Suddenly Last Summer (36 page)

Worried, Sean gestured toward the end of the corridor. “There’s an office we can use just along here. So what’s going on? You’ve never come to the hospital before.”

As soon as the door closed, giving them privacy, Jackson rounded on him. “Damn you, I warned you not to mess with her.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Élise. She’s gone. And it’s your fault.”

“Gone?” Sean felt his mouth go dry. “Gone where?”

“Back to Paris.”

“Paris?” He thought about what she’d told him. Thought about what the place meant to her. “No. She wouldn’t have done that.”

Jackson thrust a piece of paper at him. “Read that.”

Sean unfolded it and saw it was a printed copy of an email. Élise’s name was on the top. “It’s addressed to you.”

“Read it.”

Mon cher Jackson, I am so very sorry to let you down but I can no longer stay at Snow Crystal. It is very sad for me because I thought I would be here forever, but I see now that is not possible. I hope you will forgive me. I will never do anything to harm your family and staying will make it awkward for Sean to come home. Do not try and argue with me or come after me because I know I am right. I am supposed to give you notice, but I have trained Elizabeth and Poppy and they are both very good, and all the other staff, they are good, too. Snow Crystal has a strong team. Me, I shall go back to Paris. I should have done it a long time ago but I am a great big coward and it was easier to hide here with you where it was safe. I will miss you and Kayla, Brenna, Tyler, Jess, Elizabeth and dear Alice, and of course, Walter, more than I can say, but perhaps one day when you have forgiven me you will visit me and I will show you Paris. The nice parts, not the tourist parts. You saved me when my life was so very terrible and I will never forget that. Do not worry about me, I will be fine. And do not be angry with Sean. The fault is mine, not his. I didn’t mean to steal his family. Again, I am so very sorry to let you down. Élise.

Sean scanned the email again. “I don’t believe this. She wouldn’t walk out on you. She just wouldn’t.”

“That’s what I thought. Seems we were both wrong.”

“She hero worships you.”

“Which just goes to prove how bad she must be feeling to do this.”

Sean swore under his breath. “I can’t believe she’d choose to go back to Paris.” He thought of her, alone and anxious in a city she’d vowed never to return to, and something knotted in his gut. “Why the hell would she do that?” He barely had time to finish the sentence before he was slammed back against the door and Jackson’s fist was locked in the front of his shirt.

“Damn it, you
know
why she’s doing that! She’s doing it because of you! She says so in the email. I warned you to stay away from her but you just couldn’t do it, could you?”

Staring into the furious eyes of his normally even-tempered brother, it took Sean a moment to gather himself. “Let go of me, you’re wrinkling my shirt. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She was happy at Snow Crystal. She had a home. We’re family to her. And now you’ve gone and trampled the whole of that just so that you could burn up the sheets with her for five minutes.”

“It was more than five minutes,” Sean snapped, “and she was hiding with you because she was too afraid to live her life.”

“So you thought you’d help her live it?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Pushing his brother away, he paced to the center of the office.

Why would she do this, when Paris held nothing but bad memories for her?
Why?

“You’ve got no end of women to pick from, but you just had to have Élise.”

“I’ve told you, it wasn’t like that.”

“So you’re going to pretend you didn’t get involved with her?”

“No, I’m not!” Struggling with his own feelings, Sean backed away. Where would she have gone? Not to
him,
surely. Maybe this was his fault. He’d accused her of hiding, hadn’t he? “She still owns an apartment in Paris. It belonged to her mother.”

“She told you that?”

“She told me a lot of things. She hasn’t been back there since she left. What if Pascal finds out she’s back? Will he hurt her? What if he hasn’t moved on?”

Jackson’s eyes narrowed warily. “She told you about that, too?”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“She’s never told anyone else that. Not even Kayla and Brenna.”

“Well, she told me. And she also told me she’d never go back to Paris. She was scared.” And guilty that she’d let her mother down. Lonely. Frightened. Sweat pricked the back of his neck. “Do you have an address? Do you know where that apartment is?”

“No, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Seems like you didn’t just rip up the sheets with her, you let her get close to you. You encouraged her to spill her secrets, something she has never done before by the way, and then you did your usual thing and told her you didn’t love her.” Jackson stood, legs spread, glaring at him. “You broke her heart.”

Sean felt the ache in his chest throb. It was the same ache that had been there every day for a week. “That is not what happened.”

“Really? Then why don’t you tell me your version, and tell me fast because right now I feel like putting a few dents in you. If you didn’t break her heart, why isn’t she still at Snow Crystal?”

“Because she broke mine!” His tone raw, Sean paced to the other side of the room. “She broke mine, all right? And it fucking hurts, so don’t come here and lecture me about causing her pain.”

There was a stunned silence. “She broke yours?”

“Yeah. And now if you don’t mind I need to be on my own to think this through.”

“I drove here to find out what’s going on and I’m not leaving until I find out.”

Sean gritted his teeth. “I told her I loved her. She told me she didn’t love me. Do you need more detail than that? And you’re welcome to tell me I deserved it and that I finally got what was coming to me but I’d rather you waited until I’ve sorted this out.” He saw the astonishment in his brother’s face and gave a humorless laugh. “You’re thinking this is justice. Well deserved for all those women who cried on your shirt because I wouldn’t tell them I loved them. The first time I actually say those words to a woman it’s to one who doesn’t want to hear them.”

“You actually told her you loved her? And she left?” Jackson’s brows rose. “I’m confused.”

“Then you don’t know her as well as you think you do.”

“I assumed she’d fallen in love with you and it wasn’t mutual. I assumed she’d left so it wouldn’t be awkward. If you’re in love with her, why did she leave? That makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. We’re her family. Or rather, you are.” Sean gave a grim smile. “Family is the most important thing to her. She’s spent the whole summer trying to get me to fix the damage with Gramps. Pushing me to talk to him, to heal things.”

“And you did. So why would she leave?”

“Because she thinks if she’s there, it will keep me away. She thinks I’ll come home less. That the family will see me less.”

“Because you didn’t show up to family night?”

“That was probably what put the thought in her head. Having just been rejected I wasn’t in the mood for family togetherness.”

“And you’re sure you said those words? You didn’t just imply it, or assume she knew or—”

“I said those words! Those three words I never thought I’d say. First time ever, well apart from Gramps but I don’t count that.”

“Gramps?”

“Never mind. For the record, I said them more than once to Élise, just so that there could be no misunderstanding. And no, she didn’t say them back, she didn’t run into my arms and no, we’re not going to live happily ever after. Can we stop talking about it now? Living through it the first time was hard enough. Reliving it isn’t much fun, either.”

Jackson ignored him. “I’m surprised, because I actually thought—” He shook his head. “Never mind. It explains why she was so quiet at family night. And why she kept saying it was her fault that you hadn’t turned up.”

“It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I wasn’t in the mood for company, but I didn’t for a moment think she’d blame herself for the fact I wasn’t there, or that she’d decide she was a threat to our family.”

“She was behaving very oddly. She told us all how much she loved us.”

“Why is that odd? She tells everyone she loves them all the time. Everyone except me. Have you tried calling her?”

“Her phone is switched off.”

“Why would she switch her phone off?” His concern deepened. He thought of her going back to a place she hadn’t returned to since she’d left with Jackson. A place that held nothing for her except memories of violence and loss. The thought of her facing that alone made his chest ache. “I’ll fly to Paris.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“The same way everyone does it. I’m going to get on a plane.”

“But you have work.”

“This is more important. Élise hasn’t been back there for—how long is it? Eight years? Someone should be with her.” He pulled his phone out and searched for flights while Jackson gaped at him.

“You’re going to take time off?”

“I did it when Gramps collapsed.”

“Gramps is family.”

“So is Élise. People will have to cover for me.” Again. He already owed more favors than he could ever repay. “There’s a direct flight to Paris leaving tonight. All I need is the address.”

“I don’t have an address. She’s worked for me for the past eight years.”

“But you went to her apartment the night you rescued her. What do you remember about it?”

“It was eight years ago and I was dealing with an abusive husband and a terrified woman. I wasn’t exactly looking at the neighborhood.”

Sean reined in his impatience. “Think!”

“All I remember is getting her out of there and trying not to break every bone in that man’s body.” Jackson spread his hands, clearly frustrated. “She lived near the river, I know that. We were in her apartment for less than half an hour. She just stuffed a few things in a case while I kept watch in case he showed up. I could just see the Louvre from her bathroom window.
Rue de Lille,
yes that’s it. She lived on the
Rue de Lille.
”

“Apartment number?”

“No idea.”

Rolling his eyes, Sean booked himself a flight out of Boston. “Let’s just hope it isn’t a long street.”

“You’re just going to turn up there and hope you can find her?”

“If you don’t have her address, I don’t have much choice.”

“How do you know she’s going to want to see you?”

“I don’t. But I know that if she’s back in that place she’s going to need a friend.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
HE
APARTMENT
WAS
coated with thick dust and a deep layer of memories. They choked her, suffocated her, made her throat ache and her eyes sting. It hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed and everywhere she looked she saw her mother. And mistakes.

The feelings she’d buried pushed their way to the surface. Picking up a pot she’d made in school when she was eight years old, she turned it over in her hand, remembering her mother’s delight on the day she’d brought it home.

She’d just been kidding herself, hadn’t she? When she’d thought she’d moved on, she’d been kidding herself. All she’d done was ignore the past, block it out, refuse to look at it like a child closing her eyes in a dark room so that she couldn’t see what was there. But she hadn’t really moved on. There was a big black hole in her life and instead of filling it in, she’d fenced it off and tiptoed around it, afraid to look at it, afraid that if she took one wrong step she’d fall back in.

Tired after the long flight and crushed by the memories, she collapsed on top of the bed, unable to sleep, and spent the night thinking of her mother, tortured by guilt, knowing she couldn’t live here, sharing this tiny apartment with the ghosts of her past.

But she couldn’t go back, either.

Sean didn’t need another reason to stay away from Snow Crystal. The O’Neils didn’t need someone disrupting their family.

In the morning she threw open the shutters and stood for a moment watching sunshine dance across the roofs of Paris. The apartment was tiny but the position perfect, just a few steps from the river Seine. If she stood on tiptoe and peeped out of the small bathroom window she could see the distinctive architecture of the Louvre.

With light and fresh air pouring into the apartment, she started clearing.

It took her two days.

She filled huge sacks with clothing and possessions. Some she threw away, some she took to a thrift store. She wanted no reminders of the past, no reminders of the bad choices she’d made, the consequences, the misery. The only exception to that were a few personal items of her mother’s and a collection of photographs. She’d had no idea her mother had taken so many. A quick glance showed that they ranged from baby photos right through to a clipping of Élise being the only woman in the otherwise all-male kitchen of Chez Laroche. Finding an empty shoe box she stuffed them inside, promising herself that she’d look at them properly one day, hoping the time would come when she’d be able to go through them without feeling bad.

When she’d finished clearing, she vacuumed, polished and wiped until the place gleamed and not a speck of dust remained.

It helped her to keep busy, to occupy her mind and to not think.

She tried not to think about cooking with her mother, about those dark days with Pascal. But the one thing she absolutely couldn’t stop thinking about was the O’Neils.

What would they be doing now? She glanced at her phone and calculated the time difference. It would be morning in Vermont and they’d be serving breakfast in the Boathouse.

Kayla would be on her phone, checking emails. Tyler would be eyeing the female guests and grumbling about the work. Walter would be overdoing it. Alice would be knitting and worrying and Elizabeth would be busy in the kitchens with Poppy. And Jackson, dear Jackson, would be keeping everything going, steering the ship into deeper water so it didn’t smash to pieces on the rocks.