“It’s a pretty day. Why don’t we eat on the patio? Grab plates and glasses from the cupboard next to the stove. Silverware is in the drawer just below. I’ll put the food on a tray and be out in a minute.”
Rory located the necessary items and carried them out to a sunny patio scattered with potted herbs and tomato plants. There was a small wrought-iron table in one corner, tucked beneath a rose-draped pergola. It was a lovely spot, cool and shady with the mingled scents of roses and basil drifting on the late-afternoon breeze.
Soline appeared with the tray just as Rory was finishing the table. “Here we are. Help me, please. It’s heavier than I thought, and my hands are trying to cramp.”
Rory hurried to relieve her of the tray. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should have carried it out.”
“I’m not an invalid, chérie. I do quite well for myself. Most of the time.”
“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” Rory set out the food, then dropped into one of the chairs. “Thank you for this. For letting me barge in on you. I hope I haven’t ruined any dinner plans.”
“Plans?” Soline barked out a laugh. “I haven’t had plans in years. And certainly not dinner plans.” She held out both hands—bare, since she hadn’t been expecting company. “It’s to do with the gloves mostly. They make me clumsy—especially when eating—and something of a spectacle in this day and age, an eccentric old woman stuck in the past.”
Rory shot her a dubious glance. No one in their right mind could ever mistake Soline Roussel for an old eccentric. Even now, makeup-free and unprepared for guests, she looked beautifully chic. Like the effortlessly beautiful women in Condé Nast Traveler, her face spoke of glamour and exotic adventures, lives lived in faraway places.
“I’ve always loved gloves,” Rory said. “I think they make you look chic.”
Soline smiled unconvincingly as she leaned across the table to fill Rory’s water glass. “Aren’t you sweet. Now, tell me why you’re here, and don’t say it was your turn. You have a face like a rain cloud. What’s happened?”
“Nothing, really. I just . . .” She shook her head, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s nothing.”
Soline arched a brow. “You knocked on my door because nothing happened? What kind of answer is that?”
Rory helped herself to a piece of eggplant, then poked disinterestedly at it. “I’m sorry. It hasn’t been a good day, and I needed someone to talk to.”
Soline’s face softened. “So talk.”
Rory shrugged. “It’s Friday. That’s the day I call to see if there’s any news on Hux. There wasn’t. I didn’t really think there would be, but . . .”
“But?”
“I can’t see how this ends, and it scares me. I’m afraid he’s never coming back, and the gallery will be all I ever have. What if . . .”
“You turn out like me?” she supplied quietly. “It’s all right to say it.”
“No. It isn’t that.” At least it isn’t only that. “It’s something my mother said. She thinks I’m opening the gallery for the wrong reasons.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Because Hux is the one who put the idea into my head. It was something I used to toy with when I got bored with school, one of those what if kind of things. But Hux made it seem possible. He said it was a dream worth chasing. So I chased it.”
“And you think that makes it wrong? Because someone inspired you?”
“I was supposed to finish school, then do an internship at the Musée d’Orsay. When I told her I was leaving school to open a gallery, she said I was trying to prove something to someone who wasn’t even here. Because I was scared.”
“You’re not, are you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think so then, but now . . . I’m just second-guessing everything. It’s starting to feel like Hux is never coming home, and maybe I’ve known it for a while now. Why else would I decide to open a gallery right now, unless some part of me thinks it’s time to move on?”
“Your mother said all that to you?”
“No. Not in so many words, but she knows how to get under my skin. She doesn’t like it when I make plans for myself, so when I do, she has to undermine them. In twenty-three years, it’s never occurred to her that I might actually know what I want.”