Page 42 of Forgiving Paris
Gabe looked down at the table for a minute and then back at his mother. “I wish I could’ve met him.”
“He saved my life the first time.” Alice looked at Ashley. “You saved it the second time.”
Alice went on to say that she would’ve gone back to the drugs, back to hating her mother and scrounging for scraps on the street. She would’ve lost her baby for sure. “But instead, God led me to you.”
Under the table, Landon ran his thumb over Ashley’s hand.
The two young women only worked together for a few weeks. “But every day you would talk to me in the back room.” Alice smiled. “If you could call it that. The space was just a closet, really.”
“I can picture it.”
“We both felt the same about our lives.” Alice took her time. “Remember, we talked about how we could never go back to our families. We thought we’d be terrible mothers.” She hesitated. “But my situation was worse than that because of my addiction. I craved another hit of heroin every hour of the day back then.”
Ashley could see herself, skinny and pregnant, talking to Alice in that break room. The girl had been a French version of herself—all except for Alice’s addiction. The only addiction Ashley had ever known was her addiction to Jean-Claude. And by the time she met Alice, she was over that.
Alice continued. “Every day I thought about going back to that spot under the bridge near the Seine. A bunch of drug addicts lived there in tents. Everyone shared needles.” Alice teared up again. “I thought that was love. I told you that.”
“Yes.” Ashley nodded. “I remember.”
“And every day you took my hands, Ashley, and you told me that wasn’t love. It was a sickness. You told me my baby deserved more than that.” Alice’s voice was thick with emotion now. “Some days I only returned to work for one reason. To hear you say those words again. That drugs weren’t love. That the people under the bridge didn’t care about me. They cared only about the next hit.”
That’s right.Ashley had indeed said that. “I told you that even if your mother never forgave you, God loved you.”
“Yes, you’d just come back to believing in God. Youhad the same faith my grandmother had. But my mother had never taught me about Jesus.” Alice hesitated. “Because of you, I began to wonder if maybe God was real.”
Alice explained that she had been living in a halfway house, a place for recovering addicts. When Ashley spoke to her about God, Alice no longer felt alone and desperate for more heroin. She felt like maybe there was hope, after all.
“But I still struggled. You didn’t work for a few days, and I decided everything you’d said wasn’t true. There wasn’t a God and no one loved me. I told myself I’d be crazy sick for a hit of heroin until the day I died.”
Ashley glanced at Gabriel. This was hard for him to hear, that much was obvious. He had hold of his mother’s hand again. “I still can’t believe this, M’man. It sounds nothing like you.”
“I know.” She smiled at him. “But itwasme. And the story of my redemption is important. Because everyone has a past. Everyone comes from some background. The place where God found them and picked them up and dusted them off. The day they first understood how loved they were.”
“Yes.” Gabe nodded. “It doesn’t have to be drug addiction. We all have something.”
Alice turned to Ashley. “Without you to talk me into living those few dark days, I made a plan.” She paused. “I… I was going to take my life. Mine and my baby’s.” She looked at Gabriel for a long time and she kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry, son. Sorry I ever considered that.”
He put his arm around her and held her. “You’re here. I’m here. That’s all that matters, Mère.”
“Thank you, Gabriel.” Alice was quiet for a while. “The truth is, I was going to jump off the Pont du Garigliano. There would have been no surviving that.”
“This is the part she told Jessie the other night. When we all had dinner.” Gabriel looked concerned for his mother. “It had been a long time since I’d heard the story.”
“It’ll be a long time till you hear it again.” Alice smiled at him but pain filled her eyes. “I have to tell Ashley. I’ve begged God for this chance.”
Ashley wondered if maybe she and Alice should’ve had this conversation alone. But they never would’ve met if it wasn’t for Jessie and Gabe. “Was that the night… when you came into the bakery? When you weren’t supposed to be working?”
“It was.” Alice angled her head. “I was there to say goodbye, Ashley. It would’ve been my last hour. If I’d had my way.”
“I could tell something was very wrong.”
Alice nodded. “Right.” She explained how she couldn’t stop shaking, and Ashley took her into the back room. “You asked me if I was going to do something stupid. Find more drugs or… you didn’t say it, but I think you knew.”
Ashley had known. She could see the past vividly now. The girl, shaking and desperate. Her eyes wide with fear. And then Ashley saw herself, what had happened that day. “I took you in my arms and hugged you.”
“No one had hugged me like that for years.” Aliceshook her head. “I had lost so much, but in that hug… in that single hug I felt hope.”
Landon tightened his gentle grip on Ashley’s fingers. He kept his eyes on Alice, like he couldn’t get enough of this story. Across the table, Jessie looked the same way.
