noteful | Entries tagged with montreal

It's a nice day for an outing in Montreal, which is beautiful in the summer, but not so hot that a journey undertaken on the Metro and on foot gets unpleasantly hot. They make their way largely unnoticed or remarked upon, just two couples out and about, though Alain stops once to help some gloriously lost Belgian tourists find their location and that of their hotel on the map they are fighting over.

It's a bit of an adjustment, going from bright summer sunlight to the coolness of the indoor ice rink. "Of course, it's better in winter," Alain says, as they wait to rent skates. "Then you can skate outdoors."

"Colder, too," Meg puts in.

"But better."

It's probably to no one's surprise, not even really Alain's, that X picks up ice skating pretty quickly. It's a functional, practical sort of skating -- she's in no danger of scoring a 6.0 in artistic impression -- but it gets her easily around the rink. And if she and Bruce spend much of the outing holding hands, it's certainly not because either of them is having any trouble with keeping their balance.

No, Meg is the one who gets to suffer the indignity of finding herself somewhat sprawled on the ice, when she loses her footing trying to avoid a collision with a particularly oblivious boy of about thirteen.

"I'm fine," she tells the others, as Alain helps her up. "I think I mostly bruised my pride." (And while this is largely true, she will discover later that her right knee is giving her pride a run for its money.) "I'm fine, honey," she repeats, as Alain frowns in the direction of the boy, who is halfway around the rink and by all appearances hasn't noticed that Meg fell at all.

It's probably also to no one's surprise that Alain suggests leaving not long after that, or that he does a fair bit of fussing over Meg while Bruce returns their skates to the rental counter, or that they take a taxi back to the apartment, rather than deal with walking and Metro and people who don't watch where they are going.

Alain waves off various offers of help with dinner when they get home. "It shouldn't take long," he promises. Any preparations that could be done ahead -- prepping crepes ingredients, putting together the salad, even setting the table -- were done ahead. Alain takes himself off to the kitchen (not that this is far, as the kitchen is separated from the living room/dining room by only a counter-island), and Meg waves the others over to the sofa and armchairs.

"Would you like something to drink before dinner? Laura? Bruce?"

Even when parties are not loud, raucous affairs, the time right after one is over seems very quiet in comparison.

Meg kind of likes it.

She and Laura have finished putting the leftovers in the refrigerator and loading the dishwasher, and are just sitting down in the living when Alain comes back in from taking out the trash.

"That did not exactly go as I planned," Alain says, dropping onto the couch next to Meg.

"Well, no," Meg says.

In that Heidi gave her number to his friend Marc, and his brother left with Meg's friend Donna.

"But I think everyone had a good time."

Meg opens the refrigerator door, frowns, then closes it again. She does the same thing with the cabinets they use as a pantry. And then she heads back to the bedroom in search of her husband.

"Honey? I thought you were going to get the stuff for your shindig."

"I did," Alain says, halfway through swapping his I-am-a-serious-academic-teacher-of-literature sweater for something more casual and less intended to maximize the mere half dozen years between him and many of his students.

"And where it is?"

"In the refrigerator."

"Okay," Meg says. "And, um, where's the part of it that isn't beer?"

"Well, I just thought we could use what we have on hand, right?"

"What we have on hand. Right. Um, Alain, neither of us has been to the store in almost a week. What we have on hand is three eggs, and third of a loaf of whole wheat bread, half a jar of marmalade, some grapes that are probably more accurately described as raisins at this point, forty-five millilitres of orange juice, two cans of soup, and most of a box of corn flakes. The ones you didn't like. You said they tasted funny."

"They did," Alain says and then frowns. "You didn't go to the store?"

"I told you I wouldn't have time this week."

"So we don't have, um, chips or crackers or cheese or anything?"

"They're all on the list. Which is on the bulletin board. Where you could grab on your way out the door. When you went to get . . . "

"The beer."

Meg nods.

"Do we have popcorn?"

"On the list."

"Well, damn. All right, ma belle, what do we do?"

Meg sighs. "Well, let's see. We've got about twenty minutes before ten people start arriving. You order some pizza, I'll run down to the store on the corner and see what I can find quickly and if anyone is hungry before the food is here and ready we'll just . . . tell them we're désolés."

Alain leans down to kiss her. "I love you."

"I know. Et je t'aime aussi." Meg grabs her purse from the dresser. "Remember that Heidi doesn't eat meat. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Meg stops at their coat/storage closet to get a jacket. Or at least, that was the plan . . .

It's not that Meg has forgotten about Milliways (because how could she), or not noticed that the door hasn't popped up in a while (because she might be incredibly busy, but she's not that busy).

And it's not she's not a little worried about that fact, or that she doesn't miss people there.

But it is a thing she can neither change nor control, and she is incredibly busy, and so it's also not a thing she spends too much time dwelling on or fretting over.

And maybe . . . maybe it's not an all bad thing that she hasn't been traipsing off to end of the universe and beyond these last few months. Maybe her first year of medical school, his somewhat-more-than-full-time job, their fundamental (though not incompatible) differences in personality, only quasi-integratable family traditions, an overabundance of well-meaning but not always helpful in-laws, and a somewhat constant discovery of oh, marriage involves this, too? is enough to be navigating.

It's a lot to be figuring out, really, and it's not like they have a whole lot to compare it all to. They're really the first of their friends to get married, and while they both have lovely examples in their parents' marriages, those are things they observed only when they rather more settled into. And even though Meg can talk to her mother -- and does -- about getting married young and to a man from a completely different cultural tradition, it's only so much help. Different era, different problems, different details, and in a lot of ways, different stages of their lives. Deidre Ford up and moved to a place she'd never even visited and didn't know a soul, and spent much of her first year of marriage pregnant and dealing with a newborn. Meg has lived in Montreal four years and has her own friends, and while kids are in the plan for the future, there's no immediacy to that plan. At all.

Besides, John Ford had come to his marriage unencumbered with other relatives. Alain has so many that Meg is still working on getting their names straight. (And it's quite clear sometimes that not all of them know exactly what to make of his tiny, red-headed, Anglo wife.)

And maybe that's enough to be sorting out (and they are sorting it out) without adding the strain of her visits to a place that he has never been entirely comfortable about the existence of. Maybe, sometimes, the universe actually does know when you've got enough on your plate for the moment, and nothing else needs to be added.

The same, alas, cannot always be said of husbands.

"You want to throw a party?" Meg asks, staring across the breakfast table at him on Saturday when they've both managed to carve out the same few hours free of schoolwork, homework, housework, assorted other kinds of work, and relatives. "Next week?"

"'Party' is too formal," Alain says. "I'm thinking more like a . . . "

"Gathering? Event? Get-together? Affair? Shindig?" Meg offers.

"Shindig? That can't be a real word. Even in English."

"It is," Meg says.

"Shindig," Alain repeats, thoughtfully. "I like it. Is there any more toast?"

"There's more bread," Meg says. "But it hasn't been toasted. Or was that meant to be a subtle request that I make you more toast?"

"You're better at it than I am, ma belle."

"It's toast, honey. You just push the button." But she gets up and goes to the toaster, anyway.

"It tastes better when you make it," Alain says. "Thank you. So I think we should have a shindig."

"Why?" Meg asks.

"I just think it would be fun. And helpful."

"Helpful? To whom?"

"Your friends, of course."

Meg blinks. "Okay, I think this might be one of those times when you're following up on a previous conversation we didn't actually have."

They've both done it -- turned I meant to talk to you about into didn't I talk to you about?

Alain stares up at the ceiling in that way he has when he's reflecting on things, until the toast pops up to break the brief silence. "I think you're right," he says.

Meg sets the plate of fresh toast on the table and takes her seat again. "All right, so why do you think it would help my friends if we have a party?"

"Well, they're trying to learn French, yes?"

"Yes." McGill might teach its classes in English, but it requires its medical students to at least be reasonably capable of having a conversation with the Francophone patients they will encounter once they're in Quebec hospitals. For Meg, this is mostly a matter of needing to learn some of the more technical medical vocabulary. Some of her classmates, on the other hand, are still mastering present tense irregular verbs.

"And how did you learn French?" Alain asks, slathering what seems to Meg to be a slightly disgusting amount of marmalade on his toast.

"In high school," Meg says.

Alain waves his hand (and marmalade knife) expansively. "Non. You didn't really speak French when we met."

"Of course I did."

"Not really," Alain says. "You spoke French like a very bright girl who had studied it in high school in Ontario. Your French got better after you met me, because then you were having real conversations in French."

"And you get credit for that, I suppose."

"Of course. The same way you get credit for the fact that my English is better than it was four years ago."

"I guess that's fair," Meg says.

"Right. So that's what we'll do. We'll have your friends over and my friends over and we'll have everyone speaking French and it should help your friends."

Meg studies her husband across the table for a very long moment.

"I'm not saying it's a bad idea," she says finally, "though I'm also not saying it's a good idea. That partly depends on why you're really suggesting it. Because it's a nice idea, helping my friends with their French, but you wouldn't throw a party for it. And we've got another year before anyone has to be conversational in French, so there's no rush. So what's up here?"

Alain eats half a piece of toast before he admits, "I might think Luc should meet your friend Heidi."

"Heidi? And Luc? Really?"

"Yes. We like Heidi, don't we?"

"Of course. Heidi's very nice. But, Alain, Heidi makes me look . . . "

"Tall?"

"Well, there's that. But I was going to say haphazard."

"There is not a force on Earth that makes you look haphazard, ma belle."

"All right, that might be a bit of an overstatement. But Heidi's very . . . serious. And that's not a bad thing, it's actually a good thing for a person who wants to be heart surgeon, but I don't really think she's the right person to try to set up with your artistic actor brother."

Actually, Meg doesn't think they should be trying to set Luc up with anyone. For that matter, she doesn't think they should be trying to set Heidi up with anyone. And especially not with each other.

"He needs someone serious. He hasn't had a proper girlfriend since Nathalie. And that was more than a year ago."

"I really don't think he's ready for someone . . . " Meg trails off and sighs. "Okay, fine. But when he gets upset about this, it was your idea. I was just the girl making the toast."

"He won't get upset."

"You know him better than I do," Meg says. But she thinks she's right about this. "Also, I do not have time to plan a party, or a shindig, or whatever it is you want to have. I'm busy with the nervous system this month. So I will invite Heidi and some other people, but the preparations are all on you, Alain."

"I can handle putting a shindig together."

"All right," Meg says.

"You'll see, ma belle."

"I guess I will, yes," Meg says.

"Do we have any more eggs?"

"In the refrigertor. And don't think that's going to work twice in one morning."

"Hello?"

The apartment is quiet. There's a stack of papers at one end of the couch next to a half-finished cold cup of coffee, and a note stuck to the refrigerator.

Meg,
I had to pick some things up for Tante Ginette.
I should be home by 6:00, but I'll call if it's going to be later than 7:00.
Love you, see you soon.
Alain

It's already 6:20, but visits to Alain's aunt often run long, so that's not really a surprise. She dumps the cold coffee down the drain, rinses the mug and leaves it on the counter, and puts a fresh pot on to brew. And then she goes back to their room to get her Walkman.

She's about to curl up on the bed to listen to Tchaikovsky when she remembers that she told Alain they could try to be in the same room and not interact. She's not certain she thinks that'll work -- for one, she's not sure he won't try to talk to her, and for another, she's not sure she'll feel alone enough -- but at the very least, they need to try it.

So she settles at the end of the couch that doesn't have papers piled next to it, sitting sideways, with the small of her back up against the arm and her legs stretched out along the cushions.

She's about halfway through the first movement of the violin concerto when the door opens. "Ma belle?"

"I'm here."

Alain comes over, looks down at her, and then reaches up and taps one of his ears just where headphones would be, eyebrows raised just enough to make the gesture into a question.

Meg nods.

"Is everything all right?" he asks.

Meg nods again, and tries not to flinch. She's probably not completely successful, though, because Alain continues, "I know, Meg, but I have to ask that much."

"I know. Is everything okay at your aunt's?"

"Yes." Alain leans down and kisses her, briefly, just catching the corner of her mouth. "I have a story for you, though. Later. Go back to your music."

"There's fresh coffee," she says, as he starts to walk away from the couch.

"I love you."

"You're welcome."

She closes her eyes and goes back to her music.

She can hear him over the strings, fixing his coffee in the kitchen, crossing the room, settling at the other end of the couch, turning the pages of the papers he's grading.

It's . . . comfortable.

It's very, very comfortable.

After about twenty minutes, as she's turning the tape over the play the Mendelssohn on the other side, Meg shifts a little, so that she's more lying on the couch than sitting on it, and so that her feet just come to rest against the side of Alain's leg.

He looks up from his papers to her.

"Tickle me and I'll kick you," Meg says, closing her eyes again.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Alain says, squeezing the toes of her left foot for a second and then turning his attention back to his work.

When the second concerto ends, she decides, she'll ask him about his aunt and dinner and whatever one of his students wrote that just made him laugh out loud.

But for now, they can just keep working on being alone together.

She doesn't get much sleep.

She lies on her side of the bed, hovering in a sort of watchful, wary state of not quite being awake (but also decidedly not being asleep), and she waits.

It's like her ribs are all of a sudden a half size too small for her lungs, and she hates it. It's half worry (because maybe something has happened, maybe he was so mad when he left that he forgot his wallet and his keys and he's stuck somewhere and he can't get home, and maybe he's been hit by a car and he's lying in a hospital bed, and maybe he's decided to move to Europe and he's gone to apply for the visa). And it's half anger (because maybe none of those things are true, and he's just not here.)

And it doesn't end well, because if nothing has happened, then the moment of relief is going to be utterly swallowed up by the intensified anger that follows. And if something has happened, then the guilt over having been angry at him is going to be horrid. And neither of those things is going to be improved by the fact that she'll likely be exhausted when whatever it is happens, because she hasn't slept.

She finally gives up just before seven o'clock, and gets up, and goes out to the living room, wondering how long she waits before she calls his brother or his parents or the hospitals.

Alain is asleep -- sound asleep, by the looks of it -- on the couch.

Never mind angry, never mind relieved, Meg is instantly and deeply annoyed.

(It won't last long. One minute later, she'll be furious, but in this moment, it's pure, unadulterated annoyance.)

She stomps (as much as a small person wearing bedroom slippers on a carpeted floor can be said to stomp) into the kitchen, and she unloads the clean dishes from the dishwasher, slamming cabinets and drawers and rattling cutlery as she does so.

(And she hates that, too, because it's petty and childish and ridiculously passive aggressive, and she knows that it's not going to make her feel better and she knows that it's not going to improve the situation and she knows that it's just mean and she does it anyway.)

"Meg?" Alain says, around a yawn, as he stands up.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Meg asks, looking at him across the counter that divides the kitchen proper from the living room.

"You know that you did," Alain says.

And because there's no answer to that that she can really make, she says, "When did you get in?"

"A little past twelve."

"Oh."

"You'd gone to bed. I didn't want to disturb you. More than I already had, of course."

"Don't. Don't."

"Do you know how you made me feel last night?" Alain asks.

"Do you know how you made me feel last night?"

"I don't see you all day, and then you're home, and I think, I finally get to spend time with my wife, but no, you just want to hide in the bedroom and listen to music you only play when you're upset, and you won't tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing was wrong, Alain. I just needed half an hour when I didn't have to interact with anyone."

"I'm not 'anyone,' Meg. I'm your husband."

"And it's not about who you are. It's about who I am. I am a person who occasionally needs to be alone. And last night was one of those occasions."

"So, what, you're Marlene Deitrich? You 'want to be alone'?"

"That was Greta Garbo," Meg says automatically.

Alain glares at her. "Is that really the point, right now?"

"I guess it's not, no. What is?"

"The point is that you made me feel like you didn't want me around last night."

"Yeah, you've made that really clear. And you've made it very clear that you're disappointed in me because of that, and I really don't know what to do about that, because I can't change it, any more than I could suddenly have green eyes. So you know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Alain, that I am complicated and demanding and that I ask more from you than most would, and I am sorry that there are fundamental parts of my personality that you apparently find so problematic that you storm out and stay gone all night, and I am sorry that I cannot be exactly what you want at every given moment of our lives, and I'm sorry that I'm not perfect."

There's a moment of silence, and they stare at each other, and Meg tries to wrap her brain around the fact that she's really and truly yelling at her husband.

And then he starts to laugh.

. . . that is not what Meg was expecting.

"What?" she snaps.

"What are we doing?" Alain asks.

"I'm pretty sure we're having a fight."

"Are you enjoying it?"

"Not especially, no," Meg says. "Not at all."

"Me, either. Why don't we stop?"

"Because we clearly have issues we need to resolve. And if we don't talk about them, they're just going to fester and get worse."

"All right, yes," Alain says, coming into the kitchen. "But, ma belle, you just apologized for being human. I don't think we're exactly having a rational, productive discussion about issues. I think we're just having a fight. And I hate fighting with you."

"I hate fighting with you, too."

"So let's stop," Alain says, wrapping an arm around her waist. "We'll stop fighting, we'll talk."

Meg nods.

"Good. Come on," he adds, tugging her forward a little.

"Where?"

"Bed," Alain says. "Not like that," he adds, off her incredulous look. "I just have a theory I want to test."

"And what's that?"

"That it's almost impossible to fight with a woman if you're curled up together and she's got her head on your chest."

Meg laughs without really meaning to, and it's like something shifts back into balance.

"There's that smile," Alain says. "Come on."

He's right. The new conditions are not remotely ideal for a fight. They work pretty well for a conversation, though.

"I don't remember that you ever wanted to be left alone before we got married," Alain says, one thumb tracing a circle on the back of her shoulder. "And lately, I don't know. You didn't want to spend time with my friends, and then you didn't want to go see Luc, and then last night you didn't even want to see me. And I don't remember it from before. It's like it's new, and I don't know why."

"It's not new, Alain. It's something I've done my whole life, needing to be alone sometimes. I just didn't live with you until recently. So when I didn't want company, I just . . . stayed home."

"Ah. That makes sense."

"Doesn't it?"

"Well, now I just feel silly," Alain says.

"Don't. It's new for you, and you like having people around all the time. I don't always. And it's not about not liking people, or not wanting to spend time with people I care about, it's just that sometimes I need thirty minutes or a hour or so when I don't have to interact with anyone at all."

"So it's about interacting? Or not interacting?"

Meg nods. "Yeah."

"All right. So do you think could you not interact with me while we were in the same room?"

"What do you mean?" Meg asks cautiously.

"Could you, say, listen to your music at one end of the couch while I was reading a book at the other? Then you don't have to interact with me, but I get to feel like I'm spending time with you."

"I don't know," Meg says, after a moment's thought. "But we could try it."

"All right. We'll try it."

"You scared me last night," Meg says, a full minute later.

"Scared you?" he asks, and his thumb stops moving on her shoulder.

Meg nods against his chest. "Yeah. Because you were disappointed and upset and you left, and you wouldn't say where you were going or when you were coming back and sometimes . . . sometimes, when someone does that -- "

"I'm not your sister."

"I know. I -- "

"I'm not going to do what she did. And you have to trust that. You can't judge me based on what someone else did before you met me, Meg. That's not fair."

"I know that. Rationally, I know that. But the rational part of my brain doesn't always get the loudest voice on this topic. And I know that you need to be able to leave, and take time and space to deal with things, that's how you process, and I don't want you feel like you can't, but . . . just tell me when you're going to be home. Please."

"All right," he says. He traces three circles on her shoulder, then stops and asks, "You know I don't actually think you're perfect, right? I know it sounds unromantic to say that, but I know that you're not perfect. I don't expect you to be."

"I know."

"Because sometimes, ma belle, I think you expect you to be. I think you expect people to expect you to be. And you're not. There are going to be times you disappoint me, and there are going to be times I disappoint you. I hope that most of them are small, like I wish he hadn't forgotten to buy the paper towels, but some of them are going to be big. If your goal is to get through the next sixty years without ever disappointing each other . . . we might as well give up now."

"I'm not giving up."

"Good."

"And whatever we have to work out, we'll work out," Meg says. "Because . . . because I am worth everything I put you through."

Alain laughs, which she as much feels as hears. "Yes, you are. And I'm worth everything I put you through."

"You are, yes." Meg sighs and settles a little more comfortably against him. "And I could almost sleep."

"So sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

Meg feels a bit like a rubber band stretched between two points that are, technically speaking, about three millimetres beyond said rubber band's capacity. It wasn't even that anything particularly bad, or difficult, or trying happened today. It was just that a lot happened today.

The television is on when she gets home, but the living room is empty. Meg turns the volume down, checks in the bedroom and bathroom, and then finds the note on the kitchen counter.

Gone to buy milk.
Back soon.
Alain
5:28 pm

The clock on the microwave reads 5:32, so she's just missed him. They probably nearly met in the lobby.

She's so glad they didn't. Not that she doesn't want to see her husband, of course, she just doesn't want to see him yet.

Meg turns the television's volume down a little further and goes back into the bedroom. She puts on a dark green sweater that belongs to Alain and is made of some of the softest wool she's ever felt. She takes her shoes off, places them in the floor of the closet, steps over the pair Alain has left by her desk, and takes her Walkman from the top left drawer, selects her cassette, and lies down to listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams's Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus until she feels settled.

It's a good piece of music for that. There's something soothing about the repetition (but not boring, with variation), and she likes the minor keys, and in the places where tune isn't being especially variant, her brain automatically provides the lyrics to "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say," which is one of the hymns she's always liked, and in fact, had chosen for her wedding.

When it finishes, she rewinds the tape and starts over. For seven and a half variants, she's starting to even back out.

And then . . .

"Meg? I'm back."

She turns just enough to see Alain in the doorway, and raises one hand to wave. She also pulls the headphones away from one ear. "Hello."

"Hello." He comes over and looks down at her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I'll be up in a little while."

"Are you sure?"

Meg nods. "Um-hmmm."

"All right." Alain picks up the blanket at the end of the bed and drapes it over her legs. "I know your feet are cold."

Meg smiles, puts her headphones back in place, and Alain goes back to the living room. A moment later, as she's kicking off the blanket she doesn't want over her feet, she hears the television get louder again.

She's rewinding the cassette for the second time when the door opens again. "You're not sick, are you?"

"No, I'm fine."

"You're sure? Because you thought you were fine before, ma belle, and then you had chicken pox."

"That was just the once, Alain. I'm sure I'm fine."

"Do you need anything?"

Just for you to stop coming in and talking to me.

"No. I'm just going to listen to this again."

"What are you listening to?"

"Ah, Dives and Lazarus."

Alain frowns. "Isn't that what you listen to when you're upset?"

"I'm not upset. I'm fine, Alain. I promise. And I'll be out in a little while."

"All right."

The fourth variant is just ending when the door opens again.

"Are you mad at me?" Alain asks.

"What?"

"Are you mad at me?"

"No, of course not," Meg says. "Should I be?"

"Then what's wrong? Why are you hiding back here?"

"Nothing is wrong. There's nothing I need for you to fix right now, honey. I just want to be alone for half an hour. I need to be alone for half an hour."

"You want me to leave?"

Yes.

"It's really not about you."

"You don't want me here?"

"I don't want anyone here right now. And you just sort of fall into that broad category," Meg says.

"I haven't seen you all day, and you want me to leave you alone?"

Yes.

"I'm not asking you to leave me alone for the rest of our lives, Alain, or even the rest of the evening. But right now, yes, I want you to leave me alone. For twenty minutes. I just want to lie here, and listen to Vaughn Williams, and not be under a blanket, and not have you coming in every five minutes to ask if I'm sick or upset or mad at you, none of which I am."

"Well, Meg, right now you sound both upset and mad at me."

"Can you please just give me twenty minutes by myself, honey?"

"You know what," Alain says, "take all the minutes you want. I'm going out."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"When will you be back?" Meg asks.

"I don't know."

"Will you call if you're going to -- ?"

"What's the point of calling someone who doesn't want to talk to you?" Alain asks.

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?"

"Fine," Meg says, because she just can't do this right now. "Fine. Go out. Have a good time. I'll be here when you get back."

Alain smiles at her from the doorway, and it's the most humorless smile she's ever seen from him. "And if I'm lucky, you'll be speaking to me by then?"

He closes the door before she can reply.

She plays Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus another four times before she gets up and goes into the living room.

She turns the television off.

She finds the milk, still in its shopping bag, sitting on the counter and puts it in the refrigerator.

She reads one of her textbooks for an hour, and then spends another two hours on the copy of Les Trois Mousquetaires that Alain has left on the end table. She knits twenty-five rows of what would have been a hat, but when she looks down at it, there are so many mistakes that she pulls all the stitches out and re-rolls the yarn into a ball.

And at midnight, she leaves the light on in the living room for Alain and goes to bed.

"Don't feel like you have to wait up," Alain says.

"Don't feel like you have to get into too much trouble," Meg replies.

They've got very different Friday evenings planned. Alain is off to his friend Jérôme's bachelor party, and Meg has a new murder mystery and a spot on the couch.

Alain leans down to kiss his wife's cheek. "I promise I won't have to call you to come post bail."

"Well, I promise to come post it if you do."

"And I'd pay you back later?"

"In ways you can't imagine," Meg says cheerfully, and Alain laughs. "Have fun."

"You, too."

After he's left, though, Meg has a hard time focusing on her book. Partly because she's two chapters in and fairly certain the cousin did it, and while she supposes that could be a red herring, she's also fairly certain it's not. And partly because she's just not quite in the mood to read.

She's also not remotely in the mood to study, which is these days how she spends an awful lot of her not otherwise occupied time.

She decides, in the absence of a better plan for the next ten minutes, to make a pot of tea.

The teapot is, of course, back on the shelf she can't reach. It's getting a little ridiculous, in her opinion. She's asked him to put it with the mugs a dozen times. He always says he will, and she knows he means it when he says it, and yet. Of course, part of the problem might be that there's not quite enough room on the shelf she wants it on, not when all the mugs are clean and put away.

But maybe if she moves that bowl . . . It doesn't make any sense to keep it there, anyway.

Three hours later, Meg has reorganized the entire kitchen, taking into account what they use the most, what they use the least, what they probably will never use but received as a wedding present, what makes sense logically grouped, and which shelves each of them can reach without having to climb onto furniture. And then she leaves a lamp on for Alain and goes to bed, without ever having actually made tea.

It's some time after one when the shift of the mattress and the blankets wakes her from what's essentially a doze, because even if she's not waiting up, she's still waiting for him to get home.

"Did you have a good time?" Meg asks.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"I wasn't really asleep."

"It was all right," Alain says neutrally, answering her question. Had they been having this conversation sitting in the living room or standing in the kitchen, Meg knows exactly the shrug that would have accompanied his statement.

As far as Meg can tell, none of Jérôme's friends are exactly enthusiastic about his upcoming nuptials.

She settles her head against Alain's shoulder. "I'm glad you didn't feel like you had to do that before our wedding. One last night of freedom or whatever it's supposed to be."

"I didn't feel that I was giving anything up, marrying you," Alain says, kissing her hair just above her temple. "Go back to sleep."

Alain sleeps late the next morning. He might have slept later, but Meg wakes him up a little before eleven with the argument that he has a wedding to attend and the promise that the coffee is already waiting in the kitchen.

She's studying at one end of the table when he half-stumbles, yawning, into the kitchen several minutes later, and opens the cabinet with the mugs.

Then opens another cabinet.

And another.

"Meg?"

She looks up.

"What happened?"

"Oh, I reorganized a little last night."

"A little?" he asks.

"A lot."

"And you didn't think maybe you should talk to me before you moved everything in the kitchen?"

"I . . ."

"Well?"

"You're right. I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd mind."

"Wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I would. I'm sorry, Alain. I was just trying to make room for the teapot, and I guess I got carried away."

"You reorganized my whole kitchen."

"Hold on," Meg says. "It's not your kitchen. It's our kitchen."

"And that gives you the right to change it all without me?"

"No, Alain. It doesn't. I've already said that I'm sorry and I was wrong. But, honey, this isn't just your apartment any more. It's mine, too. It's ours."

Alain throws both hands up briefly. "We don't have time for this. We have to go watch one of my friends make the biggest mistake of his life." He sloshes coffee into a mug and stalks back to the bedroom.

Attending Jérôme and Monique's wedding is a bit like watching the last act of King Lear, knowing that Cordelia is busy dying off stage, and that it's not going to get mentioned in time for anyone to stop it, and that there's nothing anyone in the audience can do but wait for her body to be carried in.

Or perhaps Meg is just projecting, given that she and Alain rode here in silence and she's not exactly in the mood for a wedding.

Most likely, though, it's a little of both. Monique and Jérôme seem, from the limited interaction Meg has had with them (especially Monique), to be remarkably unsuited to each other. Monique is more or less universally disliked by Jérôme's friends, and while Meg is a firm believer in making your own decisions about things, she has to believe that if friends who've known you all your life all dislike your fiancee, that's probably indicative of something.

On top of that, it's a wedding that feels like a wedding, not like the start of a marriage, and Meg is willing to bet that Monique has given much more thought to the centerpieces on the tables at the reception (which are dramatic and tall and make it impossible to see the person sitting directly across from you) than she has to things like the reality of sharing a kitchen.

Alain's friend Henri, who was one of the eight groomsmen, drops into the seat across from Meg's, drink in hand. "I think she chose the weekend before Halloween because she's a witch. I still can't believe he went through with it."

"Henri," Alain says, with a shake of the head and gesture to Meg to indicate they're not the only two people sitting here.

Henri leans to his left until he can see around the explosion of flowers and feathers and glitter-encrusted twigs in the middle of the table. "Ah! Bonjour, Meg."

"Bonjour, Henri."

"Thank you, Meg, for not being Monique."

"You're welcome, Henri," Meg says, because he seems to be waiting for a response, and it's the only one she can think of.

"Ça suffit, Henri," Alain says, before turning to Meg to ask (in English), "Do you want to dance?"

It is, in its way, something like an apology, his hands at her waist and her head against his shoulder, and if it doesn't solve any problems, it puts them all into their place as pieces of the whole.

Meg's silent when they get back to their table, while Alain is telling a long story about something he and Jérôme did when they were fifteen, to which Meg is only half-listening, thinking.

"Meg?"

Perhaps she wasn't even half-listening, because she has no idea what Alain just said.

"Hmmmm? What? Sorry," she says.

"Are you still mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you. I just . . . "

"What?"

"Do your friends talk about me like that?" Meg asks.

"Like what?"

"The way they talk about Monique."

Alain smiles. "Not where I can hear them."

"I'm serious, Alain. Do they think you made a terrible mistake? Did they try to talk you of marrying me?"

"No, of course not. One or two of them pointed out that we were young to be engaged, but that's not about you. And, anyway, they were wrong. They like you, Meg. And I love you."

"Je t'aime, aussi."

"You believe me, right?" Alain asks. "You heard Henri. They know you're not Monique."

"Just what I always wanted to be. 'Not Monique.'"

"You know what you are?" Alain asks, reaching over to take her hand. "You're strawberries."

"I'm strawberries?" Meg asks.

"Yes."

"Alain, I have no idea what that means, unless you're trying to be poetic about my hair."

"Strawberries. They're sweet enough to be dessert, but they're good for you. You can have them every day and not get tired of them. And you could you live without them, but why would you want to? You're strawberries." He picks up one strand of her hair and considers it for a second. "And, yes, your hair probably contributes to the metaphor, ma fraise."

Meg laughs. "All right, I'm strawberries." There's a pause, and then she says, "We can put the kitchen back the way you had it, if you want."

"Eh, I should see what you did first. I just put things in cabinets when I moved in and left them there. Your way might make more sense. You can show me, when we get home."

Meg looks around the wedding reception that no one seems to be enjoying very much. Etiquette says that they're supposed to stay until the cake is cut, but . . . "Let's go home," Meg says.

"So you can show me the kitchen?"

"Eventually."

Alain smiles. "Race you to the car."

Meg doesn't have a lot of truly free days right now, because there's always school work, but she has carefully arranged her schedule to leave Thanksgiving Day completely open, with no reading, note-taking, or studying, even if there's no way to leave the whole weekend free. Thanksgiving is, after all, a day for family, which these days means Alain. They spend the morning in Mont Royal park before going over to his parents' house for the afternoon and dinner. They come home with enough leftovers to see them through the rest of the week and spend the evening watching movies.

On Tuesday, though, Meg has to jump straight back into the busy whirl of med school. Class with Dr. He (whose name that has prompted more than one Who's-On-First-ish conversation, and whose English is just accented enough that Meg is still getting an ear for it), and lunch with Donna and Jeffery (conducted in the French they're both working to improve, at least until Donna gets fed up with talking around the words she can't remember), and a long but impromptu meeting with a librarian to sort out some kind of minor and inexplicable error with her account that she's still not sure has actually been resolved.

And, when she thinks she's finally done for the day, and can go home, she gets caught by Sara-without-an-H Daniel-without-an-S. Sara-without-an-H is Meg's least favorite classmate, possibly of all time. She must be intelligent -- she got into the medical school at McGill, and they don't exactly take all comers. But she's clearly used to thinking of herself as the smartest person in the room and to everyone's being impressed with her. She comes across as superior and entitled, as well completely oblivious to the fact that she has managed to alienate most of her classmates in not quite two months. She's very loud; Meg always feels like she's being shouted at when Sara-without-an-H talks to her. And she's an American, who does seem to have realized that she's not in the United States any more (so different rules, laws, and customs apply), and that (moreover), she's in the French-speaking part of Not-the-United-States even if she is at an English language university.

On top of all that, she keeps calling Meg "Meghan" (and spelling it Megan-without-an-H when she writes it down). Meg has asked her not to on fourteen separate occasions.

Sara-without-an-H has, for reasons Meg can't quite figure out, decided that they are friends. No, not friends, allies. That whatever Sara-without-an-H is trying to accomplish (which generally means complaining/whining/pestering about until people give in to shut her up), Meg is going to be happy to help. This time, it's something about some professor's office hours not being convenient (for her, of course), and Meg stands, resisting the temptation to cover her ears (because that would be rude) while Sara-without-an-H goes on and on and Meg makes noncommittal noises before pleading the need to catch her bus and making her escape.

The bus gets caught in traffic. Meg can't really say she's surprised. It's been that sort of day. Even the twenty-minute conversation with the German tourists who want a local's opinion on where to go and what to see is pretty much par for the day's course.

Meg gets home wanting nothing but an hour to herself, and possibly being able to spend half of that doing something other than study.

Instead, once the hellos and how-were-your-days are over, Meg gets, "Oh, Luc invited us over for dinner. We probably need to leave in about ten minutes."

"What?"

"Well, you were later than I thought you'd be," Alain says.

"Traffic, but that's . . . I don't know that I can go to dinner at Luc's tonight, honey."

"We don't have to stay too late," Alain says. "And even medical students have to eat."

"No, it's not that, it's just that I don't really feel up to socializing tonight. It was a long day." With a ridiculous amount of interacting with people.

"It's not 'socializing,' ma belle, it's dinner with my brother."

"Unless we're going to be eating in total silence, it is socializing." Meg's experiences with her husband and his brother and family have not included an abundance of silences. "Besides, I did see him yesterday."

"I thought you liked Luc," Alain says, looking puzzled and a little hurt.

Meg doesn't sigh. (It's an effort, but she doesn't sigh.) "I do like Luc, Alain, you know I like Luc. It's not about liking or disliking anyone, I'm just not up to it this evening."

"I guess I can call him and tell him we can't come after all."

"No, if you want to go, you should go," Meg says. "Go, spend the evening with your brother without your wife around. The two of you don't get much time that's just the two of you any more, and he's your best friend."

"You're my best friend," Alain corrects.

Meg smiles. "And you're mine. But he's your oldest friend. And you're still his best friend. So go have dinner with your brother."

"You're sure you don't mind."

"I don't, no."

"I don't want to just abandon you."

"You're not abandoning me," Meg says, and she feels she deserves some credit for not adding, Please, just go already. "I've got a refrigerator full of leftovers and some work to catch up on. I'll be fine and busy and terrible company this evening, anyway."

"All right," Alain says, kissing her cheek, and pulling on his jacket. "I'll call you if I'm going to be later than ten."

"Don't stay out too late. Remember that it's a school night, M. Gagné," she calls after him, and he laughs a little as he closes the door behind him.

Monday

Meg pulls her sweater more tightly around her and goes to see what the thermostat is set on. She frowns, bumps it from 20 to 21, and decides to make tea for good measure.

The teapot is meant to be right next to the mugs, on the bottom shelf in the cabinet next to the refrigerator. It's not. Because Alain, who didn't own a teapot before he married Meg and now technically has joint ownership of this one, keeps putting it away on the third shelf in the cabinet in the corner, next to the pitcher.

And Meg can see the logic in that -- holds liquid, has a spout, etc. -- but the problem is that Meg can't reach the third shelf in the cabinet in the corner, which makes it a fine place to store the pitcher (which they almost never use), but a rather less useful place to keep something she uses easily four times a week.

Meg drags a chair over from the table, climbs up onto it, and retrieves the teapot.

"Alain," she says, over dinner a few hours later, "could you please try to remember to put the teapot next to the mugs, when you're putting things away?"

"Did I put it up in the corner again?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry. Of course, ma belle," he says.

"Thank you."

Tuesday

"Are you cold?" Meg asks, on Tuesday evening.

"Hmmmm," Alain says, looking up from the bookshelf, which he's reading his way across, pulling books and stacking them at his feet.

"Cold," Meg repeats, getting up to look at the thermostat. "Are you cold?"

"No, I'm fine."

"I'm a little cold."

"Well, I know your toes were like ice last night."

"Sorry," Meg says, attention more on the thermostat than her husband. It's back on 20.

"Maybe you need a sweater," Alain suggests.

"I'm wearing a sweater," Meg says. "I'm going to turn this up a little," she says, setting the dial on 21.

"Fine," Alain says. "Yes, of course."

Wednesday

On Wednesday morning, Meg wakes up to find that Alain has left books all over the kitchen table, the coffee table, and the far end of the sofa.

"What's all this?" she asks.

"I was figuring some things out for classes this year. I think I've got it now. I'll put them away later."

"All right," Meg says. She opens the cabinet by the refrigerator, which (much to her complete lack of surprise) does not have a teapot in it. "Could you, um, get the teapot down for me?" she adds, pointing to the cabinet in the corner.

"Sorry," Alain says, setting the teapot on the counter next to the coffee maker. "Are you going to be late tonight?"

"Yeah, Wednesday night class."

"Can I meet you for dinner before?"

"I'd like that," Meg says.

"That Italian place you like, that I can never remember the name of, but that has the flags out front?"

"Rosa's, five o'clock."

Thursday

"Alain?" Meg calls from the doorway, coming in Thursday evening with grocery bags. "Hello?"

There's no answer. She sets the bags on the counter, turns the thermostat up to 21, puts the groceries away, and then looks around their still book-strewn apartment.

The thing is, it will probably start to bother Alain that three surfaces are covered in French literature some time around Easter. So Meg gathers them up and reshelves them carefully onto the bookcase, alphabetically by author (because while Alain doesn't mind having books scattered across the living room, when they're on a shelf, he wants them in order). She's just finishing when the front door opens.

"I got the groceries," Alain says, holding up his hands so she can see the bags.

"Oh," Meg says. "Um, so did I."

"You did? I thought you asked me to this morning."

"No, I said I was going to," Meg says.

Alain laughs. "I must have misheard you."

"Or I misspoke." She looks down into the bag he hands her. "Well, we both remembered the eggs."

"So we'll eat a lot of omelets. I -- ma belle, where are my books?"

"I put them away for you," Meg says.

"You put them . . . " Alain looks over at the bookshelf. "Meg, I wasn't ready to put them back."

"I thought you said you were finished."

"With figuring things out, yes, but not with writing down what I'd figured out."

"I'm sorry," Meg says. "I really thought you were finished."

"It's all right," Alain says. "I'll figure it out again later."

Friday

"I think it's cute when you wear socks to bed," Alain says, coming up behind her as she's changing into her nightclothes. He wraps an arm around her waist, and kisses the side of her neck.

"I never wear socks to bed," Meg says. She doesn't like sleeping in socks.

"I think it would be cute if you did," Alain amends.

"And when you say 'it would be cute,'" Meg says, turning to face him, "you mean 'you have very cold feet, ma belle'?"

"Let's just say your toes are a very surprising thing to have wind up against a man's ankles at two in the morning," Alain says, moving them across the room toward the bed.

"Well, you're the only man who's ever complained about it," Meg says, letting her hands come to rest on his shoulders. "Then again, you're the only man who's ever been a position to have a complaint."

"Good," he says, pulling her (and her still-in-socks feet) down onto the mattress.

"Alain, why, if you don't like how cold my feet are, do you keep turning the heat down?"

Alain reaches up to push her hair back from her face, and then runs his hand lightly down her back, along her spine. "Do you really want to have this conversation now, ma belle?"

"I guess it'll keep."

Meg is cold.

Not the bone-numbing, can't-feel-your-fingers, air-burns-your-lungs kind of cold that is being outdoors in Montreal in January, but the kind that you get in early October, when buildings' heating systems haven't quite adjusted to the cooler air out of doors, and your toes are a little chilled inside your socks and you wish you'd worn a slightly heavier sweater.

She's also tired. She'd stayed up later than she meant to the night before, watching the Blue Jays clinch their division with a walk-off win over the Angels. And not just tired, but drained. It's been a long, full, busy day, and she's drained.

Her plans, as she turns the corner and heads for her apartment building, are to get home, take a very long and very hot bath, and find the easiest thing in the kitchen for dinner. Alain is out. It's the first Canadiens game of the season tonight, and he's getting together with friends to watch it.

At least, that was plan. But as she opens her front door, she can hear the game not-quite-blaring in the living room.

"Meg," Alain says, getting up from the sofa and coming over to meet her at the door. Behind him, she can see his friends Marc and Henri sitting on the couch.

On the down side, there go her plans for a bath. On the other hand, she can smell the pizza they've ordered, which means dinner is going to be even easier than she had hoped.

Alain leans down to kiss her, briefly, given that they've an audience. "I was just starting to wonder when you'd be back."

"He's been looking at the clock every five minutes for more than half an hour," Henri says, cheerfully.

"Lies," Alain replies, helping Meg out of her coat, though Meg suspects Henri is right about this.

"I thought you were going out," Meg says.

"Marc's tv is broken, so we came here instead." Alain looks over his shoulder at his friends. "You don't mind, do you?"

Meg wonders, for a second, what would happen if she said that she did. People who say you don't mind, do you? are never expecting you to say that you do. But since she doesn't, not really, she just shakes her head. "It's fine. I'm going to steal a slice of your pizza and go read or something," she says, with a slight nod toward their bedroom.

"You don't have to hide in the bedroom, Meg. You can join us."

Meg looks over at Marc and Henri. She likes them -- she likes almost all of Alain's friends, really -- but they're very . . . on. Henri, especially, very much engages people in whatever he's doing, which is in no way a flaw, assuming a person has the energy to be engaged, which Meg just kind of doesn't right now.

On top that, the Canadiens are opening their season by playing the Maple Leafs, which means she'll get cast as a Leafs fan, because she's Alain's Anglo wife from Ontario, despite the fact that her support of the team has never been more than nominal. (They were the "local" team, when she was growing up, so they were her team kind of by default. She's never felt a particular connection to them, or to hockey in general -- that's reserved for the Blue Jays, and baseball. There is also the fact, as her high school boyfriend had once gotten her to admit, that she's oddly bothered by the non-standard plural, even while acknowledging that Toronto Maple Leaves would sound silly, and Alain is waiting for an answer, why is she thinking about Derek, anyway?)

Meg turns her attention back to her husband.

"That's all right," Meg says. "I'll just . . . "

"We want you to," Alain says.

"I don't . . . " Meg says, but can't quite bring herself to say want to. But she doesn't. And it's not a reflection on Marc or Henri, and it's certainly not a reflection on Alain, she just doesn't feel up to socializing right now.

"You're upset," Alain says, frowning and dropping his voice, with a glance over at his friends, whose attention appears to be back on the game. "Do you not want us here?"

"I'm not upset, Alain, I'm just tired. I just want eat something and lie down. So, this is fine. You have your night with the boys, I'll go find out who murdered the senator in my book."

"You're sure?"

"I'm positive."

"I feel bad, though," Alain says. "I haven't seen you all day and now we're both home and I'm ignoring you."

"You're not ignoring me."

Alain studies her face for a second, and Meg finds herself thinking that if she doesn't get out of the entry way to this apartment soon, she's going to scream. And then he nods, though she can tell by looking at him that he doesn't really understand why she doesn't want to watch the game with them.

"If you change your mind," he says.

"I know where to find you."

"How many shades of lipstick do I have on my cheek?" Meg asks.

The last of the guests has finally made it through the receiving line, and the bridal party has taken a moment to catch its collective breath after the whirl of thank you for being here and it was a lovely ceremony (and, from Laura to Alain, do not be a jerk).

Kim smiles. "A few," she allows. "Do you want help with that before your grand entrance?"

"And all the pictured thereof?" Meg asks. "Yes, definitely. Thank you. We'll be right back," she tells Alain.

He reaches out and catches her hand. "Hurry back. You owe me a dance."

The dance in question is to The Beatles' "Michelle." It may not exactly be a traditional choice, but it's in both English and French and includes Alain's nickname for her, and they like it. Alain is fond of humming it while they do things like fix dinner. (And it's certainly a better choice than that silly Bryan Adams Robin Hood movie song that the radio stations won't stop playing.)

There are other people Meg "owes" dances to as well: her father and Alain's father, Luc and Oncle Sylvain. And Carlisle, who asks her for what would probably be a very proper waltz if Meg knew how to dance a very proper waltz. She's quite sure that Carlisle does, but he's very gracious about leading her through steps she's not exactly getting right, and is probably doing a great deal of compensating for her missteps. When the song ends he returns her to Alain, and thanks them both. "Now you get to spend the rest of your lives realizing how lucky you are," he tells them before he goes.

"I think your friend is having fun," Alain says, wrapping an arm around her waist, and Meg looks over her shoulder to see what he's looking at, and then laughs. On the far side of the dance floor, Castiel appears to have been adopted by three of Alain's young cousins. (Meg knows their names are Hélène, Laetitia, and Virginie, though she doesn't know which name goes with which cousin). The four of them are dancing in the unself-conscious and fairly ridiculous manner of ten-year-olds and (apparently) Angels of the Lord.

There's no sit-down meal, though there's also no shortage of food. Not for most people, anyway, though Meg and Alain can't quite seem to get enough of a break from talking to people and dancing and photographs to actually get any of it themselves. Meg is starting to wonder how to go about remedying that when Parker arrives with a very full plate and hands it to Alain.

"You two need to eat something," she says. "Can't have the bride and groom fainting at the reception. I'm ninety-nine percent sure that's considered bad luck. And those little puff things by your thumb are excellent."

"Thank you," Meg says.

"Eat," Parker repeats. "I'm going to go say hi to the cute boy over in the corner."

Alain looks over to the corner. "That's my cousin Thierry. He doesn't speak English."

"Pfft," Parker says as she goes, with a wave of her hand that implies a common language is far from necessary.

Then again, this is Parker, so it may not be.

Several minutes later, when Parker is dancing with Thierry, and Alain has gone to get rid of the now-empty plate, Meg takes a moment to just look around the room and try to fix all this in her memory. It's all going by so fast.

"Hello, Meg," someone says from just behind her shoulder.

Hello, Edward. Meg turns around, and smiles. I suppose if I forget anything, I can always ask you to remind me.

Edward's smile has the edge of a smirk. "How thorough you like me to be? Should I prepare a journal with all the things you've missed?"

Meg smiles. No. Not all of them. Only the good ones.

When the DJ takes his break, Luc takes the microphone to make the toast. In addition to being the best man, the groom's brother is, after all, an actor and a performer. He is also fluent in English, and he essentially provides his own simultaneous translation throughout, moving easily from one language to the other, so no one will be left out.

"Mesdames et monsieurs, ladies and gentlemen, a moment of your time, please. Thank you," he says, as the the chatter in the room falls away. "My brother's first girlfriend was a girl called Anastasie." Beside her, Meg hears Alain groan, faintly and without anything much like sincerity. "She had long blonde braids and somewhat crooked teeth, and Alain talked about her all the time. They were six."

Luc pauses, and then continues. "After Anastasie, when he was older, Alain tended to be a little . . . cooler, about his girlfriends. Not quite so effusive. Until one evening, when he he showed up at a bar with this redhead he'd met in the audience of a play I had been in at university. And the next day, did he have anything to say what way, I must say, a rather performance by his only brother? Oh, no. All he wanted to talk about was this girl. How beautiful and intelligent and charming and kind and wonderful she was.

"And as far as I can tell, he has not shut up about her since, though he has decided she is even more beautiful and intelligent and charming and kind and wonderful than he initially thought.

"So, Meg, thank you, for giving my brother someone to talk about the way he talks about you, and welcome to the family. And Alain, I hope that you will always have as much to say about Meg as you do now. Just perhaps not always to me."

Luc raises his glass. "To the bride and groom. May you have every happiness."

"Merci, Luc," Meg says, reaching up to kiss her brother-in-law's cheek when he joins them a moment later. "That was lovely."

"You're welcome. Did you get lipstick on my cheek?"

"Only a little," Meg promises.

There's a small bouquet of roses that the florist has provided for Meg to throw, as she didn't carry one in the ceremony. There's a great deal of good-natured jostling and laughing, but Meg throws it quite deliberately to Kim.

The flowers from the prayer book she carried down the aisle, though, she gives to Laura, quietly and away from the main bustle of the party. "I want you to have these."

"Oh. I -- thank you. They are very pretty," Laura says. After a second, she adds, "I am sorry they will die." There's a longer pause, and then she says, "You will tell me what I am supposed to do with them?"

"Take them home, and keep them as long as you like," Meg says. "There's a superstition that whoever catches the bride's bouquet will be the next person to get married, but I didn't throw them and you didn't catch them. I just want you to have them. Because you're a good friend, and you've come a very long way to be here."

"You helped. It is important," Laura says. And, being very careful with the flowers, she hugs Meg.

All in all, it's everything Meg could have asked of her wedding day, with the possible exception of its refusal to slow down.

"Do you feel a little like this whole day has passed in twenty minutes?" she asks Alain, when the cake has been cut (and most decidedly not smashed into anyone's face) and they've made their farewells and left in a flurry of birdseed and confetti and cans rattling on the back of Alain's car.

"More like fifteen," Alain says. "But it was perfect."

"It was, yes," Meg agrees.

In every way.

She's never been all that fond of being the center of attention.

Which is, unfortunately, kind of hard to avoid when you're the bride at a wedding. (Or perhaps that's fortunate, in the grand scheme of things. But Meg still isn't looking forward to it.)

"You look beautiful," her father says, as they wait in the narthex.

"Thank you," Meg says, reaching out to straighten her father's boutonniere, which doesn't actually need any straightening. "You look very handsome."

The organist has almost reached the end of the prelude. The mothers of the bride and groom are being escorted to their seats. Kim (in maid of honor capacity) is having a hurried, whispered conversation with Maryse, Alain's cousin who is tasked with keeping everything running on time and in order today.

Meg shifts her grip on the prayer book, with its gardenia and spray of white rose buds, that she is carrying instead of a bouquet.

"Nervous?" John asks, with a smile that implies he already knows the answer to the question.

"A little," Meg admits. "Not about getting married. Just about walking down the aisle."

The organist begins Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary and Meg hears the unmistakable sound of a church full of people standing up.

Kim turns around, smiles brightly, and sets off on Maryse's nod.

"Well," John says, holding his arm out to his younger daughter, "just keep your eyes on him and you hand on me, and you'll be fine."

Meg settles her hand on her father's arm. "Thank you."

"Deep breath, big smile, and here we go, Megkin."

The use of her childhood nickname almost makes her laugh (which was, no doubt, the point).

St. Andrew's is a beautiful church, and it's full of people she knows and loves and cares about (some of whom are here in defiance of rational laws of time and space), and Meg sees absolutely none of that right now, because she has taken her father's advice and is keeping her eyes on Alain.

Alain, it must be said, does not appear to be paying much attention to their surroundings, either. And his smile right now might be the absolute most wonderful thing Meg has ever seen in her life.

"I like the dress," Alain says, leaning over a little to whisper under the cover of the end of the processional.

"Worth the wait, then?" she asks.

"In every way," he says.

There's a moment of profound silence when the organ ends, and Meg hands her prayer book bouquet over to Kim. And then the priest says, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony," and the service has begun.

Meg and Alain had several long discussions with each other and with Reverend Webb about how much of the service to put in French, before deciding (to Mr. Webb's not quite entirely concealed relief) to basically leave it in English. One of the readings and one of the hymns are in French, but of the service itself, they are only using French for parts of the actual vows.

"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" Mr. Webb asks.

"I do," John says, and transfers his daughter's right hand from his own to the priest's. Mr. Webb puts Meg's hand in Alain's, and Alain repeats his vows after the priest. Meg suspects Mr. Webb is just as nervous about this part as she was about walking up the aisle; his French pronunciation is a little shaky.

"Moi, Alain Michel, déclare te prendre toi, Meghan Margaret, pour épouse légitime, à partir de ce jour, pour le meilleur et pour le pire, dans la richesse et dans la pauvreté, dans la santé et dans la maladie, pour t'aimer et te chérir jusqu'à ce que la mort nous sépare, selon le décret de Dieu, et je t'en donne ici ma foi."

He lets go of her hand for a second, and then she takes his.

"I, Meghan Margaret, take thee, Alain Michel, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth."

Luc, who has not forgotten the rings, sets them on the minister's prayer book. Mr. Webb blesses them and then gives Meg's ring to Alain.

"With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee honour, and all my worldly goods with thee I share: in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen," Alain says.

His smile is still absolutely beautiful.

Meg's vow is a bit let poetic. "Je te donne cet anneau en symbole et en gage de ma foi constante et de mon amour durable."

It's the end of the French that Mr. Webb has to lead them through, and he looks very glad to be done with it.

They kneel to receive the priest's blessing, and then he joins their right hands again, and says, "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." He looks from them out to the congregation and announces, "Forasmuch as Alain and Meghan have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving of rings, and by joining of hands; I pronounce that they be man and wife together, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

And that's it. They're married.

There are still readings and hymns and prayers, of course, and they still have to sign the register, but the marriage part of the ceremony is over. And Meg can't honestly say she pays all that much attention to the rest of it. And then, almost suddenly, are final prayers and blessings, and then the organist is playing the Alla Hornpipe from Handel's Water Music and Meg is walking back down the aisle, with her husband (husband) this time.

They reach the narthex just ahead of Luc and Kim, and for one brief moment they're alone.

"I'm going to kiss the bride now," Alain says.

And he does.

Something Old
The existence of a certain interdimensional bar aside, Meg Ford has never had a better-kept secret than her wedding dress. Even her mother has never seen it before the day she helps Meg dress in it. Months of asking has gotten her groom the information that it is white, and that she really likes it. (Also, that it's not so formal that he will be required to wear a morning coat instead of just a suit. He's very grateful.) It has been here at Sylvain and Ginette's house since the day she bought it with Laura and Parker. Ginette has taken care of the few minor alterations and repairs it needed. Now, looking in the mirror, Meg realizes she hasn't been entirely honest with Alain. She doesn't just really like this dress. She absolutely adores it.

Something New
On the other hand (or foot), the shoes have been far from secret. Just about everyone has seen her shoes by now as Meg has been carefully and methodically breaking them in for weeks now, wearing them around her apartment and to the end of the universe and out to buy the paper at the newsstand on the corner and down the aisle in the church at the rehearsal. It's the only logical way to deal with them. The heels are higher than anything she usually wears, and she's going to be on her feet in them rather a lot today, and no one wants blisters for their honeymoon. (Especially not when one is headed to Paris.)

Something Borrowed
She doesn't wear a veil. She wears her hair up, held in place with a great many bobby pins and a silver comb that belongs to Tante Ginette. She'd worn it at her wedding, she'd said, when she'd offered it to Meg with a great many if you'd likes and only if you want tos. It was quite obvious what it would mean to her if Meg wore it, though, and Meg never for a moment considered declining. Ginette hasn't any children of her own, and she's very close to Alain and his brother, Luc. She's been lovely and gracious and wonderful about extending that include Meg as she's become an ever more fixed part of Alain's life.

Something Blue
Her emerald-cut aquamarine earrings were a gift from Alain for her birthday, selected expressly for today. Most of the jewelry she wears today came from Alain, which only seems appropriate. One of the two bracelets around her right wrist was a gift in honor of their two-month anniversary, the first gift she ever had from him. Her engagement ring has temporarily taken the place of the amethyst she usually wears on her right hand, so it won't be in the way of the gold wedding band she'll be putting on shortly. She doesn't wear any kind of necklace; the neckline of the dress doesn't need help or competition.

And a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe
When every detail of Meg's outfit has been checked and double-checked, Kim goes to put the last touches on hers, and their mother produces a small velvet box like that for a ring.

"What's this?" Meg asks.

"It was mine, from my wedding," Deirdre says, and Meg opens the box to find an old English sixpence. "For your left shoe. I hope it brings you as much luck as it brought me."

"Thank you," Meg says, settling the sixpence in the side of her shoe, and then hugging her mother.

"You're welcome. Now don't make me cry. We don't have time to redo our makeup."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Meg is getting married in not quite seventeen hours.

Today has passed in something of a rush, a flurry of details and lists and phone calls and confirmations and timetables and, at some point, she is relatively certain she might even have had lunch.

She spent much of the morning with Alain's cousin Maryse, who is in charge of all the lists and details and timetables from here on out. Meg had not been at all sure about handing all that over, because they're her lists for her wedding, even though she knows she's going to have Other Things to focus on for her wedding day. But Maryse has proven to be calm and practical and organized, and moreover she brought her own index cards to their first meeting, and Meg has surrendered custody of her Notebook.

They have successfully rehearsed getting married to everyone's satisfaction. They've practically successfully rehearsed the reception, as almost all of the guests were at the rehearsal dinner that closed down Sylvain's restaurant this evening.

This wedding is as planned and prepared as it can be.

Meg's plans for the rest of the evening involve mint tea, a crossword puzzle, checking to see how the Blue Jays did in Seattle, and getting a decent night's sleep.

All of which she will get to just as soon as she finishes checking the one list she still has, which is a packing list for her overnight bag. After all, the groom is not supposed to see the bride on the day of the wedding until the ceremony starts, which she thinks is rather silly but which matters to Alain. They cannot, therefore, both sleep in this apartment, so Meg is headed off to spend the night at Sylvain and Ginette's.

She could have taken this bag over earlier, of course, but she wanted the excuse to come back to the apartment with Alain after the rehearsal dinner. It's amazing how difficult it is for the bride to find time alone with the groom once the wedding celebrations have started.

Meg is just closing the bag when Alain wraps an arm around her waist. "Do you have everything?"

She nods. "I do, yes."

"And your father won't be here to pick you up for another ten minutes. Whatever will we do with the time?" he asks, though he's already kissing her neck.

"Alain?" Meg asks, a moment later.

"Oui?"

"Luc has the rings, right?"

Alain laughs. "Oui, ma belle."

"And you won't let him forget them?"

"Non," Alain says, moving to kiss her again.

Meg reaches up and lays one finger across his lips. "And you won't let him keep you out too late tonight?"

Alain kisses her finger and then brings his hand up to move hers away. "One drink. That's all. Juré craché."

"All right."

"Ne t'inquiète pas," Alain adds, and Meg lets him turn his attention back to kissing his fiancée.

It's several minutes later, and not without some reluctance, that Meg takes half a step away from him. "I should go," she says. "Dad'll be here soon, and you know what parking's like down there on a Friday night. If I'm waiting, I can just jump in the car when he gets here."

Alain sighs. "My responsible Meg." He brushes one lock of her hair back behind her left ear. "I love you more than I can say."

"Je t'aime, aussi. Je t'adore."

Alain kisses her one more time, and then picks up her suitcase.

"Come on. I'd be a terrible fiancé if I let my bride-to-be wait alone on a street corner the night before the wedding."

"And you've been such a wonderful fiancé so far," Meg says, as they make their way out of the apartment and down the steps. "It would be a pity to mess it up right at the end."

"The end?" Alain asks, holding the door out to the street for her.

"Well, yes. You won't be my fiancé much longer. This time tomorrow, you'll be my husband."

Alain smiles, and reaches for her hand. "And you'll be my wife."

"I will, yes," Meg says. "And that is my dad," she adds, as John Ford's car comes into view. She waves to him, and then takes her overnight bag from Alain. "Have fun with Luc tonight."

"I hope the Blue Jays won for you," he says, as John's car comes to a stop and Meg darts out into the road to get into the passenger seat before the light changes.

"Ma belle," Alain calls, and Meg pauses at the car door. "What does your dress look like?"

Meg laughs. "À demain, Alain," she calls, and gets into the car.

"Until tomorrow, Meg."

The apartment looks so much bigger with nothing in it.

Meg has never thought of herself as especially sentimental about things, outside of a small handful of objects she's given significant meaning to. If asked, she would have guessed that she would feel the same way about places.

But then, she's never done this before. In her whole life, Meg has never moved out of a place. Not really. Her room at her parents' house still looks largely as she left it when she went off to university, which wasn't significantly different than it looked when she was in high school. And the res hall room she'd spent her first year in hardly counts – it was a res hall room, after all, and she can count her stay there in months.

She's lived in this apartment for almost three years.

She got engaged in this apartment.

In another hour or so, she'll probably never set foot in it again.

And that's . . . strange.

Carrie and Olivia have already gone, Carrie taking most of the living room furniture with her. The few odds and ends of furniture that were Meg's are gone now as well, the desk and the dresser to what she probably needs to stop thinking of as "Alain's apartment," the bed to storage in his parents' basement, the bookcase to the third years in the apartment across the hall for $20.

Alain has taken most of her boxes (neatly labeled, inventoried and cataloged in a notebook as she packed them) over to his -- their apartment. There are a couple still stacked by door, next to the vacuum cleaner and the bucket of cleaning supplies. Meg is, in theory, doing the final cleaning of the place.

The truth of the matter is that there's not a lot of cleaning left to be done. She and Carrie and Olivia had done that the evening before (just them -- no parents or siblings or boyfriends or fiancés or petits amis du jour). They'd carried out the trash and packed up the rest of Olivia's scattered things (haphazard, unlabeled, no inventory or system), scrubbed the kitchen and the bathroom. And then they'd sat in the floor of their empty apartment and eaten pizza out of the box, rather as they had the day they'd moved in.

Meg's furniture had left this morning, and she'd offered to vacuum and do the final pass of cleaning after it had gone.

To finish removing any trace that the three of them had lived here for most of their university careers.

So here she is, in a too big, empty, personality-less apartment, that both does and doesn't feel like some place she belongs.

Meg leaves the living room and goes to the small room in the back of the apartment that has -- had been her bedroom for three years. It's already empty, but she walks all the way around it anyway, and opens the closet door. It has been one of those places the end of the universe has liked to turn up.

Today it just opens onto an empty closet.

She stands looking into it with her hand on the doorknob, anyway.

She hears the front door open, and knows it's Alain even before she hears him call, "Meg? C'est moi."

He and she are, after all, the only people who still have keys.

"I'll be right there," Meg answers.

"I'm going to take these boxes to the car. I'll be right back."

"D'accord."

Meg hears the front door close behind him, and then closes the closet door. She doesn't look back over her shoulder as she leaves the room.

She looks into Carrie and Olivia's room, and the bathroom. Everything is neat and clean and in order.

She reaches the living room just as Alain lets himself back into the apartment. There's a single box (Meg: Bedroom: Box 6: Books: Mysteries) still sitting by the door, with cleaning supplies and her purse. Alain gestures to them. "Is that everything?"

Meg nods. "That's it, yes."

"Ready?" he asks, and she nods again.

Alain leans down to kiss her, once, and then picks up the box.

"Come on, ma belle. Let's go home."

The coffee pot is almost empty when Meg reaches the kitchen.

Which means that not only has her definitely-not-a-morning-person fiance woken up earlier than her definitely-a-morning-person self, he's been awake for a while.

Meg pours the not quite a cup that's left into a mug. She's not much of a coffee drinker (at all), and Alain brews coffee that's very strong and fairly bitter, but some times just seem to call for it, and this is one of them.

Alain is sitting in the floor of the living room, his back against the couch. Meg sits down next to him, so that their knees rest against each other. Alain's eyebrows go up for a second at the sight of her mug, but neither of them speaks.

They sit like that for several minutes.

"I didn't think it bothered me this much," Alain says, finally, his eyes on the window across the room.

Meg nods, even though he's not looking at her. "I know."

"I don't like it."

"I know that, too."

"I don't like it, I don't understand it, I don't trust it, and I don't really want you going there. And I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize for any of that, Alain."

Alain turns to look at her. "Not even the last?"

"No. You might have to apologize if you were trying to forbid me from doing something, but you don't have to apologize for not liking it or wanting it to happen."

Alain's smile is faint and very wry. "I don't think it would do me any good to try to forbid you to do something."

"Well, no. Probably not."

"And I know it's important to you, and I wouldn't even ask you not to go there, but I just . . . "

"You don't like it."

Alain shakes his head. "It's not that simple, Meg. It's . . . my fiancee is friends with an angel. How long can I possibly compete with that before you -- "

"Alain, you're not competing with that. You're not competing with any of it. There's no contest here. I don't see my life as some zero-sum game, where you can't win unless someone else loses."

"But you stayed there. When something was wrong and you needed help, you stayed there. You didn't come home to me."

"That's true. And I'd do it that way again. Because it's not that simple, either. It wasn't a question of 'something was wrong and I needed help.' It was 'I was ill and I needed medical attention.' And I had very good medical attention there, and I was safely quarantined so I couldn't make other people sick, which would have been much harder to manage here."

"But I wasn't there."

"No, you weren't. Look, Alain, I can't promise you that you will always be the single most important thing at any given moment of my life or the single deciding factor in every decision. You can't be. There will always be circumstances that affect that."

"That's not exactly encouraging, ma belle."

"But," Meg continues, "when you take all the decisions and all the moments and average them together . . . it's you. It's us. And no one and nothing matters more. Here or there."

Alain opens his mouth and then closes it again, shaking his head a little. But he's properly smiling for the first time since the evening before. "I hate it when you say things like that."

"No, you don't," Me says, with a smile of her own. "Even though you can't argue with them."

A moment passes before Alain speaks again. "Your friend Edward said I was 'very accommodating of all this.'" Meg winces a little. "What, you don't think I'm 'accommodating'?"

"It's not the word I would use. It makes you sound like . . . like a hotel. Or like you're just indulging some whim of mine or something. I don't know. I would say that you're amazingly accepting, and terribly supportive, and generally remarkable, but not 'accomodating.'"

"The current conversation wouldn't seem to support the theory that I'm accepting or supportive, Meg."

"Of course you are. You don't like this or understand it or want it to be happening, and you're still here, and we're talking about it. If you weren't accepting or supportive, we'd have been done a year and a half ago, when I first told you."

"Maybe," Alain allows. And then, in a bit of a rush, "I didn't like him. Edward."

"I know you didn't."

Alain looks just a little taken aback. "How? I didn't say anything or . . . "

"No, you've been very tactful on the subject of Edward Cullen. But I'm your fiancee. I know you, and I know when you're being tactful."

"He's your friend."

"Yes, he is. But you don't have to like all my friends."

And Edward told her that he hadn't been entirely kind to Alain.

"He made me feel like he didn't expect me to be good enough for you. And he talks like he thinks he knows you incredibly well. Maybe even better than I do."

"Well, he doesn't get a vote on whether or not you're good enough for me, and he doesn't know me better than you do."

Even without mind-reading, Alain knows her better than Edward does.

"I don't like him. And I can't say I really like this, either," Alain says, reaching out and touching the gold bracelet from Edward, where it rests on her right wrist between the silver one from Alain and the steel one from Laura.

Meg waits until he has moved his hand away, then turns the bracelet on her wrist until she can reach the clasp.

"No, I didn't mean . . . You don't have to take it off," Alain says.

"I know. But I don't have to wear it every day, either," she says, setting it carefully on the table beside her.

"Thank you."

Meg nods. "I know I'm not the easiest person you could have chosen."

"You're really and truly not," Alain says. "But you're the only one I've ever wanted to choose. And I won't stop trying to understand things, even if I don't like them. So here we are."

"Here we are. And of all the places I have been or will go, this is my favorite. Even though our coffee's gone cold."

Alain leans over and kisses her. "I'll make us more."

When an hour has passed and Alain has not returned, Meg fixes dinner -- chicken and salad. She leaves Alain's share of the chicken to stay warm in the cooling oven, his salad at his usual place at the table.

An hour after that, she moves both the chicken and the salad to the refrigerator, and puts a note at his place telling him where to find them if he wants dinner.

She's tired, but not remotely sleepy. Still, in the absence of anything else to do, Meg brushes her teeth, combs and braids her hair, and heads for the bedroom to change into her pajamas.

The bedroom door opens onto Milliways.

"Very funny," Meg mutters, closing the door without stepping through it.

She opens it again to find the bar still waiting for her. "This is the textbook definition of terrible timing, you know," Meg says, closing the door again.

The third time she opens the door and finds the bar waiting for her, Meg sighs and takes one very small step across the threshold. She never lets go of the doorknob, and she steps back into the apartment immediately. "Happy now?" she asks the door as she closes it.

It's still there the fourth time she opens the door. "Fine. Have it your way. But you can't make me go through," Meg says, and slams the door.

She curls up against the corner of the couch in the living room. She doesn't expect to fall asleep, but she must at some point. It's the only way Alain's letting himself back into the apartment just before midnight could wake her up.

"Je suis ici," she says, before he can turn on the light.

"Meg?" Alain crosses the still dark room and puts one hand on her shoulder. "You should have gone to bed."

"I fell asleep here," she says, bringing her hand up to cover his. His hand is cold. "Did you eat? There's chicken and -- "

"I ate."

"All right."

Alain is silent for almost a minute, his hand still on her shoulder, before he speaks again. "I don't like fighting with you."

"I don't like fighting with you, either," Med says. "Do you want to talk about things?"

"In the morning," Alain says.

"I have class and you have school," Meg says.

"So we'll miss them."

There's a second, and then Meg nods. Alain's hand tightens on her shoulder briefly. "I love you," he says. "I don't think this would be nearly so difficult if I didn't."

"Je sais. Et je t'aime, aussi."

"Are you coming to bed?" Alain asks.

Meg nods again. "Yes."

So long as he opens the door.

Meg has been back in Montreal for seven hours and nineteen minutes when she hears the key turn in the lock on the front door.

"Meg? Are you -- ?" Alain breaks off as Meg kisses him, dropping his suitcase and kicking the front door closed with one foot, his arms going around her. "Ma belle," he says, several moments later, "not that I am complaining, but . . . what brought that on?"

"Tu m'as manqué," Meg says.

"I missed you, too," Alain says.

"How do you feel?" Meg asks.

"Good," Alain says, with a smile. "Better by the second," he adds, bending to kiss her again.

"You don't feel feverish? Or have a headache?"

Alain laughs. "No, of course not. I'm fine. Maybe a little tired, but fine."

"Tired? Why are you tired?" Meg asks, reaching up to place the back of her hand against his forehead. He doesn't feel warm.

"Ah, because I spent the weekend moving furniture," Alain says, ducking away from her hand. "Meg, what's wrong? You're acting very strangely."

"Have you had the chickenpox?" Meg asks.

"I don't know what that is," Alain says.

"La varicelle."

"Oui, quand j'avais quatre ans. Luc et moi ensemble. Pourquoi?

"Oh, thank God," Meg says, resting her cheek against his chest. "Then you're probably immune and I didn't make you sick."

Alain steps back so he can look at her. "Ma belle, you're not making any sense. And that is not like you."

"I had the chickenpox while you were gone. And I was already contagious when you left, and I didn't know if you'd had them before or if I'd made you sick."

"Meg," Alain says slowly, "you can't have had the -- what did you call it, chickenpox? -- while I was gone. You would have . . . " he taps one index finger across her cheeks and the tip of her nose " . . . spots."

"I did," Meg says. "They're gone."

"That takes days, ma belle. Weeks maybe. You cannot have had spots for weeks. I saw you yesterday. You can't have been sick for weeks since yesterday."

"Well, most people can't," Meg says. "I can."

"Comment?" Alain demands, and then, before she can answer, "Oh. Milliways?"

Meg nods.

Alain takes another step back, dropping his hands to his sides. "You had the chickenpox. Which is a ridiculous name."

"Yes. And I went to lie down, and instead of going into the bedroom, the door took me to Milliways."

"And you stayed there."

Meg nods. "Dr. Cullen found me there."

"Edward?"

"Carlisle. His father."

"Right. Baseball."

Meg nods again. "Yes. And I was running a high fever, and -- "

"How high?"

"Dangerously high," Meg admits. "Around forty."

Alain draws a sharp, almost hiss-like breath. "Quarante?"

"Oui."

"Why didn't you come home?"

"I needed a doctor. And one was there. And, yes, I guess I could have come back here, but . . . you weren't here, Alain."

"I wasn't here because you told me you were fine. Yesterday morning. I asked you twice. You know I wouldn't have left if I'd known."

"I know. And when I told you that, I believed it. And I'm not blaming you, not at all. That's not what I meant. But if I'd come back, I would either have had to get myself to a doctor or hope I didn't get any sicker before you got home. And I didn't know if you'd had chickenpox before, or if I'd already made you sick, of if I could still make you sick. Either way, the most sensible thing for me to do was -- "

"I don't give a damn about sensible right now, Meg."

"Alain, I--"

"You were sick, you were very sick, and you were there. You were in a place I can't be, or even get to, to help you or protect you or take care of you when you need me. And that's just going to keep happening, isn't it?"

"Probably, yes," Meg says. "I'm sorry, Alain. I -- "

Alain holds one hand up, shaking his head. "Non. Pas maintenant." He sighs, and shoves one hand through his hair. "Je vais faire une promenade," he says, finally.

"And . . . do you want me to be here when you get back?" It's his apartment, after all. If he wants space, she'll go.

Alain very gently kisses her forehead. "Pour toujours."

He pauses at the door. "But don't wait up."

"Chaussettes," Meg says, sitting on Alain's bed and watching her fiance throw (almost literally) clothes into the bag he's packing.

It's not the way Meg packs -- she has lists and there's careful folding to maximize space and so on -- but it's not her bag. Alain tends to pack at the last minute and on whims. Which means he occasionally forgets things like socks or his toothbrush or, on one memorable occasion, any shirt but the one he wore out of the apartment.

"Oui. Chaussettes. Merci," Alain says, pulling two pairs of socks from a drawer and adding them to the top of the bag. He looks down into the bag, reaches in to move things around, and then looks back to Meg. "Je pense que c'est tout."

Meg nods, her own eyes still on the bag. "Meg?" Alain says, and she blinks and looks up at him. He frowns at her a little. "Ma belle, are you sure you'll be all right?"

"Of course," Meg says. "You'll only be gone two days." Alain and his brother have been drafted to help with the move of a cousin who lives in a town whose name Meg cannot quite remember. "Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"I don't know. You just look tired," Alain says, reaching one hand out and letting it rest against her cheek.

"Well, I did get up at 5 a.m. to help my fiance pack," Meg says. Luc is due at 5:30.

"Yes," Alain says, "but you look more tired than that would explain."

"Maybe a little," Meg allows. "It's been a busy semester. But I'm fine."

"I can tell them I can't come," Alain says.

"I'm fine," Meg repeats. "Go help your cousin. Don't worry about me."

Alain hesitates for a moment, his hand still resting against her cheek, and then nods. "Get some rest this weekend. Don't just study the whole time I'm gone. You can stay here, if you want some quiet."

"I probably will."

"Good," Alain says.

There's a knock at the front door.

"That'll be Luc," Meg says.

"Oui." Alain leans down and kisses her. "I'll call you. I love you."

"Je t'aime, aussi, Alain. Have fun," Meg says. "And don't worry about me. I really am fine."

"Go back to bed," Alain tells her, kisses her once more, and leaves.

Meg doesn't go back to bed, though. She likes mornings, even ones that start very early. They're quiet and still and generally speaking she can get a lot done. She fixes toast and tea and settles in to study at the table in the apartment she doesn't officially in just yet.

It's surprisingly hard to focus.

Maybe she is more tired than she realized.

She fixes soup, when it's lunch time, but finds the idea of actually eating it to be incredibly unappealing.

Meg revises her earlier theory. Maybe she's coming down with something.

She spends Saturday afternoon dozing on Alain's sofa and drinking most of the apple juice in the refrigerator. Alain calls in the evening, but they're both too tired for a proper conversation. He thinks he'll he home by tomorrow afternoon, though possibly not till the evening.

Meg wakes up Sunday morning with a sore throat and a dreadful headache and suspects she might be running a low fever. She decides against going to church, and instead curls back up on the couch with a book she can't seem to pay any attention to.

Finally, just before noon, she gives up on reading and the couch, and decides she's going back to bed.

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Meg Ford

June 2013

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Be Who God Meant You To Be

and you will set the world on fire

Entries tagged with montreal

July 8, 1992, Montreal

April 28, 1992 (Again)

April 28, 1992

April 18, 1992

November 13, 1991

November 9, 1991

November 8, 1991

October 25-26, 1991

October 14-15, 1991

One Week

October 3, 1991

July 6, 1991, Reception

July 6, 1991, Ceremony

July 6, 1991, Morning

Friday, July 5, 1991

June 1991: Moving Day

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June 2013

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