Letters to Audrine

19- I Miss Him So Much

Silas laughs and then says, "What are you doing here?"

"Audrine invited me," I inform him. "She said there was somewhere she wanted to take me."

"Really? This late?" he seems confused. I figured that Audrine would have told him we were going somewhere, so I'm surprised that he doesn't know. I was also confused about why she wants to meet so late, as the sun is starting to set now and the day is almost over.

"I don't have any more information," I shrug.

"Okay, well I'll go get her," he goes along with it, heading into the back to get Audrine.

Quickly, both Silas and Audrine are coming into sight, talking about something in French too quickly for me to understand.

"We have to be quick," Audrine tells me, starting to head toward the door. Quickly, I wave goodbye to Silas and follow her out of the restaurant.

"Quick for what?" I ask her as we walk.

"Reading some of the letters made me remember something," she tells me. We turn down a street I've never been to and I'm suddenly facing a dauntingly tall hill. Audrine doesn't look intimidated, and continues her speedy walk.

I'm nearly out of breath as I try to keep up with her pace moving up the hill, passing some houses and little shops that I hadn't known were over here.

"We have to be sneaky though," she adds vaguely.

"Okay, I can be sneaky," I promise her, feeling grateful now that we waited until late in the day to take this walk, because if the sun was beating down on me, I might have had a heat stroke.

After we make it up the steep hill, she takes me through more small paths, only passing a few other pedestrians. We talk about other random things as we walk, but I don't ask about where we're going because it doesn't seem like she wants to tell me until we get there.

"I haven't been up here since your grandpa left," she tells me as we stop at one building made of khaki colored stones with moss sneaking its way through the cracks.

"What is this place?" I finally ask.

"Somebody's house," she tells me, walking into the yard. I don't see any lights on in the building, or anybody moving around. "I don't know whose."

"What are we doing here?" I ask another question in hopes of this making any more sense.

Around the next corner, Audrine stops at an iron ladder attached to the side of the house. "Follow me," she says before she starts clambering up the ladder. I'm nervous about this being somebody else's house and the possibility of getting caught, but Audrine doesn't seem worried at all. Her confidence fuels me, and I follow her up.

The top of the house is flat and easy to walk on, and when both of my feet are stable on the top of the roof, I look around and the view from here is breathtaking. I can see so many hills and valleys dipping like the waves of an unmoving ocean all around us.

"This is the tallest point in the town," Audrine tells me as she sits down on the roof. "And it was Charlie's favorite place to be. Especially to watch the sunset."

"It's beautiful," I mumble, trying to take in all of the beauty around us. I can even see the city lights of Nice in the distance and the ocean water past that. I feel like I can see the entire world from up here.

"We would sit up here for hours," she recalls. I sit down beside her. "Just talk about nothing, and everything."

"Did you ever get caught?" I ask her curiously, still feeling very aware that we're just on the roof of some random person's home.