CHAPTER 20
What if this all goes badly?Shaundra mused anxiously as they drove towards Nathanael’s mother’s house.What if she hates me on sight?
She’d never met her mother-in-law, a situation she’d found profoundly strange, but had learned to live with. Mentally, she compared that to the sheer excitement that had greeted her announcement that she was marrying Nathanael, the way her mother and siblings had swarmed him, engulfed him. She guessed that a lot depended on how you grew up, and in her family, they’d grown up in an untidy heap in tight surroundings, like a litter of hamsters.
The street he turned into was quiet, middle class, and the houses were surprisingly large. She threw Nathanael an assessing look. In the rare instances when he’d spoken of his circumstances, she’d gotten the impression that while they weren’t impoverished, they hadn’t had much, either. And she knew his mother didn’t work anymore.
As she looked at the neatly tended gardens and spacious balconies on the surrounding houses, she became certain that Nathanael had something to do with how and where his mother lived now. She wouldn’t put it past him to purchase a house and set up a handsome stipend for his own mother—like he did for her mother—even though, for whatever reason, he didn’t stay in constant contact with her.
They parked outside a honeysuckle-colored home with one of those tiny, eco-conscious European cars in the garage and Fleur-de-Lys emblems worked into the wrought-iron fencing. She hid a nervous smile. You can take the woman out of France, she figured, but you couldn’t take France out of the—
“Nathanael!” The happy cry was immediately followed by the front door being thrown open, and a woman rushing outside, arms flung out before her in welcome.
Next to her, she felt his body grow tense, and then slowly relax, as if he was willing himself to be calm. As the woman launched herself excitedly into her son’s arms, Shaundra took the opportunity to assess her. She’d long wondered which of his parents Nathanael favored. Would his mother be dark-haired and dark-eyed as he was, with a long nose and strong jaw?
But no, she was slender, shapely even for her age, with wispy blonde hair that was going gray at the temples and which had been drawn back in a messy bun. There were several silver rings on her thin fingers, but the fingernails had been chewed to the quick. Shaundra got the impression of a pretty, nervous, flightless bird.
So, he took after his late father, then.
The stream of excited chatter in French halted, and Shaundra realized that Coralie Michiels was addressing her. She flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Ma’am.” She held out her hand. “I’m delighted to meet you.”
Instead of shaking her hand, Coralie reached up and patted her on her cheek, murmuring in French how pretty she was. “My dear, my dear, how wonderful. How lovely. Oh, my heart, I am so enchanted!”
Shaundra, feeling overwhelmed by the effusive welcome, could barely manage a few words in response, before Coralie clasped her hands together and asked, “And you have a baby, yes? I have a grandchild? I am so excited to meet him!” She leaned to one side, looking beyond them to the car, as if expecting Benjamin to open the door on his own and hop down from the SUV.
Nathanael touched his mother lightly on the shoulder and said, “Benjamin is with the nanny, Maman. We thought it would be better to meet you alone first, since it has been so long.”
The disappointment on the poor woman’s face was palpable, and Shaundra felt sorry for her. She hurried to promise, “We will bring him to you soon. Before we leave.” Which, she realized, was rash, because she had no idea how long they would be in Paradisio Falls, and still had no clue as to what Nathanael’s true intentions were in coming here in the first place.
But Coralie smiled brightly and gestured for them to enter. “C’est bien.Come in, come in, please,petite.I baked a pie for you. A quince tarte tatin. It was Nathanael’s favorite when he was growing up.”
Nathanael’s brows shot up in surprise. “You made me a quince pie? I haven’t had it in years!”
They stepped over the threshold into the well-lit foyer and followed her into the living room. “Well, today you will have some. You have no idea how hard it is to find quinces is Paradisio Falls!”
Shaundra allowed herself to be seated on the couch, wondering all the while what the hell a quince was. The pie was proudly brought out and sliced, and Coralie placed a massive hunk of it on her plate, immediately pouring a dollop of cream on top. Shaundra tried it cautiously. It was delicious, but surely the portion was enough to share with several other very hungry people!
She listened passively, trying to make herself invisible as mother and son put out tentative feelers, slowly reconnecting after so long apart. She instinctively liked Coralie, and it was killing her trying to figure out why a man who had such solid core values as Nathanael would have stayed away for so long.
She answered politely when asked a question, explained to a curious Coralie that she and Nathanael had met while he was a patient at the dental clinic where she had worked. She described her own family, giving a brief thumbnail sketch of her siblings, as Coralie sat there smiling.
Upon request, she whipped out her phone and allowed her mother-in-law tooohandahover the most recent photos and videos of Benji.
Nathanael was less forthcoming, answering questions about his businesses, about his recent trips to the Far East, and assuring his mom that he still ate well and worked out. Yes, Maman,taking care of my health, thank you.
But the tension was palpable. It was as though Nathanael was a pressure cooker on a very low heat, slowly, ever so slowly, coming to the boil.
She had the uneasy feeling that if the pressure inside escalated drastically, everything in the room would be obliterated.
Once Coralie’s barrage of questions had been exhausted, she began giving her own updates. How she was thinking of buying a pair of rabbits to keep in the back garden. How she had joined a walking club. How she was baking so much more, cooking so much more, now that she had his uncle Tobias to take care of.
Shaundra felt Nathanael go rigid, as if he had been transmuted into marble. The seconds that passed felt like hours, and then Nathanael managed to speak.“Pardon?”
“Ton Tobias,” Coralie explained, blithely unaware of the fact that the atmospheric pressure inside the room had drastically dropped. “He hasn’t been doing well.”
His voice was glacial. “You still speak to him?”
“He’s my brother-in-law. Of course I speak to him—”