Promises to Keep Read 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