Page 114 of Meet Me in the Garden

“Nathalie,” I whisper, but she cuts me off.

“This isn’t it,” she says. She’s standing in the single lighted place, dust motes thick in the air around her, like I’m seeing her through static.

“But look here—” I say.

She turns away from me and rushes down the long stairwell and I hurry to match her pace. And then we’re outside, in the parking lot again, and Nathalie’s finally looking at me, but now she’s screaming. “How could you? Youstoleme!”

“What are youtalkingabout?” My voice comes out a shriek, not unlike hers last night. People are staring, Nathalie’s eyes are wide and panicked and furious and sad.

“You stole me,” she says, and I’m back at Adele’s dining table, I’m twenty-four years old and I have my life planned out, I’m right on the precipice, Clément and me, an apartment ours in just a month, working the figures for the two of us, a bed for him and a bed for me, two bowls and two mugs and two sets of utensils to start us off. I make no pacts with Delphine. I tell her to do what she must with her daughter, with my sisters. I tell her that I’m my own person and I’m her best friend and I refuse. Her threat cannot touch me.This isn’t you, I tell her.I know this isn’t you, and I will stay right here until you come back.Clément and I move just like we plan to. My life, just as I planned it. Quiet nights, view of Sunset Boulevard from the living room window. Friends down the hall for Clément. Women in my bed. Ginny returns and there’s no ring on my finger, no hesitation, my body doesn’t fight when she takes off my clothes because I’ve had practice, because I haven’t hidden myself away. I see Felix try to kiss Al at the Christmas party and we tell each other everything. We’re friends in the least complicated way. I never sit in the cold night while the headboard bangs against the wall, never lie to myself about what’s possible. I don’t say to Ginny:Just once.I say:Always.I say:Here I am, I’ve been waiting.And I tell Clément that love can look any number of ways, I tell him:There are so many ways to be in this world and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

We’re in the parking lot and people are staring and I am dazzled by my own fury. “You have noideawhat I gave up,” I say. “No idea.”

Desperation across her face, and fear. “I hate you,” she says. Snarl on her lips. Trembling. She’s nearly the same age as I was, that last night with my mother at the table, when there wasn’t nearly enough lovebetween us, when we said what was true and lost each other for good. A severing. But not for Nathalie and me.

“You have no idea what I gave up,” I tell her again. “But I’d do it all over. I’d giveallof it up—all over again—for you.”

She covers her face with her hands.

“Come,” I tell her. “Let’s go home.”

A storm rages in my body as we drive. She’s looking out the window. “I’m so stupid,” she says. “To write asongabout that place. Oh my God.”You stole me.It’s repeating in my brain—so wrong, so wrong, my breathing shallow with its wrongness—and now she’s talking about something else. “I have to perform it tomorrow in front of so many people. All of my friends. A famous producer. My teachers.You. It’s a fake song, a made-up story.”

That she could say such a thing to me and then move on—to this, toanything—after saying it. We stop at a red light. A blue car passes, a black one. I’ve lied to her our whole lives together, terrible, even though I felt I didn’t have a choice. She doesn’t want my explanations. She wants to talk about her song. The light turns green, I move through it.

“You’re an artist,” I say. “You’ve done what artists do. Turned one thing into another thing, entirely its own. Whoever said a song had to be true? No one will know what it’s about unless you tell them.” She doesn’t respond. “Listen. I know you aren’t ready to talk about this, but there are a few things I need to say. No one’s seen Delphine since the hospital. We don’t know where she is. No one’s laughing at you. No one’s pitying you. She asked us to think of her as dead. So we let her be dead, toallof us.”

When we get home, she goes straight to her room. I lie on the sofa and stare at the ceiling. How many places did they sleep between the house on North Harper and the laundromat attic? How did Delphine decide, day after day, to not call me for help? Maybe it wasn’t even a decision. Maybe I had faded away to her already. Nathalie’s door opens. I wait, but she’s just heading to the bathroom. Water running, door to her bedroom shutting again. Shadow of branches and leaves on the ceiling, light dancing, everything else still. I watch until the shadows have made their way fromthe ceiling to the wall. The phone rings. A burst of noise on the other end, overlapping voices, music, and Elise saying, “Odette, can you hear me? The opening’s still in full swing but I had to call you with the news. Odette? Your paintings. They all sold. All five of them.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

WHEN ELISE REACHES MEAGAINit’s Saturday morning, the kids at school with their caps and gowns, me in the middle of doing my hair, dressed in a cream summer dress and brown leather sandals, a knot in my throat that’s been stuck here for days, even after Nathalie let me talk to her. It was two nights ago. She held Clément’s hand as I started from the beginning, from the garden in the Marigny, my hand on Delphine’s belly. I told her that losing Nathalie made Delphine want to die. That it was brutal, unimaginable, and that Delphine didn’t know how to endure it without letting go completely. I didn’t expect to tell them about the threat, but I did. I said I’ll never know if I went along with the lie out of loyalty or out of fear, and Clément said, “Maybe both,” and I said, “Yes. Maybe both,” and they listened closely to every word, and when it was over they went outside together and I saw them through the window, sitting on the patio chairs, watching the birds fly.

And now Elise’s voice is in my ear, long-distance, and I check the clock. I have plenty of time, so I stop getting ready, take a moment to talk to her.

“How was the concert?” she asks.

“It was good,” I say. I won’t go into everything that’s happened, not right now. When she comes back we’ll talk it over. For now I say thatNathalie played well, sang with emotion, received thunderous applause. I don’t say that she didn’t seem able to take much of it in. That I found her bewildered, blinking in the bright lights, awkward when Al handed her a dozen yellow roses, holding them away from her body as though they were meant for someone else. A thrum of panic, thinking of it. We’ve already signed a lease for an apartment near the college. They’ll move out in three weeks, on the first, and Nathalie’s not okay, and my fear for her overwhelms me, keeps me up at night, has me waking with dread each morning, the feeling coming before the memory, confused and searching until I pinpoint the source of it.

“The show was fantastic,” Elise says. “I haven’t felt so motivated in as long as I can remember. And your paintings! Three of them sold before we even opened, the other two in the first hour. A woman who came in near the end of the night was crushed that there weren’t more. She wants to discuss a commission. We’ll be back home in a few weeks and you can show me what you’ve been working on.”

“It hasn’t been much,” I say. “With all the worry about the plant and what I’ll do now, and my sisters not talking, and the kids about to move out. And Nathalie,” I say, even though I thought I’d wait. “She found out about Delphine. She’s devastated.”

“Oh, no,” Elise says. “Oh, Odette. I wish I was there.”

“I do, too. But we’ll talk about it more, another time. For now it’s graduation and the picnic. I made Nathalie a crown of flowers for her hair. I’m trying to make it special for her. It’s the worst timing. I’m doubting all my choices. But my paintings! Your gallery! It’s so thrilling, all of it.”

“It is,” she says. “How did everyone react when you told them about the paintings?”

“I haven’t told anyone,” I say.

“Are you serious? Why not?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real yet.”

“It’s real. Tell somebody,” Elise says. “Tell somebody as soon as we hang up.”

Ginny.