Secrets of Paris Read Free

now consisted of only Lydie and her mother. But Michael had said no, what Lydie did not want to leave was her family tragedy.
    Eight months before Michael accepted the position at theLouvre, Lydie’s father had killed his lover and himself. Margaret Downes. Lydie felt a jolt every time she remembered the name. After forty years of what everyone considered a great marriage, Cornelius Benedict Fallon had fallen in love with another woman. Lydie hadn’t known and Julia claimed, even now, to have had no clue. Lydie knew there must have been clues, and she often felt furious with her mother for not seeing them. Because right up until the time the New York City detectives knocked on her door, Lydie had believed in her mother’s myth of a happy family.
    Lydie was her parents’ only child; born relatively late in their marriage, she knew she was beloved. They had raised her to feel confident and live like a daredevil. A favorite story of her father’s was of how Lydie at eight, watching the Olympics on television, had suddenly stood and done a perfect backflip off the back of the sofa. The second time she tried, she broke her collarbone. During high school she took up whitewater kayaking, tutoring children in a neighborhood few of her convent school classmates would even visit, and hitchhiking to Montauk on Saturdays. One day her father let her take an H-production Sprite for a spin. The intensity of concentration required to speed thrilled her, and from then on she thought of racing as a legitimate way to drive a car fast.
    Cutting through the Galerie Vivienne, remembering that Bugeye Sprite and her old fearless self, Lydie felt her eyes fill with tears. The emotion was so strong she stopped in front of a wine shop, pretending to regard the window display while she cried. She thought of the car Michael had given her for Christmas, just before the shooting. They had shopped around together, and Lydie had fallen in love with a showroom stock Volvo 740 wagon. Michael had grinned at the idea of his wife racing a station wagon, the car favored by women living in the Litchfield Hills to ferry kids and groceries around Lime Rock. Secretly, he had bought it for her. Lydie closed her eyes, remembering that Christmasmorning: in their apartment on West Tenth Street she had opened a small box containing brown leather driving gloves, a map of Connecticut with “Lime Rock” circled in red, and the keys. She hadn’t even driven it since her father died. It sat in Sharon, Connecticut, in a garage behind her crew chief’s house.
    Michael had told her about the Louvre position as if he were giving her a gift even greater than the car: the gift of adventure, a year in Paris. But Lydie hadn’t wanted to come. She had wanted to stay in New York; she couldn’t imagine leaving her mother. She couldn’t imagine leaving the scene. But in spite of lacking heart, she couldn’t say no to Michael, who was incredibly excited about the move. And then, the day had come to pack their things into a crate that would cross the Atlantic on a Polish freighter.
    Julia had sat on Lydie and Michael’s bed, watching them pack. Lydie knew that although her mother felt abysmally sad at seeing Lydie go, she wouldn’t dream of speaking up. Julia would think that by doing so she would spoil Michael’s happiness. She was plump, especially in the bosom, with soft, curly gray hair and, even then, a perpetually happy expression in her blue eyes. Lydie could hardly bear to look at her that day; she rummaged through a dresser drawer. Coming upon her driving gloves, Lydie slipped them on, flexing the new leather.
    “Can’t wait to see you drive at Le Mans,” Michael said. “It’s only about two hours from Paris.”
    “I can’t wait,” Lydie said, doubting even then that she would drive in France.
    “Oh, you two will have such a ball,” Julia said, grinning. “All the museums and the restaurants. Your aunt Carrie and I spent a weekend in Paris one time. It was