Paris Was the Place (48 page)

Gita showed me how to risk everything. She got me to open my heart. And I’m trying to keep it open now that Luke’s gone. It’s my heart, after all. It’s mine.

Seven girls come to the workshop that night, including Esther. She smiles shyly at me when she walks in, and I go to her by the door and embrace her. It’s so good to see her again. There’s a flood of memories—of the first class we had in this very room in January. Of the day Gita said she was my friend. The maps I’d spread out on the floor, and how each of the girls traced her own geography. Where are those girls now?

Esther sits down on the couch, and Sophie asks all of them to go around the circle and say their names. Then I stand and say, “Hello, my name is Willow, but you can call me Willie. Everyone always calls me Willie.”

The girls are from Algeria and Bangladesh and India and Liberia. Macon told me that the courts are busier than they’ve ever been this fall. None of the girls look at me. I know about their conspiracy against the teacher. But they’ve shown up. That’s all I ask of them on the first night.

“I’d like to talk about the word ‘courage,’ ” I say. “You can use it in
your stories for the courts. I think all of you show that you have courage by coming to this class tonight.” I hand out the pencils and the notebooks with snowflakes. “I’d like to start by doing some drawing.”

Sophie stands in the doorway, smiling and shaking her head. “ ‘Courage,’ ” she says to all of us. “It’s a good word.”

Gita understood the word, and she also understood hope. To walk away like she did was to have both, maybe. Luke had it too. He didn’t seem scared in the end by what was happening to him. Even when Gaird and my father and I were talking about Luke’s death at the apartment, I don’t think we believed it would happen. This may seem surprising, but there was so much I didn’t understand about the disease. After he died, I thought I might die. It sounds dramatic, but it was simple.

He was the person who could make me laugh more than anyone I’ve known. My beloved. He was family. And family can be everything. The girls open their notebooks, and a sob rises in my chest. Maybe I’m not ready to be here yet. I got to say good-bye to Luke and to Gita. How amazing is that? They would expect things of me tonight. They would want me to be strong and to also have hope and to be damn funny. The girls and I have three hours together. It’s time to tell some stories.

First thanks go to my editor, Carole Baron, for whom my gratitude is unending. She understood this story before I really did. I’m indebted to her genius for knowing what to ask for and when. And to the way she embraces life. It has been one of my greatest gifts to get to work with her.

Thanks also to Ruthie Reisner at Knopf for her smart, nuanced edits and all her help. I’m also very grateful to Erica Hinsley, Bette Alexander, and Bonnie Thompson (Bonnie of extraordinary copy-editing talents) and to Maria Carella and Kelly Blair.

My agent, Stephanie Cabot, has been the biggest supporter of this novel from the start, and her readings have enriched the story in so many ways. I’m deeply thankful.

Thanks also to my friends and readers Sara Corbett, Caitlin Gutheil, Anja Hanson, Lily King, and Debra Spark for their wise input and for moving the book toward where it needed to go.

Next, to my father and mother, the most incredibly supportive parents. To John Conley for his wisdom and to Erin Conley for her sisterhood.

Thanks lastly to Winky Lewis, Katie Longstreth, and Lou Honore for their friendship during the making of this book.

The novel is for my kind husband, Tony. And to my boys, Thorne and Aidan.

In memory of Keith Taylor.

Susan Conley is the author of
The Foremost Good Fortune
, a book that won the Maine Literary Award for memoir and was a Goodreads Choice Award Winner. Her writing has appeared in
The New York Times Magazine
,
The Paris Review
,
Ploughshares
, and elsewhere. She’s been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband and their two sons.

Other titles by Susan Conley available in eBook format
The Foremost Good Fortune
• 978-0-307-59520-1

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www.susanconley.com
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The Foremost Good Fortune