Promises to Keep Read online

  As he had done for almost twenty years, Philippe left before dawn for the covered market, where he and Gilles, his longtime friend and assistant, set up his popular cheese stand. Now there was a spring to his step that had been missing for many years.

  They rolled out the glass-fronted counters and filled them with delicious and aromatic cheeses from all parts of France. Only the finest products would do, and Philippe had spent years studying and apprenticing to acquire his well-earned reputation.

  Where Philippe was quietly passionate about the cheese they sold, Gilles was flamboyant and engaging. When lineups at their stall grew long with customers wanting Philippe’s opinion and suggestions, Gilles would work the queue and take care of simple requests so everyone remained in good humor.

  Kat entertained the thought of introducing Gilles to Molly the next time she visited. His hearty laughter sounded like just the right fit for hers—and he was single.

  Katherine’s days began with yoga and a walk or bike ride. Cycling by herself made her feel free and at peace with the world. As much as she loved the weekly rides with Philippe and their local cycling club, she found going alone on secondary roads, away from traffic, both more exhilarating and calming.

  The first time she rode alone that week, she remembered how after James had left her, she vowed never to cycle again. The memories of their shared involvement in the sport were excruciating in those early days of painful disbelief.

  The home exchange in Sainte-Mathilde had cured her of that, when her quickest response to a sudden emergency had been to hop on a bike to get help. After leaping that hurdle, cycling through the peaceful countryside of the Luberon reawakened the euphoria she had known on a bike since childhood.

  She had returned to Toronto after that exchange with renewed commitment to the sport and to not allowing the hurt James had inflicted to rob her of anything good in life.

  Now she pedaled on, banishing those thoughts. Her new life seemed all good, and cycling was once again a vital part of who she was.

  But since shortly after her arrival in Antibes back in the summer, she realized what she loved even more here was simply walking, quietly observing everything around her. It occurred to her that she had traded her early-morning Toronto habit of checking all the news services for the delight of watching the old town waking up.

  This habit continued now as she spent the early hours strolling the ancient streets and alleyways at the heart of Antibes. She absorbed how the light was falling on the cobblestones and the vine-covered houses and wondered if its beauty would ever become commonplace to her. She took great pleasure in watching the town’s cats and dogs join the early lineups for baguettes; in hearing voices laughing, cajoling; in the sound of chairs scraping and dishes rattling as cafés were set up; in smelling the night’s catch from the fishing boats as it was laid out on display down at the quay. She reveled in all of it.

  Her camera—not her computer—was now her constant companion. Her focus was on the small world around her, not the bigger picture. She realized she was a news junkie no more, and that had to be a good thing.

  On the first day of her new life with Philippe, she began a photo journal, an idea that came to her during her morning walk. She set up a separate album on her computer, adding one shot each day, accompanied by a few words: her private gratitude journal.

  She would go through that album weeks later and see that there was a pattern among the photos she’d chosen. She was, to use a phrase she had adopted during her divorce counseling, “redefining the possible.”

  At some point during her morning walk or ride, she would sit by the sea. The Mediterranean had called to her since she first set eyes on it thirty years earlier. La Grande Bleue, Philippe called it. There was something about the calls of seabirds, about the colors of the sea, the movement of the water, the play of light on the waves that seemed to symbolize the change in herself.

  Breathing in the salty air, she considered how her story was changing.

  Early on in her counseling, after James had left, she had struggled with uncertainty and identity. Now she was forging a new path and feeling more confident about who she was and, more important, who she wanted to be.

  The future had disappeared into a black hole the fateful afternoon of “la Katastrophe,” as Molly christened it. Now it was bright with promise and different in every way imaginable. There was a plan developing. Dreams. She was sure there would be stumbling blocks along the way, as there always are, but she felt prepared to face them.

  There was no denying the moments of melancholic homesickness that overcame her from time to time. Memories were triggered by something as simple as a smell, a taste, or even a color. But those remembrances that brought sadness or a desire for what she once knew as home, often morphed into a reminder of good things that would stay with her no matter where life took her.

  At times, in private, she even shed a few tears but came to recognize they were not so much tears of sadness but rather a way of clearing emotional hurdles to bring her back to the reality she had chosen. She had left many anchor points behind, but their absence had opened the door for her to move forward.

  It wasn’t that she was completely different; it was that everything around her had altered and she was opening up and embracing that change, taking a chance. And it felt right. Who knew? She smiled at that. She’d been asking herself that same question repeatedly.

  “Who knew?” she said out loud now as she tossed some pebbles into the sea and got to her feet.

  She was growing aware of how right Philippe had been when he’d warned her that word of their living together would quickly spread through the old town. Even Monsieur Bouchard—the curmudgeonly owner of the tabac where she purchased a copy of Nice-Matin, the local newspaper, each morning—seemed to be casting his vote. Now when she entered the tiny shop, its walls coated with international papers and tawdry tabloids, he solemnly waved a copy waiting for her by his cash register. At times he showed a hint of a smile, and she felt that she had passed inspection.

  Usually, after collecting the newspaper, her next move was to sit at a small table by the window in the café, Le Vieil Antibes. After ordering a pot of thé au citron, she would watch the village activity and read the latest news with her dictionary close at hand. “My morning French lesson,” she called it.

  She ran into Bernadette a couple of times and had coffee with her. With her wild, frizzy, gray hair and ever-present stilettos, Katherine’s favorite taxi driver and hilarious social commentator was easy to spot when she rushed through the town on any number of seemingly endless tasks. Her age was indeterminate, her energy limitless, and her knowledge of local affairs without compare. Bernadette herself preferred Swedish men, but still she told Kat that Philippe was “le meilleur homme du pays,” the best man in the country, adding with a snort, “even if he is French.”

  If Kat had no other plan, she would end up at the market with an espresso for Philippe and, for herself, a café au lait, which she was learning to enjoy. She would leave quickly if he was busy, but on slow days, she would sit by the stall for a while as he worked.

  Her knees weakened every time she saw him, his handsome face framed by dark-brown hair that was a little on the long side and combed back until the ends escaped in small untamed curls. He gives me schoolgirl moments, she thought as her heart fluttered at the very notion of him. She could feel her cheeks flush with desire when their gaze connected with others watching. Who knew I would have those feelings again at this point in life? Who knew?

  After returning the cups to the café, she would wander the market, looking for ingredients for dinner if she hadn’t already bought fish at the quay.

  On Wednesday, she rejoined the expat group in Nice for their weekly “walks and talks.” The women welcomed her back warmly, although they were surprised, as they thought she had left France for good. Katherine sheepishly laughed and said,
“So did I.”

  She told Philippe she was also going to rejoin her Monday bridge group—at some point.

  “I might learn to play bridge with you after the holidays,” Philippe responded.

  “Is that you or the wine talking?” Kat asked. “I would love it if you did.”

  She felt a shift in her thinking. She was definitely no longer in vacation mode.

  But there were moments, few and far between, when she worried that their love would not last long, and she admitted this to him.

  “Moi aussi,” Philippe said, “de temps en temps. C’est normal.”

  Katherine nodded. “We both have fears to conquer, trust to build.”

  The death of Philippe’s wife several years earlier had left him afraid of loving deeply and losing that love again. He told Kat, “You are the first, since Geneviève died, and you make me feel willing to take the risk. I just have to believe we will love each other forever.”

  Kat struggled to control her tears, but eventually managed to say, “Grief is so powerful. I can only imagine how painful your loss was. Geneviève will always live in your heart, and that’s the way it should be.”

  “Oui”—he stumbled over the first few words—“there . . . there are things I must tell you, but not today. Most important is that I now know that I can love again. I thought that was impossible.”

  They leaned into each other and kissed. The softness of his lips stirred her to her core. “Je t’aime, Katherine. I love you, and I love hearing myself say it.”

  Kat’s eyes glistened as she ran her finger lightly down his cheek and across his mouth. “Je t’aime aussi.”

  She wondered briefly what was troubling him that he couldn’t tell her and made a note to bring it up soon. Not today.

  “But you have been touched by grief too,” Philippe said. “That’s part of what makes us strong together.”

  “D’accord,” she whispered. “True.”

  As much as she didn’t want to say it out loud, she found herself admitting that she was worried about their age difference—at forty-six, he was ten years younger than she—and that, at some point, he would be attracted to someone younger.

  Philippe laid two fingers on her lips. “Shhh. Don’t ever think about that again. There comes a point when age is just a number, and we are both past that. You are strong and beautiful to me, inside and out. That’s what counts.”

  Philippe took her hands and pulled her up from the couch. “Enough talk! Let’s go and see what today’s catch is at Le Vauban and have a glass of champagne to toast our future.”

  As they went out the door, he tapped her shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, everyone thinks I am older than you. You know how the town loves to gossip.”

  Kat found that adjusting to Philippe’s elegant, spacious apartment was a process. It had a completely different feel than either the rustic farmhouse in the Luberon or the cozy fisherman’s cottage in the old town, the places she had called home during her exchange visits.

  It also did not have one truly comfortable place to sit, except at the kitchen table. Even the couch was hard.

  When Kat asked Philippe which was his favorite armchair, he raised an eyebrow. “Aucun,” he said. “Not one of them. These are all very old, mostly from my grandparents’ house, but we never spent much time sitting around. When we were home, there were things to be done, usually in the kitchen, and so we gathered there. Otherwise our social life was outdoors.”

  She nodded, reminded that she had not missed television for the three months of her exchange and that they rarely turned it on now.

  Philippe encouraged her to make the space hers as well, but Kat was all too aware that he had a history in this apartment, and it did not include her. It made her nervous to change much, but she tried.

  “I like it when you move the furniture around and make a new look for us. We are beginning our story together.” He grinned. “And we will buy some new armchairs, comfortable ones.”

  Kat eventually pinned her problem down to the fact that nothing in the apartment was hers. Nothing was familiar or gave her the pleasure that comes from carefully chosen pieces of furniture, works of art, or even a simple decoration.

  They talked about her sending a shipment from her house, and there was no question the first item to go in the container would be her mother’s treasured carpet. There wasn’t a great deal else she wanted to ship, but the few other pieces on her list also carried a wealth of meaning for her. It would be good to have them in her new home.

  The crammed bookshelves in both the living room and bedroom helped reveal this man who had captured her heart. Classic novels by Dumas, Hugo, and Zola were jammed side by side with what he called the “crazy years”—books by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein. There was an extensive collection of existentialist works—Camus, Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, and Sartre—and the more recent works of Paulo Coelho and a writer she had not heard of before, Cees Nooteboom.

  “Some of those volumes have come down through several generations,” Philippe told her one evening as she looked through the shelves for another to read, “and I’ve devoured most of them. The first few years after Geneviève died, I was like a hermit when I was not at the market. I went to a very dark place for quite a while. Reading helped me to survive.”

  Kat had taken his hand, encouraging him to go on, but he had asked her to give him more time. She could only imagine how much pain comes from watching your beloved spouse slowly die.

  Philippe was delighted to discover their shared love of reading, and he teased her with quotes from Sartre once he found out he had been one of her favorite writers in her university years.

  “He kept me company in that dark place I mentioned.”

  Katherine nodded. “Who better?”

  After a few days, Kat grew uncomfortable that Philippe was paying most of their expenses. They had not yet talked about finances in any detail, and she thought they should. When she decided she couldn’t put the subject off any longer, she said, “I feel awkward bringing it up. But we’ve never even touched on how I can contribute financially to our life together.”

  Philippe waved his hand. “It’s not important.”

  “But I feel troubled by it. We should make a plan.”

  Then she felt she’d been pushy to mention it. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was pressing for a commitment, and she chided herself inwardly.

  Her career had consumed a good part of her life, and she had paid more than half their living expenses during her marriage, so she was amazed to find that she was content not to be working. For now, her small inheritance from her mother was enough to cover her personal expenses, so she still did not have to touch her investments. But she knew that sooner or later, she’d want her own income and to contribute her share to their life together.

  Philippe listened intently as she explained this to him.

  “I understand, Kat, but we still have much to decide. You told me, ‘One day at a time,’ oui? When I talk about our future, you only let me go so far.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed, feeling a bit guilty. “On the one hand, I want to think long term, and on the other, I can’t quite go there yet. One day at a time it is, for now.”

  “D’accord, mon petit minou,” he replied, giving her a sly look.

  “Pardon? What did you call me?”

  “Mon petit minou. In English, your nickname is Kat. Un petit minou is a small cat. That’s my nickname for you. Minou.”

  Kat laughed. That was something else she loved about her life with Philippe: they laughed a lot. “D’accord . . . mon petit chou. Mon chouchou! I read that in one of my French exercise books. It rhymes. If I am your petit minou, you will be mon chouchou.”

  As part of their daily routine, Philippe would arrive with lunch carefully chosen from the day’s tempting mar
ket products. They planned in advance whether to eat at home or at the rundown family villa he’d inherited—which they hoped to rescue from decades of abandonment—on the Cap d’Antibes. They continued to spend hours clearing and pruning the gardens, as they had begun in October, weeks before he brought Kat back from the airport. Philippe now arranged with a stonemason to begin the restoration of the crumbling stone walls, and they felt excited about moving forward with the dream of opening a small inn.

  When he had first taken her there during her home exchange, Katherine had fallen under the spell of this peninsula, which jutted into the sea between the Baie de Cannes and the Baie des Anges. The properties were a mix of private homes of all sizes, some large estates—many of them foreign-owned—and a few small farm plots, like Philippe’s, that had managed to elude hungry developers. The hilly woodland at the southern end of the Cap was crossed with small lanes leading nowhere except to a breathtaking view.

  Since then, they had biked the peninsula often and hiked the rocky trail along the coast, with a picnic, as Philippe took her to all the special places of his childhood adventures. His deep connections to the area and to his family property were clear.

  During the three months she had been on her exchange in Antibes, Katherine would often walk, camera in hand, through the forest and up the Chemin du Calvaire, past the twelve stations of the cross that were in various states of disarray. The lighthouse at the summit marked the highest point on the Cap. Each time, she would capture the panoramic view in a different weather and light, and some of these photos made it into her photo journal now. She found herself drawn to the simple small church there, Notre Dame de la Garoupe. A holy site since the fifth century, votive candles and touching handwritten notes and drawings by sailors, fishermen, or their families, covered the walls, watched over by the gilded statue of Notre Dame de Bon-Port. Kat was moved, sometimes to tears, by the powerful intimacy of the pain or gratitude pinned there for all to see.