed of having? And so I had.

There was love in our house. Laughter, messes, running, music...honesty. We made art, we made cakes, we stuffed our faces with cookies and walked to the beach, throwing ourselves into the water and squealing as we splashed one another before packing up our things and heading back home.

Most evenings we had dinner with Aunt Vic and Uncle Frank. Eventually we made friends and had dinners with them too. We took trips up and down the coast. Train rides to different cities, and sometimes different countries. It was a good life. Sometimes a lonely one, but I pushed those feelings aside. I’d made my choices and I was at peace with them. Proud of everything I’d been through, and coming out the other side with nary a physical scar...but a couple of deep emotional ones that ran straight across my heart. One for Cat. One for William. But while some scars turned hard, mine had stayed soft. Pliable. Marking me, but not ruining me. Altering me, but not changing who I was at my core.

I leaned over and kissed Willa’s hair, watching as she gobbled up the last bit of her cone, and then turning once more to look at the blue-green water stretched out before us, the sky turning magenta and tangerine as the sun lowered toward the horizon.

Life was strange. Complicated. Painful. It was simple and precious. And it was beautiful. For those of us who got to live it. To experience it in all its many forms...we were the lucky ones.

Willa slid from the bench and held her hand out to me. I leaned forward and took it.

“What shall we do now, peu d’amour ?” I asked.

Her grip tightened on mine as she pulled, a teasing smile on her lips, those soft denim-blue eyes reminding me always of the man I still loved. Reminding me if not for him, I would not have her. And I would not have come here, to the place I finally felt at peace.

“Rentrons à la maison, Maman,” she said, and I smiled and got to my feet.

“A good idea, my love. Let’s go home.”