I sit back, my excitement already starting to drain.

  “Of course. Right.”

  There’s no one else better.

  Chapter Ten

  Jonathan

  * * *

  I’m on a flight back home from Paris, flying over the Atlantic, when I get the news that my firm won the contract to restore the Vanderbilt Belle Haven Estate.

  The rest of first class sleeps as my inbox floods with emails. I’m sure my phone would be ringing off the hook as well if I didn’t have it on airplane mode.

  Emails from my friends: Congratulations!

  From the Banks and Barclay marketing department: Interview request. Please send your availability.

  From Christopher: Get the fuck home!

  The contract is a big deal. We were up against a dozen other firms from around the world, bigger firms, even, and I know for a fact we weren’t rock bottom in terms of pricing. Our work speaks for itself, though. I’m not surprised we landed the gig.

  What initial excitement I felt gets shoved aside almost immediately by big-picture issues that need my attention right away.

  I grab my legal pad and impatiently bite off the cap of my pen before starting to scribble away on a to-do list. When we first landed the job consulting for the restoration work for Notre-Dame, we had to hire twenty new employees to cover the workload. We outgrew our old office space and expanded into a building in downtown Boston that Banks and Barclay had restored a few years prior. The top two floors were up for lease, and rather than allow some finance firm to swoop in and put their name on the side of the building, we put ours there instead. Fortunately, it’s big enough to handle this next round of expansion. There’s no way around it; we’ll need at least ten new hires, and that’s only counting in-office personnel. On site, we’ll need a slew of tradesmen: iron workers, stonemasons, painters, carpenters—each of them trained in the art of historical restoration.

  “Can I get you anything, sir?”

  I look up at the flight attendant, only belatedly realizing I can’t answer her with my pen cap still wedged between my teeth.

  I remove it and shake my head. “I’m fine.”

  She has a hard time dragging her attention away from my mouth as she continues, “No champagne to accompany your late night?”

  “I’m not really a champagne kind of guy.”

  I thought this was a polite enough sendoff, but turns out it was too polite.

  She doesn’t leave, instead wedging herself in the doorway of my first-class suite and trying a different tactic.

  “You’re the only one still awake, you know. Normally, if all the guests are sleeping, we’re allowed to go on break…”

  Her tone doesn’t hold any hint of annoyance about still having to be up on her feet. I think maybe she’s just trying to let me know we could have some privacy if I wanted it.

  If I weren’t so busy, would I take her up on her offer?

  No.

  “By all means, take your break. I don’t need anything.”

  I’ve had dinner and a drink; now I want six uninterrupted hours of silence to work.

  Her smile tightens as she nods.

  “If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ring me.”

  She points toward the intercom button beside my chair, but I’ve already refocused my attention down on my notes.

  Tradesmen who’ve trained in this field are hard to come by. Any carpenter can go into a modern new-build project and throw up some crown molding and built-in bookshelves. What we do takes a dedicated, trained hand, someone fluent in the ways of old masters.

  For past projects, we’ve brought people in from Florence, workers whose families have handed down knowledge in these niche fields for generations. I’ll have to consult with Christopher and see what he thinks is required. We might be able to train guys and avoid the expense depending on the timeline we ultimately negotiate.

  I still haven’t toured the Vanderbilt estate myself. I don’t know what we’re up against.

  Christopher has been keeping an eye on the project over the last few weeks. I sat in on meetings and gave my two cents as much as I could, but I’ve been majorly hands off owing to the fact that work has kept me in Paris for so much of the last year.

  Consulting on Notre-Dame came about organically. When I first saw news of the fire, my heart sank for the people of Paris. It was devastating to watch a piece of history burn, and I was still glued to my TV, watching the live broadcast, when I got the first call from Emmett.

  “My father is already moving funds,” he’d told me. “As far as contracts go, we’ll push for you and your firm. You’ll do it, won’t you?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Of course I would. But…Emmett, the firm must be French. You know that. Even if I had the time—”

  “You’ll consult then. Give your input. There’s no one better at this.”

  He sounded desperate, so I agreed, naively thinking it would be something I could give my time to here and there. That’s not been the case. I’ve flown to Paris sixteen times in the last year. I’ve sat in on countless meetings filled with builders, head architects, engineers, the Roman Catholic Church, the Parisian Architectural Planning and Design Board, and the French government that have stretched well past the point of productivity. Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen. I’ve never had a project move so slowly. There’s giving credence and care and respect where it’s due, and then there’s this. It’s a nightmare, all of it. Paris residents complain it’s too expensive and repairs are taking too long. Critics worry the new building won’t perfectly mimic what was there before. No one agrees.

  All in all, it’s consumed too much of my life. I’m relieved to be flying home to Boston.

  I’m not due back in Paris until spring. In the meantime, I’ll need to throw my full attention toward this Belle Haven Estate, attend to the course I’ll be teaching at MIT, and perhaps see about picking up the pieces of my personal life.

  The flight attendant could have helped with that, but I’ve gotten to the point where my brain is starting to sabotage me. It works ahead three weeks, past the quick sex, past the shallow enjoyment of the chase, straight to the vapid, awkward ending, and then it just doesn’t seem worth it.

  I tried giving it a real chance with Miranda this past year. We were introduced by Emmett while I was in Paris early last summer. She works at GHV, in the PR department, but she’s from our world. Boarding school bred, Ivy League legacy—it made perfect sense to everyone when she and I hit it off. Miranda is everything that should make me happy: smart, beautiful, driven, not too clingy, not too distant. She knows how to make a perfect French omelet, and she’s fluent in German and Mandarin. When I don’t call her back, she doesn’t seem to mind. She’s never pushed me to commit more of myself to her or complained that we’ve never established clear boundaries in our relationship. Every time we speak or find the time to see each other, it’s good, interesting, fun.

  She emailed me tonight, along with everyone else.

  I suppose we’ll have to celebrate the next time you’re in Paris.

  What a wonderful achievement, Jonathan.

  XX,

  Miranda

  Reading her words does nothing.

  My heart thumps its same steady rhythm as if trying to emphasize to me that there is no way to force yourself to love someone. You do or you don’t.

  I hate that my thoughts slip back to Emelia.

  I’m aware she’s become something akin to a mirage. What real memories I possess have been tainted by fantasy and longing and despair for so long that I can’t trust myself when it comes to my real feelings about her. I’ve put her on a pedestal and made it impossible for any other woman to stack up, not because of some ridiculous once-in-a-lifetime connection we shared but because I likely have an undiagnosed commitment phobia or something.

  At first, years ago, I berated myself for not pursuing her after the night we shared at the bar.

  But what the hell was I going to do? Try to start a relationship with a student? God, she’d just turned twenty-one. She was young and wrong for me in so many ways. That doesn’t mean I didn’t fantasize about her. It doesn’t mean I didn’t let things play out between us in my head. For the remainder of that semester at Dartmouth, I walked into ARC 521, looked at that wooden chair, and wished Emelia were sitting in it. I searched for anything I could find about her online, I stalked her semester schedule, I penned more than one letter to send to her university email address—only to wisen up and hit delete at the last minute. Over and over again, I picked up the phone to call Emmett, to ask him about his sister, but when we spoke, I could never gain the courage.

  I imagined how that conversation would go.

  Oh, Emelia was enrolled in your class at Dartmouth? Was she a good student?

  And what would I have said to that?

  I don’t know, Emmett. I was an asshole to her for a few weeks, and then after reprimanding her for something that seems insignificant now and forcing her to drop my class, I slid my hand up her skirt in a bar bathroom.

  Playing it all back in my head should make me feel guilty and depraved.

  But I don’t.

  As pathetic as it sounds, I was obsessed. I kept track of her work at Dartmouth, followed her thesis project, and the day she was due to present it, I snuck into the reception hall, after everyone was seated and the crowd was filled in, and I stood in the back, out of her line of sight, and listened. Her project was a conceptualized French Quarter eco-tourism campaign, a way to bring clean energy and green building practices to New Orleans while maintaining the quintessential architecture it’s known for. She spoke of the problems surrounding the city: how infrastructure, fragility, and regulations protecting historic construction can make green improvements difficult or prohibitive. Not only that, many businesses that were damaged in recent floods expended their rebuilding resources to get back on their feet, forsaking going green, which was an understandably missed opportunity. Her thesis suggested New Orleans could at once restore a few key historic buildings within the French Quarter, specifically near Bourbon Street, and in the process, bring about the city’s first LEED- or Green Seal-certified hotels.

  To her, there was no limit. She wanted a reduction in motor traffic and an increase in pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares, better drainage to prepare for future flooding, and solar energy hidden on rooftops along with outdoor gardens.

  While idyllic and naive in some ways, the fact is, her project was the best one among her peers. I would have commended her for that, rewarded her, if it were my place. But I was a good enough man to know I couldn’t cross that line with Emelia again. Still, it didn’t stop me from wishing I had.

  After the last time we spoke on campus, when she swore to me she’d never tell a soul what happened between us, she never came back to that bench outside my office window. Whatever peace and solitude she’d found in that courtyard was gone, thanks to me.

  Chapter Eleven

  Emelia

  * * *

  I can’t believe I’m here sitting inside the Banks and Barclay offices in downtown Boston, doing a lot of nervous foot tapping while I wait for the interviewer to stroll out of the conference room and call my name.

  They’ve been taking applicants back one by one for the last two hours. But here I sit, staring at the coffee station with the breakfast spread laid out that not a single one of us has had the stomach to touch. Flakey croissants and heavenly cinnamon rolls, all left to go to waste. What a pity. Maybe if my interview goes horribly, I’ll wrap up a few on my way out and tell myself the trek here from New York City wasn’t in vain.

  At the start of the day, there were twenty of us spaced around the small lobby that faces a conference room. We were the applicants who passed a rigorous interview process to be here. Three weeks of back-and-forth submissions, emails, phone interviews, and Zoom interviews, and now this is it, the final circle of hell.

  Today we either walk out of here with a new job or go back to life as we know it.

  I try not to let the idea depress me.

  It took a lot of courage to get myself here today. When Banks and Barclay first landed the contract to renovate the Belle Haven Estate, I checked their website and found—just as I suspected there would be—ten new job listings posted overnight. Of course they were bringing people on. A job of this magnitude requires a large team. At the head, there’d likely be Professor Barclay or his partner Christopher Banks, then a senior project manager, at least two or three junior project managers, a principal architect, lord knows how many other architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, technical designers, and architectural conservationists. That’s where I come in.

  But I didn’t apply for a job the day I saw those listings. In fact, at first, I closed their website, turned off my laptop, and stuffed it underneath my pillow.

  Then I continued on, going to the job I hate every day, invading my best friend’s apartment, only to be plagued by continuous thoughts of the Belle Haven Estate. Surely, there will be more long-lost, once-in-a-lifetime Vanderbilt estates to restore. It’s not that special, is the pep talk I failed to convince myself with.

  If it were any other firm taking it on, I would have applied for a position immediately. I would have already groveled my way through the front door.

  But working for Professor Barclay is not something I’d ever in a million years consider.

  That is…until three weeks ago.

  I was sitting on my bed, feeling particularly down, when I remembered the letter Sonya had given me from Mr. Parmer. It’d traveled all the way from Scotland and had the wear and tear to show it, and instead of opening it the day she brought it to me, I’d dropped it onto my bedside table and lost it beneath a book. I uncovered it and opened it carefully so I didn’t tear any of the pages inside or damage the envelope any further.

  The story of Mr. Parmer is the story of my childhood, really.

  On paper, I’m the daughter of Frédéric Mercier. My mother first met him when she was studying abroad at the Ecole Polytechnique. Now, Frédéric is head of GHV, the luxury conglomerate he’s amassed over the last two decades, and he’s the ninth richest man in the world. Then, Frédéric was just a man on the heels of a divorce, a father to two young boys, Emmett and Alexander, and still in the process of building his empire.

  Growing up, I knew Frédéric was my father, but I’d never met him, never even seen him or my two half-brothers in person. I assumed this was because he and my mother were no longer married, thought maybe they’d had a falling out or something had happened that was so dramatic they chose to never step foot in the same room together ever again. In my head, I imagined my mother loved me so fiercely she didn’t want to share me with him, and I imagined my father longed to see me, missed me, and cried over me endlessly. The imagining was necessary because my mother was so button-lipped about the situation when I was younger. I knew not to pester her about it; she’d never cave.

  It was years of this. My wild imaginings grew tamer and more realistic with age, but my quiet curiosities were never sated. It wasn’t until I was thirteen that I found out the truth. It could have been that my mother thought I was finally old enough to handle it, or it might have been that I found her at the exact right moment after she’d had one too many glasses of wine.

  I walked up to where she sat in a soft chair beside the fire, picked up the edge of her blanket, and tucked myself in beside her, wrapping the blanket around us both. She hummed in appreciation and cuddled closer, pressing a kiss to my cheek. We sat quietly at first as she played with my long brown hair, twisting it up around her fingers.

  “Tell me about my father,” I asked her gently.

  I braced for her to shut me down like all the times before, but instead, she asked, “What would you like to know?”

  Simple.

  “Everything.”

  She chuckled. “He’s tall and handsome. His hair had some gray in it the last time I saw him, but it—”

  “No. No,” I insisted. “Not this.”

  I’d seen pictures of Frédéric. I knew what he looked like, what he did, who he was.

  I wanted the truth about their relationship, the reason I’d never met him.

  I told her this, and there was a long silence that followed, the crackling fire the only sound in the room. I almost started to cry, so overburdened with anger and resentment toward a situation I knew so little about.

  Then she spoke.

  “He wasn’t always a cruel man. He was kind, especially when I first met him, but the pressure of growing his company chiseled away his soft edges. He traveled so much, and I was left to my own devices. I wanted to work, to contribute to the world. After all, I had my own degrees and education, my own brain. Frédéric didn’t like that idea though. For one, we didn’t need the money, but it was more than that—he wanted me focused on trying to conceive. He was so adamant about wanting another child, a little girl. Never mind that he was an integral part of that. We didn’t have infertility issues so much as scheduling issues. He was all over the world, barely there. During all of this, he started amassing properties as well. Investment opportunities, he called them, but they meant more than that to me. It was an outlet, a way for me to contribute. I was the one who encouraged him to buy Dunlany Castle, and he allowed me to move here once he realized how unhappy I was in the apartment in Paris. I think it was better for him too. Without me in the way, he could focus on his true love.”

  “Another woman?”

  “His company.”

  “And did you like it here? Back then?”

  She smiled wistfully. “Very much. We had so many plans, Emelia. Frédéric sent workers and tradesmen from France to help with the restoration work I was overseeing. That’s…”

  “What?”

  “That’s how I met Jacques. Jac, he was called.” She looked off over my shoulder, remembering. A fond smile played at her lips. “He came with a large crew of men—carpenters, stonemasons, iron workers—but he was different. He was a young apprentice, an artist. On his lunch breaks, he’d draw in a sketchbook underneath the big oak tree outside the kitchen window, and I’d watch him. I couldn’t help it. He was so beautiful and young. Trouble…” She looked back to me. “You have so much of him in you.” Her finger traced my eyebrow and down over the high peak of my cheekbones. “Beautiful,” she whispered.