frigid, but they were damp, and if you didn’t keep moving, if you didn’t keep your blood circulating, you could get hypothermia.
“Where exactly are we?”
“We passed Montauban about fifteen minutes ago.” At least I remembered that much. And I remembered more. “The next town, Iffendic, isn’t for another six kilometers.” We really were in the middle of nowhere. “I’ve seen police on this road before. They may patrol it. I think waiting here, inside, is safer than leaving. Besides, we’ll stay warm for a while.”
“Agreed.” In turning on the ignition briefly, he glanced at the gas gauge. His eyes grew wide.
“Isn’t it two kilometers to the mile?”
“Roughly. It’s actually 1.6.”
“I miscalculated. I’m sorry, Freddie.”
“Are we low?”
“Past empty… I probably drove too fast.”
No “probably” about it. He’d definitely driven too fast.
“I can’t leave the engine on, but we can have some heat for a few minutes at least.”
He turned the heat on full and moved his seat back and down, then he stretched out his legs, cracked his knuckles, and folded his arms under his head. “So what do you want to talk about?”
The warmth from the car’s heater didn’t last long. An hour later, I had drawn my legs up onto my seat and had my arms slung around them. I remembered from some water safety course I’d taken in junior high that this modified fetal position helped to trap body heat.
He turned the car back on for about fifteen minutes to restore the heat. It felt good, but with all the layers that encased my body, I began to sweat.
“Do you want my jacket?” Cranwell leaned toward me and reached an arm behind my seat for it.
In spite of seeing me shake my head, he kept looking, and when he fished it out, he made me wear it.
“Don’t you want it?” I figured he should have dibs if he needed it.
It was as if he were dressing a child. He guided one of my arms into a sleeve and then the other. “I’m fine, Freddie. I dressed for the weather.”
He was right, but I frowned at him anyway.
“Don’t scowl at me.” He reached through my leather jacket and began to unwind the scarf from my neck.
Closing my hands over his, I tried to stop him.
He gently disengaged them. “If you tie this over your head, it will keep you warmer.”
He was right, so I let him wrap the scarf, Grace Kelly-style, over my head and around my neck.
“Just call me babushka.”
“Or we could braid your hair and call you Gretel.”
When he said that, I knew that I must have looked about twelve years old. It was the curse of my round face and my big round blue eyes. The freckles scattered lightly over my nose didn’t help any.
“What were we talking about, Cranwell?”
He went back to his side of the car and stretched out like before, but folded his arms across his stomach. “What was it like? With Peter?”
“In the beginning, it was wonderful. It was what I’d dreamed. Toward the end, his job had begun to devour him. He wasn’t there, physically or emotionally. His mind was always on his job, but we couldn’t talk about it. It was the only way he could protect me.”
“And by protecting you, he pushed you away.”
“Basically.” My temperature was beginning to moderate, and I was no longer sweating. “But I wasn’t going to let him push me far. He was an honorable man, a decent man. I was in love with him. And I respected him. We just had one more month, and then we would have moved on, started over again. Whatever had burdened him would have been left behind. I was not unhappy being married to him.” It was important to me that Cranwell understand.
“But were you happy?” Cranwell never failed to understand.
“Happiness is transient. You might as well try to trap the ocean. You’ve never been married.”
“No.”
“Happiness is not enough to marry for.”
“So does that mean you weren’t happy?”
“No. But I was not happy every single minute of every single day.”
“But-”
“There were moments of incredible happiness strung together with real life.”
“Do you believe in soul mates? That there’s just one person on Earth? A person reserved just for you?”
“No. Do you?”
“Yes.”
Now that was an interesting piece of information. “And you haven’t found her yet?”
He rolled onto his side, facing me. “I might have.”
The way he was looking at me made my eyes dive toward the floor of the car. But they couldn’t stay away for long. His eyes were magnetic, so I closed mine and reminded myself of Severine. Then I changed the topic. To what, I can’t even remember, but I know we spent almost an hour on it.
And then, I felt myself shiver. Somehow, the perspiration trapped between my body and my cotton turtleneck had grown clammy. And my feet were freezing.
The next few minutes I spent concentrating on my toes. They were so cold I could hardly move them.
“What’s wrong?”
“My toes.”
“Move them.”
“I’m trying.”
“Can you still feel them?” A note of concern had crept into his voice.
“Yes, Cranwell, I can, and they really hurt.”
His teeth glinted in the dark, and I saw the condensation curl from his chuckle.
I moved my shoulders farther up my neck.
It was exasperating that we hadn’t seen a single car up to that point. I think I would have even flagged down an axe murderer. Was there no one in all of Brittany who was partying until the wee hours of the night?
Experimentally, I wriggled my fingers inside the sleeves of my coat. They were cold, too. I was beginning to think that staying put hadn’t been such a smart idea. I was scared. Opening my mouth, I asked the first question that popped into my head. I always get chatty when I’m nervous. “What’s it like to date movie stars?”
“What’s it like to date anyone?”
Touchy, touchy.
Cranwell sighed. “Some are workaholics. Some are egotistical. Others are the nicest people I’ve ever met. They’re people, Freddie. Just like you or me.”
Maybe like him, but definitely not like me. “How about the rock star?”
“How about her?”
“What was the attraction?”
“We were young.” He snorted. “It was the eighties. We were both on top of our games. Life was one golden, glamorous party. We looked good with each other. The photo ops were tremendous.” He sighed then, a long heavy weary sigh. “If I had it to do again, I would do it so differently. I just didn’t realize there could be so much more. With so much less. I am so grateful for God’s grace.”
“I read about you becoming a Christian.”
“That made the news here in France?”
“No. I was surfing the Internet.” How did I always get myself into such embarrassing situations? I dipped my chin toward my chest so that my face was shielded by the lapels of Cranwell’s coat. “I did some research on you.”
“Pardon me?”
There was no help for it. I batted away the protection of the coat and turned to face him. “I did some research on you.”
