Summer's End Read Free Page B

the pull between two countries, and two worlds, was too great for her.
The phone buzzed softly on her desk as she sighed and sat down. It was the house line, no doubt Margaret asking if she wanted her coffee in the studio. When Marc was away, Deanna often ate alone in this room. When he was at home, breakfast with him was a ritual, sometimes the only meal they shared.
“Yes?” Her voice had a soft, smoky quality that always lent gentleness to her words.
“Deanna, I have to call Paris. I won’t be downstairs for another fifteen minutes. Please tell Margaret that I want my eggs fried, and not burned to a crisp. Have you got the newspapers up there?”
“No, Margaret must have them waiting for you at the table.”
“Bon. À tout de suite.”
Not even “good morning,” no “how are you? How did you sleep? … I love you.” Only the papers, the black skirt, the passport, the—Deanna’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. They didn’t do it deliberately, they were simply that way. But why didn’t they care where her black skirt was, where her slippers were, how her latest painting was coming. She glanced over her shoulder wistfully as she closed the door to her studio behind her. Her day had begun.
*   *   *
Margaret heard her rustling the papers in the dining room and opened the kitchen door with her customary smile. “Morning, Mrs. Duras.”
“Good morning, Margaret.”
And so it went, as ever, with precision and grace. Orders were given with kindness and a smile; the newspapers were carefully set out in order of importance; the coffee was immediately placed on the table in the delicate Limoges pot that had belonged to Marc’s mother; the curtains were pulled back; the weather was observed; and everyone manned his station, donned his mask, and began a new day.
Deanna forgot her earlier thoughts as she glanced at the paper and sipped coffee from the flowered blue cup, rubbing her feet along the carpet to warm them from the chill of the tile on the terrace. She looked young in the morning, her dark hair loose, her eyes wide, her skin as clear as Pilar’s, and her hands as delicate and unlined as they had been twenty years before. She didn’t look her thirty-seven years, but more like someone in her late twenties. It was the way she lifted her face when she spoke, the sparkle in her eyes, the smile that appeared like a rainbow that made her seem very young. Later in the day, the consummately conservative style, the carefully knotted hair, and the regal bearing as she moved would make her seem more than her age. But in the morning she was burdened with none of the symbols—she was simply herself.
She heard him coming down the stairs before she heard him speak, calling back gaily to Pilar in French as the girl stood with wet hair on the second-floor landing. It was something about staying out of Nice and making sure she behaved herself in Antibes. Unlike Deanna, Marc would be seeing his daughter again in the course of the summer. He would be back and forth between Paris and San Francisco several times, stopping off in Antibes for a weekend, whenever he could. Old habits were too hard to break, and the lure of his daughter was too great. They had always been friends.
“Bonjour, ma chère.”
Ma chère , not ma chérie. My dear, not my darling, Deanna observed. The i had fallen from the word many years since. “You look pretty this morning.”
“Thank you.” She looked up with the dawn of a smile, then saw him already studying the papers. The compliment had been a formality more than a truth. The art of the French. She knew it well. “Anything new in Paris?” Her face was once again grave.
“I’ll let you know. I’m going over tomorrow. For a while.” Something in his tone told her there was more. There always was.
“How long a while?”
He looked at her, amused, and she was reminded once again of all the reasons she had fallen in love with him. Marc was an