I'll See You in Paris (2 page)

And done? Eric would never be done. This was his career. He was in it for the long haul, one deployment tacked onto the next, a long trip with only breaks and no end.

“Okay,” Laurel said and exhaled loudly. She closed her eyes. “Good. Wise move.” After several moments, she opened them back up. “Well, let's see the ring. There is a ring, yes?”

“Of course there's a ring!” Annie chirped.

She extended a jittery, unsure hand in her mom's direction to display the faintest chip of a diamond of a ring. A tenth of a carat? A twentieth? Even the gold band was so delicate it nearly disappeared. Good thing Annie had petite hands.

“It's beautiful,” Laurel said, sounding genuine and almost comforted by the modest piece of jewelry. Eric Sawyer wasn't some spoiled kid supported by his parents. The same could not be said for Annie.

“Again, ma'am, I'm sorry I didn't ask you first. I'm a traditional man. I should've followed the appropriate etiquette.”

“In case you haven't noticed,” Annie said. “We're not exactly a traditional family.”

There was no father to ask, is what she meant. A traditional path would've involved the dad. Who would walk Annie down the aisle anyway? Her mother? A pair of geldings?

“Okay.” Eric flushed, the pink high on his cheeks. “All right.”

“Well, congratulations, you two,” Laurel said as she led the horse out of its stall. “Sorry to dash but I want to get a ride in before dark. Eric, please join us for dinner, if you can.”

“Yes, absolutely,” he said, stumbling over his words. “Thank you. I'd be honored.”

When Laurel was out of the building, on her horse and galloping into meadow, Annie turned to face Eric for the first time since they walked into the barn.

“That went okay?” he said timidly.

“It did,” she answered with a nod. “Maybe even better than expected.”

Yet she felt unsettled.

Even with Laurel's tacit approval, something wasn't right. Annie should've been filled with love right then, toward her fianc
é
and her mom who was, if not excited, at least gracious. But despite these things going for her, going for them, there remained a hole, a slow leak of something Annie couldn't quite explain.

 

Two

GOOSE CREEK HILL

MIDDLEBURG, VIRGINIA

OCTOBER 2001

Two o'clock in the morning.

Annie's luggage was packed. She'd double-checked her passport and plane ticket. Not one but two weepy e-mails were flying through the Ethernet toward Eric. Everything was ready to go but her brain refused to rest. If she didn't get rid of the collywobbles, she'd never get to sleep.

A letter, Annie thought. She should write one last letter to her fianc
é
, and do it the old-fashioned way, with paper and a pen. Her mom sounded so retro.
He's going off to war.
As the soldier's best girl, she needed to play the part and writing letters seemed romantic anyhow.

When she crept downstairs an hour later, stamped envelope in hand, Annie discovered she was not the only one awake. She paused at the threshold of Laurel's office, hesitating before she spoke.

There her mom stood, behind her desk, fully dressed with the lights blaring around her. On the desk was a box. On her face, a scowl. Already the scene was disorienting.

“Mom, what's going on?”

“Oh geez! Annie!” Laurel whopped her chest. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry! Can I come in?”

“Yes, of course. So you're having trouble sleeping?”

“Apparently.”

Annie walked cautiously into the room. Everything continued to feel muddled.

“I can't sleep either,” Laurel said as she hugged a tattered blue book to her chest. She was wide-awake but did not seem altogether in the room. “I never can before a flight. It's infuriating. So, I assume you're all packed?”

“I am. Mom? Are you okay?”

“I hope you brought warm clothes,” she said absently. “England can be dreary this time of year.”

Laurel set down the book.

“Any time of year,” she added.

With that same blank look, Laurel started wrapping her hair in a knot at the base of her neck. For twenty years she'd sported a low, tight blond chignon. The tucked-in woman, the ice-queen attorney. Laurel was probably the very paragon of understated law-firm style back in the day, but Annie had to think it'd grown tired after twenty years. She imagined new associates mocking her, placing bets on when she'd finally find a new look.

Then Laurel sold her share of the partnership and the chignon came down. Her hair was surprisingly long and curly and wild. But now, on the other side of the desk, Laurel was trying to wrap it back up again. Old habits died hard, it seemed.

“Mom … are you…”

“I enjoyed having Eric for dinner,” Laurel said, and let her hair go free again. “He's a nice young man.”

“Thanks, I, uh … yes. He is nice.”

Nice.
For an English lit grad she really should do better than “nice.” It was a half-assed compliment for the so-called man of her dreams. Laurel was polite enough not to call her on it.

“Sorry the house is in such rough shape,” her mom said. “I forget sometimes how badly it needs to be fixed up.”

“Eric doesn't care about that kind of thing. And it's not so bad. I think he was a little impressed, even.”

Their home
was
impressive—from the road. Or when squinting at a great distance. It was large and white and grand, but shabby at its core, the inside comprised mostly of knotty wood and must. Billed as a “fixer” when Laurel bought it fifteen years before, there'd never been any plans for fixing.

But Laurel and Annie loved the house, even if neighbors, friends, and college boyfriends questioned its value, market or otherwise. Didn't they know what they had out there? Everyone from inside the Beltway wanted a horse farm in Middleburg, more so given that plane-sized hole now in the Pentagon. With even the slightest effort, Goose Creek Hill could be a gold mine. The whole deal would have to be renovated stud to stud first, of course, but the place had potential.

“I do love our rambling shack,” Laurel said, frowning at the desk and the old blue book on top of it. “Even if it costs a gazillion dollars to heat.”

“Mom, you seem kind of preoccupied. Is everything okay?”

She braced herself for the answer. Because while Laurel had been perfectly pleasant to Eric, it was clear she did not approve.

“I'm fine.” Laurel lowered herself onto the green leather chair. She rubbed both eyes with the backs of her wrists. “Just anxious about our trip. Oh, Annabelle…”

“Mom. Please.”

“So you'll go through with it?” She looked up. “This marriage?”

“That's why I said yes when he asked me. You think I'm making a bad decision.”

“I do. But you're in love,” Laurel said, not unkindly.

“I am. And just to put it out there, I'm not knocked up or anything.”

Laurel laughed and then more seriously added, “Have you even been together long enough to get pregnant and also realize it?”

Annie bristled, but it was a fair statement.

“I'm glad you're happy,” Laurel said. “And Eric is a charismatic young man. A sweet Southern military boy who loves his mama—every parent's dream.”

“So what's the problem, then? You said it yourself. I'm happy. He's a great guy. What more do you want?”

“God, if it were only that easy,” Laurel muttered. “It's not that I want any one specific thing for you. I just don't want my baby girl to choose the wrong guy, even if it's for the right reasons.”

“You can't name one bad thing about him,” Annie said, her voice getting high. “How can you call him the ‘wrong guy'?”

And what experience did Laurel have with right or wrong men anyway? As far as Annie knew, her mother hadn't entertained a single significant relationship in the last twenty years. Work, horses, Annie. Annie, horses, work. No room for frivolity. No room for falling in love.

“You think I don't know what I'm talking about,” Laurel noted. “That I'm some doddering old lady who can't recognize a good love story when she sees one. But, believe me, I have
some
experience in matters of the heart.”

“Who was he?” Annie blurted.

Laurel jolted.

“Excuse me?” she said.

They never had this conversation. They danced around it. They flirted with its edges. But mother and daughter did a hero's job of ignoring the subject of
him.

The two women lived a mostly sweet life at their ramshackle farm, enjoying their good fortune and pretty views. Who
he
was didn't matter. It had no bearing on their lives. Or so Annie had told herself, out loud and in her mind, ever since she was a little girl. Laurel said early and often the man wasn't worth knowing, and so Annie took her mother's word for it.

Until now.

“My father,” she said, as if it needed clarification. “I want to know the details.”

“The details aren't important,” Laurel insisted, as she had a dozen times before. “He was someone I thought I knew. And he didn't want any kind of life with us. What else do you need?”

“A name would be nice.”

“His last name was Haley.”

“Yeah, I gathered,” she said. “So why does it say ‘unknown' on my birth certificate? You two were married. We both share his name. He is known.”

“I don't understand why you suddenly care so much about a man who was incapable of caring about us.”

“I'm getting married. And I don't even have the words to tell my fianc
é
where I came from, who I am.”

“The man who got me pregnant is
not
who you are,” Laurel said, gritting her teeth.

Heat rose to her face, for perhaps the third or fourth time in Annie's life. No matter how many beer cans under the porch, or escaped horses galloping through town, Laurel maintained an aggravatingly neutral demeanor at all times. Annie wished she'd lose her shit every once in a while, but Laurel was too rational for anything like that.

“He's a little bit who I am,” Annie said, testing her. “Don't you think it's important—”

“Your father was a dangerous person,” Laurel said, her jaw tense as she spoke. “He fought battles for which he didn't have the weapons and so I took us out of the crossfire. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame him entirely.”

“Of course you don't.”

“But he was unknown to me in the end, which is why your birth certificate says what it does. There's also the legal side.”

“There always is.” Annie rolled her eyes. “Counselor.”

“Hey. It's important. I didn't want anyone trying to … stake a claim. That's not the right phrase but I can't think of a better way to put it.”

“So was he incapable of caring? Or you wouldn't let him?”

“That's not fair.”

“I agree,” Annie said. “It's not. So, is he still alive?”

“No.”

She expected some hesitation, a pause for half a beat. But Laurel spat out the word so sharply and with such bite Annie almost felt a sting.

“All right,” Annie said, feeling off balance. “I guess that's that. What about his family? Don't I have, like, grandparents somewhere? Aunts or uncles?”

“I don't know. Maybe. They wanted nothing to do with us. Why should I waste a single second worrying about them? For Pete's sake, Annie, after twenty-two years now I'm not enough for you?”

“It's not like that at all.”

“It's exactly like that.” Laurel sighed and picked up the old book again. “We leave in a few hours and I have a lot to sort through before then. Maybe we can—I don't know—talk more when we're there. Banbury is … it's hard to explain. It's a different place.”

That Laurel didn't have a way to finish the sentence bothered Annie because nothing about the trip made sense. The party line was that Laurel had to shore up a land deal in Oxfordshire. Family business, she claimed. But what kind of business could this possibly be?

As far as Annie knew, their family tree was mostly barren, woefully branchless. She didn't have siblings, and neither did her mom. Laurel's parents and grandparents were deceased. There was an uncle-type in Chicago, some third or fourth cousins in San Diego, plus a sprinkling of others throughout the country. All of them were Christmas-card cordial, but if she'd met them, Annie didn't remember.

Yet there was another tree, somewhere. Her dad's. Maybe it was as meager as theirs. On the other hand, perhaps it was a redwood, or whatever the British considered a significantly gargantuan tree.

“Does this trip have anything to do with him?” Annie asked. “The family land? Was my father British?”

“Uh, no.” Laurel chuckled without smiling. “The man who gave me you has nothing to do with Banbury.”

“Earlier today I told Eric that you're more predictable than the sunrise. But maybe I was wrong. So many things don't make sense. My father. This English home, which you've owned for decades but are only selling now.”

“It's my retirement, sweetheart.”

Laurel sighed again and threw the blue book into a box. Annie leaned toward it and tried to make out the faded gold words on its cover. There was something familiar about the book, and her mother's demeanor while holding it. It was curious as Laurel was never much of a reader outside legal tomes. This, despite a very crowded bookshelf behind her.

“Okay,” Annie said. “I get that it's your retirement but where did the property come from? Specifically? Who gave it to you?”

“A distant relative, someone without any direct heirs. Might as well have picked my name out of a hat. I've had the home a long, long time.” Laurel smiled. “Almost as long as I've had you. Though of course you're far more valuable. And the property is not so chatty.”