Page 27 of Past Lives
Lunch passes in a rush of flavors and stories. Heath tells how he was once stopped at Heathrow because his last name matched someone on a watch list, and Blair almost spits out her wine. I tell the story of the Orkney standoff, when a sheep hit our rental car and Heath convinced the farmer not to sue. Each time I tell it, Heath seems taller and the sheep seems bigger. Sonya brings in the salmon, and for a while, all we hear are forks and the quiet sounds from the street outside.
I notice Blair watching me and Heath, seeing how our chairs lean together and how our fingers touch under the table. She blinks, realizing something she wasn’t prepared for.
After the granita, the plates are cleared and Mother makes a show of sighing, “I ought to let you two get on with your day.” She means, “I’ve interrogated you enough.” Blair stands to help, but I follow her, squeezing her hand in the hallway.
“You okay?” I ask, searching her face for signs of defection.
She nods, eyes brighter than usual. “I’m trying to adjust my expectations, that's all. I thought you’d never—” She breaks off, shakes her head. “I’ll get used to it. I want to.”
I pull her in for a lopsided hug, feeling the bones of her back. “You’re my girl. You know that.”
Blair whispers, “I like him. I do.” But her voice is brittle, a snowflake that could shatter. “It’s just—he’s so much.”
“He is a lot,” I admit, then smile. “Did you see Mom try to seduce him with canapés?”
“I did,” she says, and then, “Don’t let him change you.”
I want to promise her, but I don’t. I just say, “Come visit us. Come over anytime.”
Heath and I walk west, arm-in-arm, between rows of brownstones. My shoes are too tight, but I feel happy. Every few steps, he pulls me closer, as if he’s afraid I might disappear into the crowd.
He’s quiet until we hit the park, then says, “Your friend is very… formidable.”
“She loves me in a weird, invasive way.”
He grunts. “I can see that.”
We sit on a bench in the nearly empty promenade. The city lights shine, distant and beautiful. He turns to me, our fingers laced together.
"I love you, Maya," he says, his voice rough enough to make my skin tingle. "I've been searching for you across lifetimes." He holds my hand so tightly I can feel my pulse against his palm. "I would walk through fire. I have walked through fire to find you again." He kisses the inside of my wrist, his eyes locked on mine, full of longing. "There is no test I won't endure, no battle I won't fight. You are mine. You have always been mine."
I press his hand to my lips, breathing in his scent. "I love you," I whisper, my voice shaking. "Is this real? It feels like I’ve been underwater for years and finally come up for air."
Heath's mouth finds mine, desperate and consuming. When he pulls away, his eyes burn with an intensity that scorches through me. "This is the realest thing I've ever known," he says, voice raw. "And long overdue."
Chapter 18
Epilogue
I standnear the crowded lawn of the Champ de Mars, my hands occupied with the narrow fingers of my daughters, their palms smudged with city and croissant. My daughters stare up at the Eiffel Tower, tiny challengers sizing up a metal giant. They try to ignore the surging crowd, but their grip on my hands tightens. Parenting twins is, in my experience, not unlike managing short-fuse nuclear reactors with their own names and baby-teeth agenda.
We haven’t told them we’re here to experience the city of love. Maya believes in honesty, but only the doses children can metabolize.
Flora points at the Tower and squints up at me, her mouth half-mooned in awe. “It’s bigger than in the pictures,” she whispers, as if the structure is a sleeping parent not to be rattled. Her sister, Fiona, clutches my sleeve with an intensity that is all Maya, and says, “You said we could go inside, Daddy. Inside the tower. Did you mean it?”
“I mean everything I say,” I answer, and my beautiful wife, her dark hair knotted into a silken twist, laughs in derision. The kind of laugh that’s meant for me alone, delivered over the heads of our children, but cherished by them all the same.
“Except when you’re trying to steal the lastpain au chocolat,” Maya says, taking Flora’s hand. “When pastries are concerned, he’s a liar, girls. Don’t trust Daddy near the bakery cabinet.”
They both look up at me, mock-serious, as if undertaking this new data for future negotiations. This is parenthood: the long chess game, the tactical sacrifices, the thrill of seeing your own wit and wickedness reflected back at twice the brightness.
“Carry me, Daddy?” Fiona asks. She is only four, but speaks with the certainty of a prime minister relaying military strategy to a feckless staff. “I’m tired.”
She is not tired. She simply knows that closeness is the ticket to my full attention. I hoist her onto my hip and turn to Maya. She arches an eyebrow, her smile just a little fragile. Sometimes crowds press too close. Sometimes the air is too cold. Sometimes the world asks her to be both a legend—someone admired and looked up to—and an anchor, the steady support our family relies on.
Maya's face catches the light as she turns to watch the girls, and for a moment, I'm breathless. Even after six years, I find myself stunned by her—the perfect arch of her brow, the way her smile transforms her entire face. She moves with a grace that seems effortless, her hands gentle as she smooths Flora's windblown hair. In these moments, I see not just my wife but my anchor, the woman who somehow balances strength and tenderness in ways I never could. "My better half," I whisper sometimes when the girls are asleep and she's curled against me, and though she laughs it off, we both know it's true—she completes something in me that was missing before her. We are two halves of the same soul.
“Get ready, girls. We’re going up!” Maya holds Flora close to her, and I carry Fiona towards the front of the queue. As theelevator climbs, both girls squeal as the city falls away beneath us.
