It ought to be illegal for a mother’s silence to be so expressive through a trans-Atlantic cell phone connection.
“I’m trying to do the right thing!”
“Do the right thing by you,” her mother said unequivocally. “First.”
Layla knuckled her hand into her knee.
“Let me put it this way, honey. If any man other than this Matthieu wanted you to give up that land—if, say, he was some short, balding Frenchman in his sixties with a taste for wearing berets—would you be tempted?”
Well…no. Layla frowned at her mother through the phone.
“I saw the pictures on the web,” her mother said.
“Mom! I told you to take that Google Alert off my name!”
“Somebody emailed me a link. I know he’s a hot guy. I know you like him enough to kiss him out in public and not even notice someone with a camera. But, honey…put your music first. That’s who you are.”
Layla flexed her toes, trying to grip the rock through her shoes.
Her mother’s voice softened. “Well, that and my daughter. Your grandparents’ granddaughter. You. We miss you, sweetie. If you decide to give it all up and become an astronaut instead, like you wanted to be when you were nine, or a gymnast, or a schoolteacher, or a pet sitter, or even a cat, like you wanted to be when you were three…any of those other yous you ever dreamed of…we’ll still love you. And you’ll still be you.”
So that Layla was hugging her knees, crying a little from an overfull heart, when she hung up.
She might not have the roots Matthieu did, but thank God she had a mom.
“You planned this, didn’t you?” Matt asked Tante Colette, setting the dusty chest from the attic down on her parlor floor with something of a huff. The thing was heavy, even for him, after the attic ladder and three flights of stairs.
She smiled at him. “Plan to ask you to get that chest down for me? I wouldn’t say you specifically. Any of you boys would have done.”
“Layla,” Matt said. “Me. You took one look at her photo or something and said, ‘There’s someone who can wrap him around her little finger.’”
And to be honest, he still felt kind of ridiculous to be wrapped around a little finger. Not ridiculous enough to unwrap himself, but still…
That secret, deep smile of Tante Colette’s that meant she was never going to tell him everything. “I was worried about her,” Tante Colette said. “I’m responsible for Élise’s descendants. It’s for my sake she’s not around to look out for them herself. And Layla seemed so…out there. No grounding at all. Did you listen to that album of hers? All wandering and rootlessness and ‘I’m footless and fancy free’? What way is that to live? Next thing you know, she would have been doing drugs like all those other rock stars.”
“So what am I supposed to do, hold her down?” Matt asked grimly. Put all the weight of the valley onto that pretty kite’s string and trap her the same way it trapped him?
Colette just gave him one of her gentler smiles, struggling with the lock on the chest. “Give her roots. Look how hungry she is for them. She started trying to sink herself into the earth—into you—the second she got here.”
Matt frowned at his aunt. “Did you give her my land as some kind of planting soil? Thanks a lot.”
“First of all, Matthieu, it was my land. To give to whom I chose. And second of all, she’s single, and there are five of you boys the right age for her, and four of you have persistently failed to find the right woman up until now.” Matt liked the way his Tante Colette always used the number five, as if Lucien was still there. “I thought the odds were good that one of you would be her type.”
Hey. Matt scowled. “Damien or Tristan?”
“If it worked out that way. I hadn’t met her yet, Matthieu. Or seen how you reacted to her.”
Heat touched his cheeks. But he said, “Damien or Tristan would probably be a better fit for her. They’d be able to fit in that world of celebrities and performers. Be better able to travel with her on tour.” Well…actually Damien and Tristan both had a lot of responsibilities, themselves. Maybe the need to tour was a challenge for any couple to figure out.
Colette made that little moue of hers that said, Kids these days. They have no brains but I’ll try to be patient. “Interesting, then, that she went for you. Almost as if she felt you fit best with her.”
Matt smiled and gently brushed his aunt’s hands aside to open the lock for her and lift the lid, revealing layers of women’s clothes, laces and silks. So many old scents came off it—dust and cedar and hints of lavender water. The essence of a long life. He wanted to be like Tristan and bury his head in that scent, take deep breaths of his aunt before she was gone from his life.