Look for me
It soothed her a little, to try to make a song out of this. She brooded over the guitar.
Wish for me
On a four leaf clover
Don’t think it over
Just come and find me
Darkness was settling over the valley, shadows creeping toward her like anxieties that had snuck out of holes in the ground and out from behind trees, prowling towards her.
Wish for me
Just blow out your candles
I’m not too much to handle
Be a hero for me
The shadows nibbled at her toes and caressed fingers through her hair.
Wish for me
Toss your coin in the fountain
Come climb the glass mountain
Take three apples from me.
The shadows climbed up her legs, crawled down her arms, and he still hadn’t come.
Wish for me
It’s not too much to ask for
A man who will last for
Ever, dreaming of me
The notes died away. She bent her head.
That was…was that actually a halfway decent song? Did it have potential? She needed to record the rough version before she forgot it. If she had a phone, she could do that right now. If she had a phone, of course, she could have called Matt.
What did it mean, that he still wasn’t here?
Matt went rock climbing. Up the limestone cliffs at the end of the valley, where he and his cousins had climbed so many times before, where they went when they needed to get away and needed to burn up a lot of frustration, to strive against a rock face into the blue above.
You couldn’t stay enraged, rock climbing. You had to focus on the rock, on the next grip, on the muscles flexing you up, working that hurt and rage out. It was a good thing to make yourself do, before you faced the person you might lash out at with that rage.
He climbed to the top of the cliff and sat for a long time, gazing down at his valley. A few yards away, invisible from almost every angle, was the gap in the rock where Niccolò Rosario’s heirlooms had once been hidden during the war. Pépé insisted Colette had stolen them, but Matt had a hard time imagining his aunt climbing up that face. Even with all those old photo albums to help him, his brain kept failing to envision her that fit and young.
His hand stroked over the phrase his grandfather had carved into the limestone, Niccolò Rosario’s motto, adopted when Niccolò laid claim to this valley. J’y suis, j’y reste.
I am here and here I’ll stay.
My valley, Niccolò had said, on behalf of all his descendants. Mine. We will hold this land against all comers: French kings, Italian mercenaries, German soldiers, perfume house accountants, time. We definitely, definitely won’t weaken and give up part of it to some rock star who can’t even tell the truth about who she is and clearly just came here to leave a great gaping hole in a man’s heart when she ran back to New York.
Where he couldn’t follow her to get it back, obviously, because…he was a valley.
I am here and here I’ll stay.
I think I’m falling really hard for you.
With her head pressed against his chest, she had said that, so that nothing protected his heart from the words.
The sun was setting over his valley. He was going to have to have it out with her sometime, wasn’t he? Face her again, with her betrayal like a knife right there where he’d lowered his arms to let her at his heart.
And he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to have this fight. He didn’t want to defend his territory. He didn’t want to drive her back and leave everything that mattered to him safe.
He didn’t want to need to.
He’d wanted her to be a safe person to let in. A person he could trust.
He wished he could stay up here all night, but he couldn’t. From the full moon above, a vague blur of his mother frowned down at him. Matthieu Michel Laurent Rosier, what are you doing rock climbing in the dark?
He always imagined how his mother would react based on the ways his cousins’ mothers had acted when they got in trouble. He blurred it with memories of his grandmother’s chiding of him to be safer, and with photos, and with a child’s almost-memories of a lap and hugs, to try to come up with an approximation of a mother-in-the-moon. But he’d never really had that—the person who kissed his skinned knees. Who was tender with him.
He looked down at the stitches on his arm, remembering the graze of callused fingers as Layla re-wrapped it in gauze, remembering the strength of her arms around his neck, holding her weight off it to make sure it didn’t hurt.
In the valley below, where his house was, a light clicked on as if someone had made herself at home inside it.
He stared at that light a long time, and then grimaced and reluctantly started to abseil down.
In the end, Layla was just a coward. She couldn’t face the dark anymore, or her fear that Matt was going to leave her alone in it. She couldn’t stand it, so she just took what she wanted.