The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted by Bridget Asher

Author:Bridget Asher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780440338727
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-28T22:00:00+00:00

ézanne regarded Mont Sainte-Victoire from the front. We see the mountain from the side. La longueur. A wider canvas,” Véronique said. We had walked out of the back door of her house, past the gravel driveway, toward the vineyards and the archaeological dig, now abandoned in the heat of the day. She had a cane with her, a cane with a marble handle. She didn’t use it to walk as much as to point things out. It was such a natural accessory I wondered how she’d ever done without it. “The mountain changes color through the day, if you have patience. Your mother watched this mountain for a long time that final summer she visited us.”

I wasn’t sure how to take this bit of information. I had the impression that Véronique wanted me to ask a question but I wasn’t sure what it should be. I only remembered our lives without her—my father in the kitchen, fumbling with the can opener. I guess you should be prepared to make a decision between the two of us. Who knows how this cookie will crumble? The cookie didn’t crumble. She came home. I tried not to dwell on what her lost summer meant to her or to me. It was lost. She was found and returned to us. But now that I was here, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her. What had she learned that allowed her to come back?

“The mountain’s beautiful,” I said simply.

She paused, waiting for something more. “Yes,” she said. “It is.” She pointed to a tree some distance between our two houses. “That is where your land commences. The line goes all the way to that tree, more or less.” This divided our properties as if the driveway between the two continued as a boundary. “That is yours. We will walk the perimeter.”

“But your foot,” I said.

“I have to keep moving. The circulation,” she said, “it moves and it is good for the bones.” We walked for a bit. “Your mother is a very strong woman,” she said.

“I think she had a lot on her mind the last time she was here. I guess she had to decide whether or not to come home, if we were worth it or if she should chuck it all for life in Provence.” I meant this as a joke, kind of, but the lightness didn’t translate.

“Her children were always worth it. The question was her husband,” she said. “He was—a cheat? That’s what you call them?”

I nodded, uncomfortable with my father being called a cheat, even though he had been one. He was still my father, and after all of these years devoted to salvaging their marriage, I’d restored him to some higher position.

“My ex-husband was an imperialist. He was a cheat. He left. When your mother was here that summer with her marriage breaking, my marriage was breaking, too.” I hadn’t known this. It was something more that my mother and Véronique shared.

“Where is your husband now?”

“He is dead.

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