I almost get up to help, but I’m too tired. “Go ahead.”
He runs off into the kitchen just as Mark enters the living room, holding a small woven basket with a checkered cloth over it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Just a little something from Heather. She wants you to know she’s sorry she thought you were a criminal.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“She figured, what better way to say that than with blueberry chia seed muffins?” He pulls back the napkin and takes a whiff. “They smell good. Want one?”
I narrow my eyes. “You know, I think I’m gonna pass on accepting food from our neighbors. At least for a while.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
Margaret “Daisy” Gordon, née Cooper, pled guilty to an assortment of charges from murder to mortgage fraud and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after twenty years.
I know this from the Google alerts I received at my new apartment in the heart of the Left Bank, almost four thousand blessed miles from Bethesda. In addition, Krystle sent me links to every story on the internet about the case until I asked her to stop.
Once it was clear that she was in no legal danger and that Sharon would recover completely from the poisoning, Krystle stepped into the spotlight as the representative of our family. She milked every bit out of her role as dear sister and dutiful daughter, and she managed to spin the media interest into a role on a YouTube reality show. A reality show on cable TV can’t be far behind.
At least she has agreed to step in as Sharon’s caretaker while we are in France. Sharon seems to be holding steady, adjusting to the memory ward. I check in with her caretakers via Skype weekly, which annoys Krystle, but we’ve agreed to pretend it’s because I am a micromanager.
On a late afternoon in April, I am sitting by the window at Le Rousseau, a café around the corner from our apartment on the rue du Cherche-Midi. I’m sipping a café au lait, in violation of the French norm of not taking milk in your coffee after noon.
I search through the images on my digital camera that I’ve taken today. It’s impossible not to be inspired wandering through this city. I started today’s stroll in the Marais on the Right Bank, then explored the Latin Quarter and the area around the Quai d’Orléans, and later discovered a quiet street filled with pastel-painted doors hidden in the shadow of the Tour Montparnasse.
For all the pain that my experience with Paul brought me, he was the one who taught me about the concept of the decisive moment in photography, when the camera captures elements in life coming together perfectly for a fleeting instant.
And I’m grateful to him for that. Because in the end, our memories are really our mind’s collection of such decisive moments. When Mark first kissed me. When Cole was placed in my arms after his birth. When I found the strength to slam Daisy’s skull on the edge of that tub.
Sometimes I do this, sit by myself at a café and watch Parisians walk by, trying to make sense of everything that happened last fall.
Reporters swarmed the Eastbrook neighborhood right afterward. REAL HOUSEWIVES TAKES A DEADLY TURN, reads a typical headline. We had to pull Cole from school, move into a hotel. In tears one night, I joked to Mark that I wished we could move to another country, and a few days later, he told me his firm was looking to fill a position in its Paris office. We left before Christmas.
From a safe distance, I’ve watched Dustin, his now-shaved head lending him the look of a baby vulture, become a media sensation. He made a compelling figure, showing off the angry red scar that ran along the back of his head from ear to ear, a result of surgeons cutting through his skull to ease the swelling on his brain. Last I heard, he had held several ask-me-anything sessions on Reddit.
I learned from the police that Daisy had installed spyware on my computer via an attachment to an email from Periscope Realty back in August. It could have been embedded in any one of the numerous documents Daisy sent me when we bought the house.
I’d clicked on them all, completely trusting.
I finish my coffee and unwrap the small square of chocolate that accompanies it, a French café tradition I love. I no longer ask myself, what if we had moved to a different suburb or even just a different neighborhood in Bethesda? What are the odds that we would move into Margaret Cooper’s neighborhood and that she would be our Realtor?
I’m sure she asked herself the same thing when I showed up in her office.
I used to go over all our interactions, wondering if I’d missed some sign. But there’s no point in thinking like that. What’s done is done.
I’ve emailed Leah several times. She returned one message, right after we moved here. She said she didn’t blame me for what happened to Dustin. Her email was full of exclamation points and forced holiday cheer. She enclosed a picture of the book club—a grinning Heather, Janelle, and Pam, in addition to herself. They were planning to read a novel called Resilience for the month of December. Janelle’s pick; it’s about the Holocaust.
Then Leah stopped returning my emails.
I don’t blame her for wanting to move on.
Cole and Mark bang on the window, and I toss a few euros on the small round table. We are off to do our courses together. Each Saturday, we attempt as a family to cook a real French meal. We drift in and out of the small shops—first the butcher, then the greengrocer, then the patisserie where Cole can pick from a panoply of glistening desserts. So far, chocolate éclairs are his favorite. Mark and I prefer opéras.
Spring has come to Paris, and the sun won’t set until after 8:00 p.m. As I leave the
