A short time later, we cross the Seine to the Right Bank. Rudy gives us a tour of the enormous Place de la Concorde before turning onto the Champs-Élysées. The sun is on its way down, but the Christmas illuminations on the plain trees haven’t awakened yet. That suits me just fine. I can admire the mythical avenue without being distracted by the sparkling, blinking cheer.
Rudy drops us off in front of a breathtaking edifice of stone, glass, and steel. He gives Louis the reservation codes and drives away to park the car. Louis and I head to the entrance. He informs me that the Grand Palais never served as a royal or ducal palace. It was built a century after the French Revolution and a decade after the Eiffel Tower for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. Its purpose from the outset was to host art exhibits and events.
Once under the gorgeous glass-and-iron dome, I’m shocked by the size of the throng. My immediate urge is to flee. But then I remember that apart from Louis, no one here—absolutely freaking no one—knows who I am. I don’t need a costume or a mask to conceal my identity. I can walk around just as I am. No one will shout insults at me or try to trip me. No one will even consider doing such a thing.
We find the locker room and pick up our skates and mandatory gloves. The skates are bright orange, funky and… way too short. The blades are half the size of the ones I’m used to, I swear!
I shoot Louis a panicked look.
He shrugs a smugI told you. “The skates we use in Mount Evor have blades that are much longer and more stable, because we skate on uneven natural ice.”
“I thought it was the norm…”
He takes pity on me. “Haven’t you ever seen skates like this on TV?”
“A long time ago when I was a kid. But I thought they were a special design for Olympic figure skaters.”
We sit down on a bench. I put on my gloves and my orange skates that look dangerously unstable. On the gigantic rink, men and women laugh as they spin and glide with varying degrees of grace.
Louis offers his hand. I take it, and before I know it, we’re on the track.
As soon as I let go of his hand, I lose my balance, and my butt meets the ice.Crap, crap, crap!
As if to celebrate Louis’s victory, bright, colorful spotlights turn on under the glass dome, against the backdrop of the dark sky. There are also dancing lights, clouds of pink smoke, and a hologram Santa riding a ghostly sleigh above our heads. The palace becomes an enchanted wonderland right out of a cheesy fairy tale.
Louis helps me up, looking very pleased with himself.
“Urgh!” I growl.
He grins. “Don’t you love the holiday season?”
“I hate it!”
“But you loved it as a kid, didn’t you?” He offers his arm, and we set out near the edge at a sedate pace. “Doesn’t this place bring it back, that feeling of wonder, a sense that magic is afoot?”
“Nice try,” I mutter. “But no.”
As a foster child, the holiday season was always the saddest time of year. And even as a grown-up, Christmastime is tricky for me. Four years ago, it was particularly bad. I missed Jeannette. My colleagues at the printer organized nonstop bashes, but I wasn’t invited to any of them. The residents of the RV park held parties, too, but the manager suggested I stay away to avoid trouble. It snowed a lot, but the snowfalls weren’t pretty. They were wet and sticky, coming down from a leaden sky. On the radio, carols sang the joys of friendship and family bonds.
It’s a miracle I didn’t slash my veins that week.
In a moment of weakness, I called my birth mother, the junkie who’d abandoned her young daughters but never relinquished her parental rights. Her selfishness had made Jeannette and me unadoptable by couples who truly longed to have children, who would’ve cherished us and given us a loving, permanent home. It doomed us to shuffle from foster home to foster home, suspended, waiting for our mom to get her shit together and take us back. She never did.
But at least, I had her number, unlike my father’s whose name she hadn’t bothered to ask.
So that’s the woman I called on a particularly lonely Christmas Eve. She didn’t pick up. I left a message on her voice mail asking if she wanted to celebrate together, or just meet over some mulled wine. I wasn’t sure what to expect, or if she’d respond at all.
She replied with a text message. It read:No.
CHAPTER19
LOUIS
Camille, Angie, and I are strolling down rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, an upscale shopping street on the Right Bank. Rudy is on standby, grabbing a coffee in a nearby bistro. Camille’s lady’s maid Marianne is off today.
This street is truly emblematic of the French capital. Many world-famous designers agree with me, because they’ve chosen its elegant Haussmannian buildings to house their luxury boutiques. The street is always bustling with shoppers, but it’s even more alluring now, decked out with festive illuminations. The atmosphere is electric, and the crisp December air is thick with the scents of sophisticated perfumes that tend to accompany the moneyed class. The sidewalks are squeaky clean and litter-free, which has become rare enough in Paris to be noted.
Glamouris the watchword.