Page 52 of The Holiday

"Sorry," Quinn said, nodding at the table. "I know it's not very French of us to have cheese and crackers before lunch, but there are some American habits I can't break, and one of them is offering food to people the minute they walk in the door."

"Well, I've personally never grown used to having cheese served to me between the main course and dessert, so maybe I'm not French enough either," I said with a smile.

"Anyway," Julien went on, putting one arm across the back of the couch so that he could make room for Quinn to move closer. "We moved over here after we got married, and then we had Lex. I've been on the fringes of French politics, but I'm still not sure it's for me." He screwed up his face. "I find that I'm more interested in things like philosophy. I love a good theoretical discussion about life, so discussing retirement ages, zoning laws, and immigration as policies are just not as interesting to me, I'm afraid."

"That's okay," I said. "And it's the beauty of being young, because you still have time to change tracks. Believe me, life is a winding road."

"So I'm finding," Julien said. He went quiet, and in the way that Quinn looked at him, I knew there was more. "Listen, Dexter, I have to be honest with you: my mother didn't want me to see you at all. She was clear when she said that she was done with that part of her life, and didn't want to revisit it, but I wanted to."

"Okay." I waited for more.

"I think it's important for me to work through my own feelings about things."

"Of course it is."

Quinn got up and wordlessly took the baby with her, disappearing up a narrow flight of stairs with him on her hip.

"Everyone lied to me about who I was and where I came from for the first decade or more of my life. And while I understand it as an adult, there's still a part of me that's searching. I want more. I need to know things."

I watched his face for clues as to which direction this was going. "Is there anything I can tell you?" I asked, completely uncertain about whether I had anything of value to offer him at all.

"It's hard for me to talk to my mother about these things," he said. "She got over it all a long time ago, according to her, and I've found that she changes the subject any time I bring it up." Julien stopped and looked at a painting that hung over his cold fireplace. "But I want to know what Ruby thought of everything. How did she feel about me?"

This took me by surprise. I would have understood Julien wanting more information about his own parents, but about Ruby?

“She thought you were a nice kid,” I said.

“No.” Julien stood and shook his head back and forth as he walked to the window, keeping his back to me. “How did she feel about my existence?”

Ah. A much more loaded question.

“I think she understood that your existence was a fact, and that you were an innocent product of your mother and Jack’s affair. In essence, she did not hold that against you—not in any way.”

“She could have.”

“Absolutely. And a lesser woman might have.”

Julien was quiet as the trees moved in the wind outside. The sky was gray and there were two lamps turned on in the room.

“But how could she not have hated me? Have wished to erase me from her mind?”

I took a long, deep breath. “Well. I think Ruby had a lot of experience with being practical. Her father died when she was very young, and she watched her mother pull herself up and thrive. Ruby was smart and self-contained, and she knew how to think critically.”

Julien turned to look at me with his hands in his pockets. “But a child is an obvious symbol of Jack’s infidelity. There was no brushing that under the rug. No ignoring the fact that I existed.”

I shrugged. “I mean, she could have ignored it, Julien. She could have put you out of her mind and just ignored the fact that you and Etienne were over here in France. She got her own life started on Shipwreck Key, and she chose to have some sort of communication with your mother. She fostered a relationship between you and Harlow and Athena. I’m not trying to pat her on the back for that, but in a way, I guess I am. Again, a lesser woman might have been bitter and let her own children see that. Ruby did not.”

He looked at the floor, hands still in pockets, face so dejected that I could see the young boy in him that he’d once been. I’d known that boy.

“I think I spent my whole life feeling like a mistake,” he admitted. “When I found out my mother had lied to me about who I was, and then realized that I didn’t have a father anymore, I sort of lost it. I drank a lot in my teen years, and did a lot of regrettable things. I needed a father.”

“Sure. A father is important to a young man.”

“Once, when you all came to France and stayed with us—remember that?”

“I do.”

“During that visit, Ruby’s bodyguard?—“

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