“Living on your own terms until the end—good for you.” I could see the network of veins glowing beneath her pallid skin. “Is it okay that I’m here? I can let you rest if you want.”
Claudia squeezed my hand. “Stay, please.” She was slowly becoming more alert. “How about you tell me about that shoebox you’re holding? I imagine it’s not a parting gift.”
I moved the box to my lap. “Actually, it kind of is.”
“Oh?” Claudia perked up further. “Do tell.”
I’d decided against telling Sebastian about the letters for now. Aside from the unresolved tension following our road trip, it felt unfair to saddle him with more details of his grandmother’s lost love while he was grappling with her impending passing. I thought about locking the door behind me, but realized it would be hard to explain if somebody tried to come in. I positioned the chair so my back was to it, giving me time to conceal the letters if necessary.
“Well, after you told me about Hugo, I did a bit of digging with the help of a friend.”
Claudia’s eyes widened. “And what did you … dig up?”
I inhaled, preparing myself to say what I’d practiced in my head so many times. “We found out that he actually moved to the United States, not long after you left France, and was living in Maine up until recently.”
I paused to let the news sink in.
Confusion clouded Claudia’s face. “I don’t understand.”
“He came to New York to find you.” I may have been gushing a little. “But then he saw you together with your husband and thought you looked really happy, so he decided not to intrude.” Not the most romantic telling of the story, but it was a good summary.
Tears teetered on Claudia’s lower lashes. “He came for me?”
“Yes!”
“You mean … he’s still alive?”
This was the part I wasn’t looking forward to. I tightened my grip on her hand.
“Unfortunately, we learned that he passed away a couple of months ago,” I said softly, wishing there was a better way to deliver the news. “I’m sorry, Claudia.”
When she finally spoke, her voice was small. “I’d assumed he was likely long gone, but death is less painful when it’s hypothetical.”
She gazed at the ceiling as if watching the replay reel of her life, editing it to include the ending she had feared but never confirmed. I sat silently until she turned to face me.
“We did find something else,” I said, sliding the lid off the shoebox. “His grandson. And he gave us these letters that Hugo wrote to you. They say that you were the love of his life—that no one ever came close to you.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Claudia flustered. “He really said that?”
I rubbed her shoulder, where barely anything now separated bone from skin. “Would you like me to read them to you?”
Her tears began to spill gently, navigating the wrinkles of her cheeks like riverbeds.
“Please.”
47
I spent the next two hours reading the letters aloud, stopping at Claudia’s request to repeat certain passages.
“I remember that November day in the bookstore,” she whispered as I folded Hugo’s final letter. “My husband and I had argued that morning because he wouldn’t allow me to leave the house wearing trousers. I was so angry—so I fled to the bookstore, which was the only place that felt like I could be my true self.” She closed her eyes, journeying back. “He found me there and apologized like he always did, in his very charismatic way. I realized in that moment that if I ever wanted to have a child, I had few choices but to forgive him.”
“Did you ever think about going back to France to be with Hugo?”
Claudia’s tired smile balanced melancholy. “After I wrote my final letter to him, I told myself that if he wrote back trying to change my mind, I would go.” The smile faded. “But he never did.”
“Well, he did—he just didn’t send it. But his grandson told me that he loved you until the day he died. You were always his great love.”
The curl of Claudia’s fingers around my hand relaxed and she closed her eyes again. “And he was mine.”
With a steady rise and fall of her chest, she slipped into a contented sleep.
The sudden opening of the bedroom door startled me. I quickly stuffed the shoebox into my tote and tried my best not to look guilty.
“Hey.” Sebastian stood gloomily in the doorway, clutching his scarf between his fists. “I hear you met my sisters.”
“I did.” I offered a small smile. “They must have been a lot to grow up with.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Even through his glasses, I could tell Sebastian was exhausted and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. But as he smiled back wearily, I realized the simmering resentment I’d felt since our road trip was gone. Especially because I’d finally admitted to myself that there’d been truth in what he’d said about my life, even if his delivery felt cruel.
Now I just felt sorry for him. Losing someone you loved really sucked, and there was nothing anyone could say that would make it hurt any less. I was almost tempted to hug him.
Instead, I stood up from the chair and motioned for him to sit.
“Claudia just drifted off to sleep, but I’m sure she’d love for you to sit and talk to her.”
Sebastian’s body tensed, but he followed my direction. As I closed the door on my way out, I heard him begin telling her about a podcast he’d just listened to.
* * *
The early evening light caught the caramel wood of the cello in Claudia’s library, where I sat paging through a biography of Henri Cartier-Bresson.
“It’s weird, right, how my grandmother’s literally on her deathbed and no one in my family wants to talk about it?”
Sebastian was leaning against the bookshelf by the door. When I’d gone downstairs to get a drink of water, his family had been discussing everything except the very thing they didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Not really,” I said, setting the book down. “Lots of people find it hard to talk about death, even when it’s happening. But you did your best to help your grandmother through this. I know she appreciates it.”
“I guess so.” Sebastian sat down next to me and picked up the whale paperweight, which had somehow made it to the coffee table. “But it was really you who spent all the time with her.”
“True, but you were the one who found me—because you wanted to help her.”
He passed the whale distractedly from one hand to the other. “I just feel like I could be doing more, you know? Instead of just sitting here, waiting for her to die.”
I looked down at the tote bag by my leg, debating whether to tell him about the letters. It would still probably just complicate things. Maybe I could tell him one day when the wound wasn’t as raw.
“Do you feel like you’ve said everything that you need to?”
“I mean, I told her how important she’s been to me and that I’m grateful to have had her as my grandma.” He looked at his hands, embarrassed. “We don’t really ever say ‘I love you’ in this family. It’d kind of feel forced if I did.”
And I’d feel like a hypocrite if I tried to convince him otherwise.
“She knows how much you love her, even if you don’t say it.”
“Maybe.” His deep breath and exhale seemed exaggerated—until I realized he was preparing to say something else. “Clover,” he said, putting the paperweight back on the table. “I’m sorry for the way things turned out on our trip to Maine and for what I said. I was kind of a jerk to you. But I want you to know that I think you’re great, and that it’s pretty amazing what you do for people like Grandma.”
I definitely didn’t see that coming.
“Oh, thank you,” I said, slowly processing the compliment. “And I’m sorry for reacting the way I did. I think it hurt so much because a lot of what you said was true.” It felt surprisingly cathartic to admit that. “I do use my work as an excuse not to get close to people. And there’s a lot of things I probably would regret if I knew I was going to die tomorrow.”
Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.
The rhythm of the old pendulum clock on the wall suddenly seemed much louder than usual.