Page 19 of Forgiving Paris
“It’ll be okay, Ash.” Landon nudged her. “A week from now we’ll be home and you’ll be so glad you went. Trust me.”
She nodded, but her next breath was as tight as the last. Just then her cell phone rang.Good,she thought.Adistraction. Her niece’s name flashed on the screen.Jessie Taylor. Ashley answered it. “Jessie. Hey!”
“Aunt Ashley!” The girl sounded practically giddy. “Are you in Paris? I can’t wait to see you.”
“Not yet.” Ashley tried to focus. “We’re about to board the first flight.”
“Okay. Good.” Jessie laughed a little. “I want you and Uncle Landon to have lunch with me and Gabriel and his mother. Remember, I told you about Gabe?”
Gabe… Gabe. “Yes, of course. The boy from your art class.” Ashley squeezed her eyes shut. Everything in her screamed,Don’t get on that plane. Don’t do it. Don’t go back to Paris. You nearly died there. Her niece was still talking. “Anyway, Aunt Ashley, we’d love to have lunch with you.”
“Sure. We were planning on it.” Wherever Jessie was, the background noise made it hard to hear her. “And hey, Aunt Ashley, I have a question for you. Gabriel’s mother…” The call started to break up. “I figured… if that was…”
“Jessie?” Ashley tried hard to hear her. “I’m losing you.”
“I’m just asking if… I don’t think it could be…”
The call failed.
Ashley tried to call her niece back, but it went straight to her voicemail. Whatever the girl wanted to say, it would have to wait until their afternoon together in Paris. If Ashley survived that long.
The gate attendant called their boarding group and Landon took both her bag and his. He looked deep into her eyes. “You okay?”
Why couldn’t she draw a full breath? Her heart pounded against the wall of her chest. “I’m… I’m fine. I am.” This was ridiculous. She had survived more than most people. Of course she would make it through this trip to France. No one was waiting to harm her on the other side of the ocean.
Besides, saying yes to the art show had been her choice, her decision. She had agreed to every detail, and she had promised Landon that the two of them would celebrate their anniversary while they were there. In the city that made her physically sick to think about.
Ashley stood by Landon as they moved toward the Jetway. Every few seconds Landon turned to her, worry heavy in his eyes. She forced a smile. “Really, Landon. I’m fine. I will be.”
He didn’t look convinced. When they were on the plane, he slipped her carry-on into the compartment above their seats. She took the window and after he was buckled in beside her, he reached for her hand. “You know where I was?” Something in his tone soothed her anxiety.
She faced him. “Where you were… when?”
“Back then, when you were in Paris the first time. When I heard the news that you were…”
“Pregnant.”
“Yes.” He held her eyes. People were still boarding the plane and the flight attendant was asking passengers to find their seats. But Landon’s voice filled her senses.
“Tell me.”
“I was playing basketball with my roommates. Baylorhad an intramural gym with four courts. Every court had a game, with people lining the walls watching.” He hesitated. “The place was packed but in the middle of the mass of people I spotted Jalen.”
“Your best friend.”
“Right. His eyes were locked on me… and his face looked pale. Like someone had died.” Landon shifted so he could see her better. “I subbed myself out of the game and met Jalen just off the court. He told me my mom couldn’t reach me. But she wanted me to know. You were home, and… you were pregnant.”
In a single heartbeat, his story shifted Ashley’s narrative. Why hadn’t she thought about this before? What happened in Paris didn’t only hurt her. Paris had also affected her parents and her siblings. And clearly it had deeply affected Landon. They were taxiing to the runway, but Ashley stayed focused on her husband. “You never told me.”
“I didn’t want you to feel bad.” His voice was soft, kind. “You thought going to Paris was about you getting away from everything here. Remember?”
“Nothing felt right. After the accident.” Ashley remembered the way her heart hurt, how it seemed God had abandoned her. “I couldn’t get far enough away.”
Ten minutes later when they were in the air and leveled off on their flight to JFK, Landon turned to her again. “You could’ve gone all the way to the moon, Ashley. But you could never go far enough away that I wouldn’t have thought about you, prayed for you every day.”
For a minute or so Ashley looked out the window at the clear blue sky. Then she faced Landon again. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, Ash. You know that.”
