Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

Despite my dirty shoes, dusty from the park’s flint and gravel paths, I approached the front doors, with head held high, and pretended I was arriving for a meal.

That gave me the most wonderful idea. I couldn’t afford a sumptuous meal at Maxim’s, but I could certainly endeavor to cook something delicious for myself. Helen would be out with Luc by the time I returned home. So as I walked I thought about what I could cook that would be fit for a queen but wouldn’t empty my peasant-sized pocketbook. I was so lost in thought I must have taken a wrong turn.

Suddenly, I found myself… lost. As I stood, turning in circles, I was taken by the most impressive building. It was a church, but it looked more Roman temple than Parisian cathedral. I was desperate to step into the magnificent structure, but I would have to return another time. Darkness was falling. Not only did I need to find my way home, but I had to find a market and purchase my dinner.

As I walked away vowing to return, I contemplated what kind of soup would be fit for Catherine de’ Medici and Joan of Arc….

Nine

January 2, 2019—8:00 p.m.

Normandy Le Chantier, 1st arrondissement

Paris, France

As we settle into the hotel, a light snow begins to fall outside. The heavy flakes are collecting on the windows of our third-floor room.

In true Parisian fashion, dinner was marked by lovely food and impatient service. Afterward the temperature plummeted so much that we hailed a taxi to take us back to the hotel.

It was just as well; we’re both exhausted and ready to call it a day. The room is nice. Very old-world French with the comfort of two full-sized beds and an en suite bath. The hotel offered a discount since I’m in the hospitality industry.

“Do you want to shower first or can I?” Marla asks, standing in the bathroom doorway clutching her toiletry case. She’s already staked her claim, but at least she’s trying to be polite.

“Go ahead.”

I’m happy for her to go first because I’m dying to pull out the diary. I’m not trying to keep it from her. However, I do want to get a first look without her reading over my shoulder.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the apartment was once Ivy’s home. The deed doesn’t lie, but I can’t reconcile the great-grandmother I knew with the woman in those paintings—with the person who lived… here.

In Paris.

It’s weird to think that Granny Ivy might have had a secret life, that she navigated this city and made it her own. But the burning question is why she hid it all these years.

After Marla barricades herself in the bathroom, I retrieve the small book from my suitcase.

I use the tissue in which I’d wrapped it to wipe away as much dust as I can.

The upper left corner of the small blue book’s cover is embossed in gold with the year 1940. A piece of satin ribbon is wrapped around the four sides of the diary and tied in a scant bow on the front like a gift.

The dust has settled into the fibers, turning the tie a grayish hue. I imagine it must have once been a soft ballet pink, like a ribbon off a ballerina’s pointe shoe, when the author of these pages tied it around the little book with such loving care.

I’m careful as I unfasten it, half expecting the threads to crumble in my fingers like the drapery tie. But it stays intact.

As I open to the first page, the glue that binds the pages cracks, but other than that, the book is in remarkably good shape.

The inside cover is printed with This is my personal diary for the year 1940. My heart leaps when I see Ivy Braithwaite scrawled in indigo ink. I run my finger over the pretty script. It’s Ivy’s hand, and it speaks to me clearer than if she were standing here in the flesh.

A link from the past to the matriarch I knew and loved, and when she was close to my age.

I pull back my hand, not wanting to mar the pages with the dust that clings to the crevices. For a moment, I contemplate waiting until I can clean it up better so I won’t damage it.

Then I hear Marla turn on the shower tap, and I realize that the next fifteen minutes might be my last bit of time alone for the next twenty-four hours or so. If I want to look at it uninterrupted, it’s now or never.

I thumb through the whole thing quickly at first, noticing that the entries stop on April 16. Then I open to the first page to meet the young woman who brought me here.

January, 1940

Paris, France

Dear Diary,

A new year, a new diary. Usually, this is a happy time, a clean slate, a new beginning. But I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what this year holds for us. I can hardly bring myself to write of frivolity and pointless fancy, which consumed me this time last year. Now, everything is different. Andres and I didn’t even ring in the new decade with a party. Nobody was in the mood. It felt wrong. Instead, we spent a quiet night at home. We were asleep before midnight. The old year slipped away, nudged out by this new period of uncertainty. The silence that permeates all aspects of our life is symbolic of what’s happening in the world.

They’re calling it a “phony war” because after Hitler invaded Poland in the fall, England and France declared war on Germany. Paris began mobilizing, but since then, there has been no military action. I listen to the news with keen interest and I’m hungry for any word from home. But what I’ve heard says that all is calm in England.

So many months have gone by without any fighting (and believe me, I think that’s a