Chasing Paris Read online

  Amy dropped her head back to the table. “Oh my gosh.”

  “Hey, don’t do that. Come on. I was reading it because I was intrigued that someone would interact with the book’s poetry the way you did. I hadn’t ever seen anything like that. And neither had Kim. She was convinced right from the beginning that you didn’t mean to sell the book back. Both of us were.”

  Amy sat up straight again. She pressed her fingers to her temples and shook her head. Then she laughed as though there was nothing else to do but laugh.

  Will continued, “So Kim told me that I ought to find you because that would be exactly the sort of adventure I’d like.”

  Thoughts about Lizzie and Billy flashed across Amy’s mind. Adventure. Was that what she was trying to embark upon with her family’s past? Maybe.

  “Then later when I was flipping through the book again, I ran across a note you wrote about John Milton being a jerk, and,” he shrugged, “you’re so right. I wanted to bring the book back and tell you that.” Through his sideways grin, he chewed on the straw of his drink.

  Amy laughed. “John Milton was a jerk.”

  I know, he was so pompous. I just finished English 143, and it was awful. I liked the professor—I had Professor Salt—but I hated the material.”

  Amy tilted her head to one side and smiled. “I had Professor Salt for English 143 as well. I loved how passionate she was about Milton, but I just couldn’t get into Paradise Lost.”

  “Me too. Exactly.” Will paused, remembering where he was in his story. “So then I found an old receipt in the book, and that’s where I got your name. Once I had that, I went to Professor Hollings and asked if he knew you. I was hoping you had English 151 with him.”

  “Greatest professor ever.”

  “Yeah, he’s the best. I didn’t show him what you wrote in the book, but I did tell him why I was looking for you. He took pity on me and my crazy idea to find you. He told me that you were from Los Gatos and that your sister is a kindergarten teacher. I’m from San Jose, so I knew I could give the book back to you on my way home for summer break. I just had to find you in Los Gatos. Nothing came up when I Googled you, so I tried looking for kindergarten teachers in the Bay Area with your last name—hoping, of course, that your sister had the same last name. There was one April Winthrow teaching kindergarten in Los Gatos, and I figured there was a pretty good chance she was your sister. So I emailed her this morning. She wrote back, assuming that the book I told her about was a book you recently lost, and she gave me your phone number to text you—”

  “My sister,” Amy said, shaking her head. “She’s always telling me that I assume too much and trust too much, but there she goes giving away my cell phone number. Sheesh.”

  “Well, I’m glad she did. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have been able to get this book to you.” Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw Chris walking down the street toward the coffee shop. Chris pointed to his watch.

  Amy looked over her shoulder. “Who’s that?” she asked. Chris waved to her. She turned back to Will without returning the gesture.

  “My dumb roommate, Chris. I told him to wait for me at the park down the street. He never listens.” Will stood up and pointed in the direction of the park. Chris shook his head and continued walking toward the coffee shop. “Go away,” Will called when Chris was within earshot.

  “No, I’m hungry,” Chris said.

  “Do I need to feed you? Go get some food for yourself.”

  Chris approached the table, standing just on the other side of the patio gate. “Hey, Amy.” He nodded at her as though they were old friends. Then he turned to Will. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

  “You’re so rude,” Will said. “You interrupt us, you don’t even introduce yourself, and you expect that I get up and leave because that’s what you want?”

  “Yes. We’ve gotta go.” He turned to Amy. “I’m Chris. Sorry I’m rude. It happens when my stomach is growling.”

  “That happens to me, too,” she said.

  Will looked at Amy. His story was just about over. Maybe Chris was right. Maybe it was time to go. He stood up, slowly, hesitating. He didn’t want to go, yet there was no reason for him to stay.

  “I guess I better let you get back to what you were doing. It was really nice to meet you.”

  Amy stood to shake Will’s hand and thank him for returning the book. As she rose, she jostled the table, causing her notebook to slide from one end to the other. Before she could steady it, the two notes, now free, lifted into the breeze and rode through the air for a moment before settling on the ground. Amy reached for the one written by Lizzie, and Will stooped to pick up the other.

  “Mr. Winthrow?” he said, glancing at the first line. “I imagined that you would be addressed as Ms. or Miss Winthrow.” He handed it back to her.

  “Oh no,” Amy said, taking the note. “It’s not mine. It’s my dad’s.” Fiddling with its corner, she said, “I sort of took it. There’s this whole thing going on with my family right now, and I don’t really understand it, and I’m trying to piece it all together.” Heat crept up her neck again, and she shook her head, avoiding eye contact, as though trying to shake the thoughts of her family out of her head.

  “What do you mean? Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, everything’s okay. Sort of. Well, no, it’s not okay. It’s just this thing with my grandmother.” Amy shook her head again. “I guess she’s my grandmother. I didn’t know she existed until recently—not until she died.” Words poured from her mouth, aimed in no clear direction and with no clear focus. “And I just don’t understand why I didn’t know her. I don’t know why it was a secret. She left a bunch of money to me, and she had all these people who hated her, including my mom, and she’s just so interesting. I mean, I think she’s probably interesting. I want to find out if she’s interesting.” Amy halfway laughed. “The whole thing is just so strange. It’s strange, and it’s driving me crazy, and I can’t figure out a way to pull all the pieces together.” She rolled her eyes, laughing through a smile, knowing she sounded absurd. She wished she could stop herself from talking so much.

  “Chris, go eat,” Will leaned over the patio railing and pushed his roommate’s shoulder toward the street. “Come back when you’re done.” He sat down. “How did you find out about her?”

  Amy sat down. She looked directly at Will and saw pure curiosity in his eyes. She knew instantly it matched exactly what she was feeling. With a deep breath—probably the first since learning about Lizzie—she felt some of the frustration that had been balled up inside her loosen.

  ELEVEN

  “U

  gh,” Chris groaned. “You’re such a pain. I just want to get some food and go home.” He hopped over the gate and cut through the patio toward the coffee shop. Amy watched him stalk away, but Will ignored him entirely. After a moment, she turned back to Will.

  “I found out about her when I got this note in the mail.” She pushed Lizzie’s note across the table toward him. “We didn’t know anything about her until then.”

  Will read the note. “I would be pretty curious if I got this in the mail.”

  “My sister was the one who opened it, and she immediately called our parents. Our dad came over and tried to explain, but he was more cryptic than anything. I guess Elizabeth—Lizzie—was a pretty bad mom. She abandoned her children, including my mother, and then her sister adopted them.”

  “What about their dad? Your grandfather?”

  “He died. I don’t know how, but it happened around the time that Lizzie left. That’s about all I was able to get out of my dad when he came over to explain. I grew up thinking that Lizzie’s sister—Eva—was my grandmother, but that’s not really true. The only other thing he told us was that Lizzie left me and my sister a bunch of money for education and a bunch of books. Oh, and that we shouldn’t mention anything to my mom because it upsets her.”

  Will nodded, letting Amy’s story sink in. “So where did you get th
at other note—the blue one addressed to your dad?”

  Amy pushed that note toward Will. “I found the second one at my parents’ house. Also,” she paused reaching into her bag and pulling out a third piece of paper, “after learning about Lizzie, I wanted to find out more. No one else was really interested, so I was on my own. My sister April didn’t care, my boyfriend told me to drop it, and my dad had already said we shouldn’t talk to my mom about it. One day at Eva’s house—we call her Nana—I found a copy of Lizzie’s will.” She handed the third piece of paper to Will. “I didn’t have much time, so I wrote down as much from it as I could.”

  He looked over the list of items from the will. “She had a house in Saratoga and a flat in Paris. Not bad.” He put the will down and then read the note from Billy. Then, placing it on the table, he looked up at Amy. “So we know a couple things. First,” he held up one finger, “Lizzie made some big mistakes and wasn’t forgiven—at least not by your mom. Second,” he held up another finger, “Eva and Lizzie reconnected at some point—enough for them to talk about you while you were growing up.” A third finger went up. “She had a lot of money and cared a lot about education. Literature especially. And,” a fourth finger joined the other three, “This Billy guy meant more to her than she meant to him.”

  Amy leaned back in her chair. She reached for her chai, which was now lukewarm. “We also know that Billy isn’t very nice. And that he probably has a lot of money, too, since he lives in Monterey.”

  Will looked at the list from Lizzie’s will. “Your grandma had some strong connections to Paris as well.” He looked at Amy. “Ever been there?”

  “Nope. You?”

  Will shook his head. “Some day, hopefully.” He sipped his latte. “You know, you have a couple different addresses here. If you wanted to, you could go see where Lizzie lived in Saratoga and where Billy lives in Monterey.” He fell silent for a moment, working on an idea. “Have you thought about doing that? Do you think Eva would let you check out Lizzie’s house—now that it’s her house?”

  Amy scanned the street, thinking. “I don’t know. I’ve driven by it. All I could see was a gate and a long driveway. I didn’t stop once I saw the gate because I knew I couldn’t really get to the house.” She turned back to Will. “I asked my dad if I could help with all this stuff, and he said no—because it upsets my mom. I think Eva might say the same.” Amy’s shoulders slumped. “And besides that, her sister just died. I don’t know what kind of relationship they had, but no matter what, it’s got to be hard. I don’t want to upset her, either.”

  Will nodded. He drummed his fingers against the table. “Okay.” He thought for another moment. “Then, if you don’t want to go directly to Eva, you’ll probably have to be a little sneaky. And it would need to be a two-person job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s figure this out.” Will reached for Amy’s notebook and flipped to a fresh page. “You could ask anyone to help you, but—”

  “No one wants to help me.”

  Will nodded, continuing his sentence without missing a beat. “I volunteer myself since this is more interesting than finding a summer job, which I dread doing. And before you say no, hear me out.”

  He grabbed Amy’s pen, and as he spoke, he took notes on his own plan. Amy’s eyes widened, but he didn’t see her surprise. “I think you have to go through Billy somehow. Since you can’t talk to your mom, Eva, your dad—” He paused and looked up at Amy. “Are you close with your mom’s siblings?”

  “No. They live far away. I’ve never met them.”

  Will nodded and looked back down at the paper. “Right. So Billy is your only option, unless you can speak French and want to try the friends from France.” He glanced up at Amy who was shaking her head. “Okay, then, I think there are two options. One, you can go straight to Billy and ask him about Lizzie.”

  “I don’t think that will work. It doesn’t look like he wants anything to do with her.”

  “Agreed.” Will put a question mark next to what he had been writing. “It’s an option, but I doubt you’d get much from him. The other option is to leverage the information you have about him.” Will’s hand began picking up speed across the paper. “You’ve got to get those letters Lizzie left to him. If you had them, you wouldn’t need to talk to anyone. You’d just read the letters. And hopefully that would lead to more clues about Lizzie’s life, which you could then follow.”

  Amy found herself nodding, trying to absorb Will’s words.

  “So what about this—what if we, say, forge a new note from Billy to your dad? We can say that Billy’s changed his mind and he’ll send someone to pick up the books and letters. We give a date for the pick up, and we say that Billy expects someone to meet his pick-up-and-delivery guy there.” He tapped the pen on the paper. “Or, we say that at the very least, someone in your family has to leave the books and letters outside the house for Billy’s guy. Then I show up to get them.”

  As Will scribbled ideas across the notebook, Amy’s heartbeat quickened. Forging a note? Lying to her dad? Taking books and letters that belonged to someone else? Who was this guy sitting across the table from her?

  Will continued, “You come with me, and if anyone like your dad or Eva shows up, you stay in the car. If no one shows, you come and help me. We can even look through the books. There must be something special about them. Maybe Lizzie wrote in the margins like you.” Will looked up at Amy. She looked back, curiously. “We’ll read the letters, see what we can glean from them, and then take everything to Billy. And while we’re down there in Monterey, maybe we can ask him some questions, too. It might not lead to anything, but since we’ll be down there, we might as well try.”

  Amy leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath.

  “What do you think?” Will asked.

  She nearly laughed. “Half an hour ago I thought I was picking up a book that I left here. Now we have a plan to solve the mystery of my long-lost grandmother. I’m not sure what to think.”

  Will smiled at the notebook. He laid the pen on the paper.

  What am I doing here? he wondered. I don’t even know this girl.

  “I guess we don’t have to do this.” He shrugged, almost as though in apology. “I know you don’t even know me. I kind of got carried away.”

  Amy opened her mouth, about to say something, but then stopped herself. She leaned forward. “It’s kind of fun to get carried away. And I just met you,” she glanced at the Renaissance poetry book on the table, “but you’ve kind of known me for awhile—so you probably know I’m apt to get carried away pretty easily myself.”

  Will remembered something she had written in the Renaissance poetry book.

  I want that one day—that one special day—to be mine. But only if it’s captured in all its sweetness on a Grecian Urn.

  He pushed the notebook toward her so she could see his notes.

  She looked at what he had scrawled across the page. Write note, schedule pick up, go to Lizzie’s, look around, get books and letters, deliver to Billy, ask questions.

  “This is crazy,” she said under her breath.

  Will didn’t respond. He watched her study the notebook, waiting. The breeze lifted fly-away curls off her shoulders, and she pushed a few golden strands off her face. When she looked back up, the sun glinted in her green eyes.

  “Okay,” she said, “what should the letter from Billy say to my dad?”

  She smiled. Will smiled back. But before he could say anything, he saw her eyes move to a point over his shoulder. He turned and saw a man with light brown hair and glasses walking toward them. He was thin, dressed in tan slacks and a white polo shirt. Will glanced at Amy. She continued to smile, but now the smile looked different.

  “Hi there,” she said as the guy approached.

  “I’m glad you’re still here,” Miles said, opening the patio gate and pulling up a third chair and sitting down at the table. “April said you were swinging by the coffee
shop after work but didn’t know how long you’d be here.”

  “Miles, this is Will. He’s an old friend from college passing through the area. Will, this is my boyfriend, Miles.”

  The two exchanged greetings and shook hands. Will didn’t think twice about how Amy introduced him, but he noticed Amy’s notebook and the folded papers had disappeared.

  “UCLA, huh?” Miles asked. “Did you graduate before me and Amy? I don’t remember ever meeting you there.”

  “No, he’s younger than us,” Amy answered. “But I knew him before I met you.”

  “Yeah,” Will added, “We know each other through English classes.”

  Amy pushed some hair behind her shoulder and rested her elbows on the table. “So what are you doing over here, Miles?”

  “I was trying to get ahold of you because my parents aren’t going to make it to dinner tonight. My dad’s business trip was cancelled, so they aren’t flying up here anymore. I know we were planning on meeting at the restaurant at seven, and I didn’t want you to show up for no reason.”

  Amy reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. Looking at the screen, she said, “Oh, and there you are. Three missed calls and three texts.” She looked toward her boyfriend. “I’m so sorry. I guess I forgot to turn my ringer back on after work.”

  “No problem. I’m just glad that I caught you here. Do you want to do something else for dinner? Or go catch a movie?”

  Amy nodded. “Sure. That sounds good.”

  “Will, do you want to come?” Miles asked.

  “Oh, actually I’m going to be heading home in a bit. Thanks, though.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Will’s eyes moved from Amy to Miles to the table. He wondered if he should say something. He wondered what he should say.