The address on all of the letters is about half a mile away from the hotel that I'm staying at. I didn't expect to be so nervous about showing up there until I start leaving the hotel with the shoebox of letters. The odds of this working are so low, and whoever lives there now will think I'm absolutely crazy.
If Audrine still lives there, what would I even say to her? "Hi, you had a fling with my grandpa sixty years ago and he never stopped loving you. Too late to do anything about that, he's dead now. Just wanted to introduce myself."
I'm already here though, and I didn't come halfway across the world to back out at the last second. With that in mind, I begin the walk up a large hill toward the address, according to a map that I have downloaded on my phone.
The summer heat is pretty grueling, and there's barely any shade along the street that I'm walking on. Today, I'm wearing bike shorts under my sundress to avoid the chafing that I had dealt with yesterday during my travels, but I'm still uncomfortably sweaty and I wish that I would have brought some deodorant with me so that I could reapply once I get up this hill.
During the entire walk, I try to rehearse some simple French phrases that I can say when I get to this address, like "I'm looking for Audrine". Since the letters are all written in English, I assume that she speaks English. And I'm counting on it, considering we wouldn't be able to have meaningful conversations about my grandpa if we can't speak the same language.
The walking path that I follow away from the hotel is narrow, and so beautiful. The tan buildings look very old, and they've clearly been here for a long time. The faded paint and chipped bricks and stones, an overgrowth of plants droop themselves over the side of the buildings make it feel like I'm walking through a moment in history. Even though the store signs are written in French, I can understand most of them. I pass a bakery, a boutique, and a cafe on my way toward the address written on the envelopes. They're all bustling with people, and the narrow path that I'm walking is full of pedestrians out to enjoy the beautiful weather this morning.
According to the map, I'm getting close and it looks like I just have to turn one last corner and I should be there. I was enjoying the scenery so much that I had distracted myself a little bit from the situation at hand, and once I get to the corner to turn, my nerves immediately come back at full force.
I have to push my shaky knees forward until I turn the corner and I'm standing in front of the right address. At least, I thought that I was at the right address. When I see myself looking at a beautiful restaurant, I feel less confident that I'm right because I was expecting to be arriving at a house.
The restaurant blends into the rest of the buildings that I've been passing, covered in plant overgrowth, bustling with people at the outdoor tables and surrounded by some trees making it look like I'm suddenly in the middle of the forest.
This is where the map says that I'm supposed to be, so I decide that I'll just go in and try to talk to an employee. If I'm at the wrong address, maybe they would be able to point me in the right direction.
Passing all of the busy tables outside, I go through the front doors and feel the great relief of the cool indoors. Right at the front of the restaurant, there's a long bakery counter with fresh-looking danishes, desserts, and croissants. I'm greeted by the warm smell of freshly baked bread and a hint of lemon. Behind that counter, there's a man standing there organizing some napkin-wrapped silverware. When he sees me walk in, he offers me a small smile.
"Salut," he greets me, and I know that means hello, but he continues speaking French after that and I can't understand any more of what he says.
"Salut," I say back to him, stepping closer to the counter. I feel like I'm about to make myself look so stupid when I try to speak French, but I don't really have a choice. Even if I get the words right, I feel like I'm going to mess up the pronunciations so badly that he still won't understand me. I have the address open on my phone, so I show my screen to him and I say, "Je cherche cette adresse."
He looks at the screen and then back up at me and starts talking in French. I have no idea what he's saying, and I start to panic. Especially when he stops talking and by his tone inflections, it sounded like he just asked me a question.
In my panic, I just start throwing out as much French as I can in my terrible pronunciations in an attempt to get directions to the right address. I don't even remember what I'm saying, but when the employee starts looking very amused, I decide to stop talking because I'm clearly making a fool of myself.
"That was nonsense," he says with a light laugh.
I'm taken by surprise when he speaks English, but also that he doesn't have an accent at all. The woman at the hotel who spoke English did so with a very thick French accent, but this man sounds like he's from America.
"Oh, you speak English," I notice stupidly, feeling an embarrassed warmth flooding to my cheeks. "I'm just looking for this address, would you be able to help me with directions?"
"You're already here," he tells me. "Would you like a table?"
"No thanks. Um, I'm looking for somebody named Audrine," I decide to just go for it. Even though I think that it's a long shot that she'd still be here; it's really my only option right now.
"Oh, okay," the employee doesn't look confused at all, "I'll be right back."
Does that mean that she's here? Or he knows her? Where is he going? I have all of these questions to ask, but he's already walking away. He goes into the back of the restaurant and I just stand there awkwardly at the entrance by the bakery display, having absolutely no idea what I'm waiting for.
I wait for just a few minutes before I hear somebody saying, "Can I help you?"
Looking up, I see a woman who looks to be my grandpa's age, her hair graying and her face wrinkled. She's wearing an apron covered in flour and using it to dust off her hands.
"Are you Audrine?" I ask what I feel like is a very obvious question, but I just don't want to get my hopes up if it's not true.
"Yes, that's me." Unlike the younger man who I was just talking to, Audrine has a French accent. I feel so relieved that this actually worked. I guess this could be a different Audrine, I don't know how common that name is here, but the odds that she's the right age, the right name, and the right location for the woman that I'm looking for? She has to be the right person.
"I think that you knew my grandpa," I tell her, feeling even more nervous now. Even if this is the right Audrine, she might not even remember my grandpa. Considering he's remembered her all this time though, I think that I would be devastated if that's the case. "Charles Henlock? It was a long time ago, so-"
"I remember Charlie," she interrupts my nervous rambling, her body going mostly still when she hears my grandpa's name. The guy from earlier emerges from the back now to join the conversation. "It's been so long since I've heard that name."
"Who's Charlie, mamé?" the guy asks her.
"He's an old friend," she tells him and then starts walking to the other side of the bakery counter, where I'm standing. Looking at the man, she says something in French that I, of course, don't understand. Then looks back at me and motions to an empty table. "Let's sit."
I follow her to the table and place the shoe box in front of me. "I'm Maisie," I introduce myself, which I guess is a first step here. "My Grandpa Charlie passed away unexpectedly a few months ago, and he gave me this to give to you."
"I'm sorry to hear that," she says to me. "He was a great man."
"Yeah, he was. Before he passed, he said that he wrote you all of these letters a long time ago. His parents intercepted and kept them so that they wouldn't get to you. Once he found out, he had already met my grandma. But he'd kept them all this time, and his last wish was that you finally get to read them."
It's a lot of information to process, so I stop talking to let her take it in. She has one pale hand pressed against her mouth and she uses her other hand to lift the lid of the box to look at the stacks of letters inside.
After a long silence as Audrine stares into the box of letters, I add, "I read a few of them, but it felt wrong. It felt like they should be just for you."
"Thank you for bringing them to me," she says slowly. I can't interpret her reaction at all, and I have no idea what she's thinking or feeling at all. I hope that bringing them to her isn't going to open old wounds, but I'm suddenly realizing that maybe that's what I'm doing. "I spent fifty-seven years wondering why he never wrote to me."
"He told me that he never stopped loving you. But even after he divorced my grandma, I don't think that he wanted to hurt his kids by telling them that he never really fully loved her," I try to explain as much as I possibly can to her. Even though I don't really know very many details myself and I can only go off of the one very brief conversation that I had with my grandpa before he died.
"He was very selfless," she sighs, running her pale, wrinkled fingers over the envelopes in the box.
I know that this isn't about me, but I can't help but feel my eyes start to fill with salty tears. "Yeah, he was. I feel like there's so much that I didn't know about him. Obviously, he had this completely different life before I was even a thought. I have so many questions that I want to ask him, and I'll never be able to. I'm sure you probably feel like you have a thousand questions for him too."
I wipe the tears from my face and work on taking deep, long breaths. I don't want to make this about me, but in the past months it's been hard to stop crying once it starts.
"I have some pictures," Audrine tells me, her blue eyes looking into mine. "And some other things stored away somewhere that maybe you'd like to see."
"Mamé," the guy from earlier speaks from behind the counter. "Les macarons brulent."
What I think that means is that the macarons are burning, and when Audrine immediately stands up from the table with urgency, I assume that I'm right.
"The restaurant is closed on Tuesdays," she tells me. "Can you come back then?"
"Yes," I say quickly. I start to ask her if she wants to keep the letters here, or if I should take them with me, but she's already hurrying into the back of the restaurant to save her macarons. So I put the lid back on the box and assume that I will keep them with me until Tuesday.
I wonder who the guy is that's been talking to me in English with an American accent and how he knows Audrine. He calls her 'mamé' and that sounds like 'mother' maybe, but she looks way too old to be his mom. He looks like he's my age or maybe a little bit older, so maybe grandson? Or is that just a nickname, and they're not related at all? He's staring at me from behind the counter, maybe expecting me to explain who I am and why I'm here. I don't feel comfortable doing that though, because Audrine might not feel comfortable with him knowing all of this.
So I kind of just ignore him, take my shoe box of letters, and I leave the restaurant through the main glass doors that I came in through as I head back to the hotel to process everything that just happened.
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Song: Pour que tu m'aimes encore - Celine Dion (Translation in external link)