Still, she managed a few paragraphs.
Lucie tells me that one morning the bombing began again, and the clock was chiming nine o’clock, but it did not have a chance to finish. . . . A xxx burst in through the wall, covering all in dust and chunks of plaster. . . . The tinkling of broken glass . . . The shock of concussion is so hard to describe; it makes one feel injured, even when whole.
Rosalyn perused the abused pages, struggling to understand the language, imagining a long-ago war-torn world, until her eyes grew heavy, and she slept.
* * *
She dreamed of the medicine cabinet.
Kneeling on the aqua blue bath mat in front of the open cabinet, Rosalyn wondered if the medications within would be sufficient to kill her.
She felt strangely detached from the question, and even more so from its implications. When Dash died, Rosalyn had fractured. Something deep down had broken, fragmented, splintered into pointy, stabbing shards. She was a shattered mirror. She was seven years of bad luck.
If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.
The words of the old song came to Rosalyn’s mind, crooned in Dash’s husky voice. He wasn’t a morning person, but if she gave him his space, he would be humming by the time he emerged from the shower, singing disparate lines of old and new songs, mostly the blues, laughing at the absurdity of the lyrics because, as he had declared on their wedding day—an extravagant affair held outdoors among the grapevines—Dash considered himself to be the luckiest man alive.
His prescriptions were lined up in neat rows on the shelf: amber vials and bottles and bubble packs of painkillers that had cost every cent they had, and then some. All marked with the name of the man Rosalyn had married six years ago and lost two and a half years ago and still loved: Dashiell Anthony Acosta.
Take with food. Do not crush or chew. Take as needed.
What if she crushed and chewed them, popped handfuls into her mouth on an empty stomach, as needed? She could wash them down with a lovely bottle of Napa Cabernet, as Dash had suggested he do toward the end, when he was trying to celebrate his thirty-eighth birthday—knowing he would never have another birthday—but was too sick to hold anything down. Good reminder: Rosalyn should take an antinausea pill before the others.
This was the sort of thing a person learned when watching her husband struggling to survive, to eradicate murderous cancer cells through chemotherapy and radiation and surgery and drugs and prayer and sheer force of will. Not that any of it mattered in the end.
Ninety-seven days—that was all it took.
Ninety-seven days, from diagnosis to death.
Chapter Five
Upon landing in Paris, Emma and Rosalyn exchanged business cards.
“I’m sure I’ll see you in baggage claim, or passport control, or customs,” said Emma, urging Rosalyn to go on ahead while she waited for an attendant with a wheelchair. “Sorry to say, none of us is getting out of this airport quickly.”
Rosalyn disembarked to the terminal, stopping in a restroom to comb her hair and splash water on her face. She snuck a look at herself in the bathroom mirror and immediately regretted it. Not that anyone looked their best after a transatlantic flight, even in first class. Still.
The face staring back at her was haggard and wan, dark circles underlining her sherry-colored eyes. Her mother would have been appalled, but then, that was nothing new. The Rosalyn-That-Was would have primped for an airplane voyage; she would have kept a makeup bag close at hand. Today’s Rosalyn wore no makeup to take the edge off. Her dark brown hair was shaggy and badly in need of a trim; she should have taken care of it before this trip, but the thought of being trapped in a salon chair while a chatty hair stylist fussed over her had been too much to contemplate.
Now she wished she had toughed it out. Somehow it felt worse to look so unkempt in France, among Parisians known the world over for their sense of style. The women at the mirrors on either side of her were well-coiffed and chic, stunning in spite of the harsh fluorescent lighting. Rosalyn hoped standards might be more relaxed out in the countryside, in Champagne.
She practically fell asleep on her feet as she waited, glassy-eyed and bovinelike, in the swollen line for immigration control. Later, at baggage claim, she spotted Emma.
“Still time to change your mind,” Emma said as she directed her escort to grab her many bags. “Want to ride with me?”
“I really do appreciate the offer, but I need my own car. I’ll be driving all over the region, visiting wineries. And I’m booked in a hotel in Paris for the first couple of days anyway.”
“Well, I can hardly argue with Paris. But Champagne’s a small place,” said Emma. “I’ll be staying in Épernay, which is a ways from Cochet, but I feel sure we’ll cross paths. If not, give me a shout. Honestly, I would love the company. If for no other reason than that it would be nice to speak English over dinner.”
Rosalyn thanked her. On the one hand, she didn’t have the bandwidth for any new “friends.” On the other, as Hugh tried to hammer into her, the wine business was all about socializing. She really should inquire about tasting the wines from Emma’s vineyards, if they weren’t yet represented in the U.S. market. And . . . she would love to find out what had happened with those letters.
“It was really good to meet you,” Rosalyn said.
Emma stilled, fixing Rosalyn with that disconcertingly direct gaze. “I try to stay away from giving unsolicited advice, Rosalyn, but believe me when I say: You’ll muddle through. Life’s not easy, and it sure as hell isn’t fair. But we’re survivors, you and I. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
Rosalyn watched as Emma, the wheelchair, and her escort were swallowed by the crowd milling about the spinning luggage carousels. A second man trotted behind, pushing a trolley loaded high with Emma’s matching luggage.
If she hadn’t felt so empty inside, Rosalyn would have sworn that she felt bereft.
Almost as if she had lost her only friend in France.
* * *
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Emma’s parting words reverberated in Rosalyn’s mind as she progressed through customs and finally departed from the main terminal to find the taxi stand.
This was the same thing her grandmother had told her at Dash’s memorial service, and as far as advice went, it was helpful. Far better than “You’ll meet someone else someday,” or the ever-popular “He’s in a better place; at least he’s no longer in pain.” Much less the exquisitely painful: “It’s a shame you didn’t have children so you’d have someone to remember him by.”