One Summer in Paris

“I don’t. The only Lissa I know is—” She stopped. “Wait. You don’t mean—Lissa? Our Lissa?”

“Who else?”

“Oh God.” Grace’s legs suddenly refused to do their job and she sank onto the chair. “She’s like a daughter to us. To me,” she corrected herself. “Obviously to you she’s something different.”

Grace remembered the day Lissa had graduated from high school. After all the support Grace had given her, it felt like a double betrayal.

“She’s a child!”

“She’s twenty-three. Not a child.”

She couldn’t absorb it. She hadn’t thought things could get worse, but this was so much worse.

Sick, she stood up and almost stumbled over the chair. She had to get away. “You need to find somewhere to go when you’re discharged. I don’t want you home.”

“Where am I going to go?”

“I don’t know. Where were you thinking that you’d go? Or were you planning on putting Lissa in our spare bedroom? One big happy family, is that it?”

He looked ill. “I’ll find a hotel.”

“Why? She doesn’t want you in sickness? Only in health?” Grace snatched up her bag. “I’ll drop Sophie here later. You can tell her the good news.”

“It would be better to do this together. We need to keep this civilized.”

“I don’t feel civilized, David. And as for telling Sophie—you’re sleeping with someone she considers a friend. You’re on your own with that one.”

She walked out of the room, managed to smile at the nurses at the desk and then dipped into the stairwell. Everyone else seemed to have taken the elevator and the echo of her footsteps somehow emphasized her loneliness. She made it as far as the first floor before control left her. She sank onto the bottom stair, sobbing.

Lissa? Lissa?

Grace thought about Lissa’s beaming smile and the way her ponytail swung when she walked. She wore jeans that looked as if they’d been painted on her, and tops that showed off her lush, full breasts.

It was so sordid. What would Lissa’s parents say? Grace was on a charity committee with her mother. She’d never be able to look her in the eye again.

How could David do this to her? To them? They were a unit. A family. And he’d torn that apart.

She was so lost in a world of misery and memories it was a moment before she heard the sound of footsteps and realized someone was coming down the stairs toward her.

She stood up quickly, brushed her hand over her face and walked down the last flight of stairs.

Sophie would be home from school soon. Grace needed to be there to make her something to eat, and to support her when her father blew up her life.

Audrey

“How did your exams go, Audrey, dear?”

Audrey adjusted the temperature of the water and directed the spray so that it ran over the hair and not near the eyes. If there was such a thing as an exam in hair washing, she’d ace it.

“They weren’t great, Mrs. Bishop.” She’d started working in the salon for a few hours on a Saturday when she was thirteen. She’d done it to give herself an excuse to leave the house and had been surprised by how much she enjoyed it. The best part was chatting with customers, and they were startlingly honest with her. After five years, many of them felt like family. “The thing I hate most is when you come out of the exam and the other kids are all talking about what they wrote for each question and you know you totally messed it up. Is that temperature right for you?”

“It’s perfect, dear. And I’m sure you didn’t mess it up.”

Audrey was sure she had. She knew for sure she’d gotten at least two of the questions muddled up on that last paper. She’d got confused between discuss and define.

Whichever way you looked at it, exams sucked but at least they were done now.

She pumped shampoo into her palm and started lathering Mrs. Bishop’s hair. The woman’s hair was thin on top, so Audrey was very gentle. “I’m not going to do a second shampoo, Mrs. Bishop, because your hair is a bit dry. I’m going to use a moisturizing treatment if that’s okay.”