It was part of their rhythm, for Julien to go one way and Mary to go another. It was like this at the Indiana summerhouse, too. Mary would go swimming while Julien read in the garden, then Mary would sit in the garden once Julien went for a walk. Each day was a wonderful stream of happy minutes spent apart with the confidence that help was in the other room if need be. Like planets that orbited each other, they never strayed too far, yet also kept their distance from one another.

In the day-to-day normal, Mary had grown grateful for her life. But now, suddenly, she had a taste of something new. They had not traveled to Indiana, but to France – a trip she had always wanted to take. A dream of hers was finally being realized and, somewhere in her subconscious, she began to wonder about other possibilities, about what else could change and what else she wanted.

Twisting and turning through the labyrinth of Uncle André’s property, Mary came around a hedge to find a boy of maybe sixteen laying on a bench, crying. She hesitated, not sure if she should allow him privacy or help him.

Having decided to not have kids themselves, Julien and Mary weren’t strong parental figures in anyone’s life. Still, with age comes compassion for those who are still learning and, though she was not a mother, Mary was always a teacher.

“Are you okay?” As soon as she spoke, she realized he probably didn’t even understand her. This was foreign territory – literally.

Still, her voice startled him, and he jumped. Sitting up at the sight of her, he wiped at his eyes. They looked at each other for a few moments before he said, “You’re my mom’s cousin. The American.”

She thought to correct that she was actually the cousin’s wife, but then realizing the already loose employment of “cousin” and considering the boy was crying, she simply answered, “Yes.”

When he spoke again, she noticed that his accent was part French and part British. “You’ve come to watch Uncle André die.”

In the spirit of keeping things simple, she repeated herself, “Yes.” He moved over to one side of the bench, and Mary sat down next to him. “Is that why you’re crying? Because Uncle André is dying?”

The boy snorted. “Uncle André is a bastard and a fool with no love left in his heart.”

Not sure if she was offended or impressed by the boy’s bravado, she persisted. “Then why are you crying?”

Slumping his shoulders at the reminder of his sadness, he said, “I am crying because my mother has ripped my heart from my chest and burnt it to embers.”

Okay. So maybe he was just hormonal and dramatic. Still, she kind of liked his flair.

“How did she manage to do that?”

The boy stood and began to pace around a bed of petunias. Mary was distracted by them for a moment as she thought about how strange it was that they were related to potatoes and eggplants, among other flowering plants in the Solanaceae family. Then the boy brought her back to the present with his fervent answer. “It’s all about appearances to her. Uncle André is dying, so we can’t smile or laugh or love!”

Mary caught the break in his voice as he uttered the last word.

“She won’t let you see your girlfriend?”

He stopped pacing and looked at her as if she were clairvoyant, wondering if she already knew what he was about to say next. “She says I need to be with family while Uncle André is still here. She says I need to spend time with him while I can, but then she doesn’t let me see him. He’s always sleeping.”

When his pacing seemed insufficient, Mary stood up and they looped the whole property together. She found out his name was Nicolas (apparently the “s” is not pronounced in French) and that his girlfriend was Claire. She lived two houses down and they had been dating for four whole months. He said she was his soul mate, that he would face sharks – of which he was apparently deathly afraid – to be with her. He wrote her a letter every single day because “texting is for unimaginative, unromantic” – and here he broke into French, then complained that there was no decent translation in English for the word he wanted to use, but that the gist was essentially lazy and unmotivated people – “with no fire in their souls”.

While Nicolas painted his love for Claire with hyperbole and grand gesticulation, Mary first found his exaggerations adorable: the turbulence of one’s first love. She followed Nicolas as he cut across a lawn, plucked a single blade of grass, kissed it, then threw it forth, standing to watching where the breeze carried it.

But somewhere between the bust of Balzac (one of Mary’s least favorite French authors) in the secret garden where Nicolas and Claire had their first kiss and the North Pond where he first told Claire he loved her, the ridiculousness of his sentiment disappeared.

He was still using embellished metaphors and inflated adjectives. His gesturing had not calmed down since Mary still had to keep a good couple feet between them in order to avoid getting accidentally back-handed. He had not suddenly grown wiser or more perceptive.

Instead the change came from Mary. Rather than watching his intimate display of emotions, she began to recognize it. She recognized his desire for Claire, his need to be with her, his promise to protect her, his drive to make her happy. She scanned her memories of things she had seen, heard, and read. The unconditional intensity was familiar and known to her, but she could not pinpoint from where.

They reached the back door to the mansion as Vanessa came outside with a file folder. In her other hand, she held a letter, which she handed to Nicolas. His eyes lit up in a way Mary had never known and he began to run inside.

Vanessa stopped him with what Mary guessed was scolding, though she still didn’t understand French. Soon enough, she flipped into English for Mary’s benefit.

“We’re about to go visit Uncle André. You’ll wait right there.”

Turning to Mary, Vanessa handed her the file folder. “We’ve started going through Uncle André’s things. He doesn’t throw anything away, so we have to start now. These are just some papers you might find interesting. Keep anything you like.”

Mary started flipping through it and stopped at a page that was exceptionally tattered. The writing was old cursive – in fact, it reminded her of the Declaration of Independence. She scanned through it. Many words were illegible. Some were worn away. At the end though, was a very clear signature.

“Vanessa. Is this… signed by Thomas Jefferson?”

“Likely.” She didn’t even look at it. “Uncle André always said that when he met Thomas Jefferson, he spoke French like someone who had studied the language very intently without having ever heard it spoken out loud.”

Mary opened her mouth to point out that Thomas Jefferson had died five years after Napoleon Bonaparte, then realized that Vanessa had not been there for that conversation with Julien. She looked at Vanessa, in her heels and fitted blazer, to whom – according to her son – appearance was everything.

Mary smiled. “This is wonderful. Thank you for sharing this.” As she continued flipping through the papers, one piece fell onto the ground.

Vanessa picked it up. “Ah, look here. This is Uncle André when he was younger. He was very handsome, no?” Vanessa handed the photo to Mary. Uncle André had in fact been quite the looker. He had a mischievous confidence in his eye that was subtle, yet captivating.

“Wait,” Mary took a look at the other person in the photograph. “This is Pablo Picasso.”

“Yes,” Vanessa responded casually, unfazed that Mary knew what Pablo Picasso looked like, “they were great friends. Let’s see.” Vanessa took the photo back, held it in better light, then pointed for Mary to see. “Yes, see here? That’s this same door in the photograph. They were standing right where we are now.”

“Wow.”

After another moment of them looking at the photo together, Nicolas let out his first whine.

“Mamma.”

“Okay, okay. Let me go find Julien and then we can all go up together, and then you can go read your precious letter.”

Mary didn’t think she would see anything weirder than an actual photo of Uncle André and Pablo Picasso, but looking at Nicolas in that moment, Mary saw something stranger still. She saw in Nicolas’ eyes such real pain that, if she hadn’t been able to see below his neck, she might actually believe the boy’s heart was being ripped out and set on fire.

Mary had never known passion like that. In all her numbers and theories, in all her logic and memorized trivia, in all her names and dates and answers, she had never known desire like that. But if this sentiment were so unknown to her, why did it still feel so familiar?

“Why don’t you go find Julien,” Mary offered. “Nicolas can introduce me to Uncle André and you two can meet us up there.”

Vanessa looked at her as if Mary had just offered to lick the bottoms of her feet, but she agreed just the same.

Up they went, Mary and Nicolas, up the stairs, past the impressionist painting that Mary now wondered whether or not was a Van Gogh original. At the second door on the right, Nicolas knocked twice and opened the door slowly. Inside, the suitcase carrier was tending to a large man who was smoking a cigar upright in a rocking chair. The chair was facing double doors that opened up onto a small balcony, which overlooked the entire property out back and from where Vanessa could be seen disappearing in the distance on her search for Julien.

As they approached, some French was exchanged between the caretaker-housekeeper-porter and Nicolas. Nicolas led Mary next to the man in the rocking chair, into his line of sight without blocking his view outside. The man did not look at them, only pulled from his cigar. Mary studied the wrinkles and sun-spots on his face, quickly finding the features of the man standing next to Picasso in the photograph. This was the fabled Uncle André.

Eventually, he glanced over to the newcomers. When he spoke, his voice was deep, gruff, and raw. “You are the American.” It was a statement, not a question. Mary noticed that Nicolas and the caretaker seemed startled by his words. It was Nicolas who questioned him.

“Uncle, you speak English?”

Uncle André growled a low rumble. “I had to. Ernest’s French was unintelligible.”

Mary raised her eyebrows at the mention of Hemingway by his first name.

“What are you doing here, Nicolas?” Uncle André’s question was almost accusatory.

“I’m here to spend time with you, Uncle.”

The man growled again. “Spend time with me? I’m half dead! Besides, you should be spending time with that young lady you spend an hour kissing every night out in the garden.”

Nicolas’ eyes just about doubled in size. Even in the dim light, his cheeks burned vividly.

Slowly leaning to his left in the rocking chair, Uncle André put his face right in front of Nicolas’. “I spent ten years fighting in three different wars. I came back each time to bigger parties, better food, richer wine, finer art, and more brilliant friends.”

Mary imagined Uncle André stumbling drunk down a Parisian sidewalk with Picasso holding him up on one side and Hemingway on the other.

“What do you think it was that kept me going in the trenches and the desert and the freezing cold? The promise of wine when I got home? The thought of seeing just one more painting or reading one more book? The idea of sitting around with friends, laughing and smoking and dreaming? No!”

From his shirt pocket, Uncle André fished out with clumsy, gnarled fingers a wallet-sized photograph and handed it to Nicolas. The boy gazed at this little black and white photograph of a young woman sitting alone, smiling on, ready for tomorrow.

“Mimi is what kept me going. The promise of one more look at her face. The thought of one more kiss. The dream that we would grow old together.”

Nicolas couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. He hardly remembered what Aunt Mimi had looked like. He was sure though that he had never before held a picture in which she looked more beautiful.

And Uncle André continued. “In all my things, in all this house, on all this land, there is not one thing more valuable than the 52 years I was gifted with my Mimi. In all these years, that photograph has never left my pocket.”

Wide-eyed, Nicolas handed it back to him, but Uncle André refused. “No. It’s your dream now. I already lived it. Now go live yours.”

Carefully sliding the photograph into his back pocket with the letter from Claire, Nicolas stared for a moment at his “uncle”. He looked as if he was unsure what to say. Then, not saying anything at all, he kissed his uncle on the cheek and ran out the door.

Mary, likely wide-eyed herself, stood there taking in the moment. She stared at this man who, like some of his stories, turned out to be more real than she had realized.

This was it. This was the place she had recognized. The place in Uncle André that wanted to keep a photograph in his pocket for an entire lifetime, the place that gave him hope during war-time. The place that fulfilled a dying man more than a mansion or priceless documents signed by famous people or memories with the greatest minds of his time. It was the same as the place in Nicolas that had already learned enough of love to understand the gravity and truth of Uncle André’s words. The place where Claire resided within Nicolas even when they were apart and the place where Mimi lived on within Uncle André even after death.

It was then that it occurred to Mary why she had recognized this place. Like Uncle André and Nicolas, Mary held a place like this, too. A place within her, not that had known this type of love, but that was ready to receive it. A place Mary had written-off, ignored, and abandoned. A place that was unfulfilled, forgotten, yet still holding out hope. A place, like France beyond this property, that Julien would never explore with her.

Uncle André watched Nicolas run out of the room, then turned his gaze to Mary. “That goes for you, too.” Then he nodded out the window where Julien and Vanessa could be seen in the distance making their way toward the house. His gaze became unfocused as he repeated himself once more. “I’ve lived my dream. Now go live yours.”

Just like Nicolas, she stood there, unsure how to express herself. Then she followed the lead of the sixteen year old boy and kissed Uncle André on the cheek. Before leaving the room, she looked at him once more. He nodded in encouragement. As she walked away, the caretaker helped him back into bed to sleep more.

Mary met Vanessa and Julien out in the garden, under a hedge that had been trimmed into an archway.

“I’m sorry, he’s gone back to sleep.”

“Yes,” Vanessa responded, “he’s very tired.” And Mary understood that it was Vanessa who was tired. Still, the cousin smiled. “Please excuse me.”

As Vanessa trotted back toward the mansion, Julien and Mary looked on at the estate. More than before, Mary was aware of the space between them. She wondered if, or maybe realized that, they were not planets in orbit of each other, but rather two equal magnetic poles that would repulse each other if they got too close. They stood there, anchored by the space between them, not looking at each other, only seeing the big house and the balcony where the caretaker was closing up the doors for Uncle André’s nap. They stood there, not doing so many things, until Mary stopped not doing and took the advice of the one and only Uncle André.

She didn’t turn towards Julien. She had never felt compelled to and that wouldn’t change now. She spoke as if she were speaking to the garden, designed for appearance, though rooted in dreams.

“I want a divorce.”

And that was the end of that.

Or perhaps, it was the beginning.