“Why?” She looked concerned for him. He was a man who needed to work. Even at sixty-eight, he had the drive and energy of a much younger man. She had seen it again when they were questioning her. He had been positively buzzing with electricity, like a live wire. It wasn't healthy for a man like him to retire. It was enough that he'd given up the ministry, it didn't seem wise to her for him to give up law as well.

“I'm old, my dear. It's time to do other things. Write, read, travel, think, discover new worlds. I'm planning to do some travel in South east Asia.” He'd been to Africa the year before. “I want to do things more slowly now, and savor them, before I can't do that anymore.”

“You have years ahead of you to do that. You're still a vital, youthful man.”

He laughed at her choice of words. “Yes, youthful, but not young. There is a difference. I want to enjoy my life, and the freedom I never had. I answer to no one now. There is a benefit to that, and a downside. My children are grown, even my grandchildren are grown.” He laughed. It was hard to imagine, but she realized it was true. “Arlette is gone. No one cares where I am or what I do, which is sad to admit, but true. I might as well take advantage of it while I can, before my children start calling the house to ask the maid if I ate my lunch or wet my bed.” He was a long way from there, and the picture he painted of his future touched her heart. In a way, she was there now too. Her children were much younger than his. She knew his oldest son must be well into his forties, and not much younger than she. He had married young and had children early, so he wasn't tied to relatively young children, as she was. But even hers were out of college, allegedly grown-up, and lived in other cities. Without Stevie to keep her company every day, her house would have been a tomb. There was no man in her life, no children at home, no one to answer to or spend time with, or take care of, no one who cared what time she ate dinner, or if. She was nearly twenty years younger than he was, but she was unfettered now too. It was what had led her to pursue the book, and the trip roaming around Europe, to find the answers that had eluded her till then.

“What about you?” He turned to her, with the same questions in his eyes that he saw in hers. “You haven't made a movie in a long time. I think I've seen them all.” He smiled again. It had been his treat to himself, to sit in a darkened theater, watching her and listening to her. He had seen some of them three and four times, and then watched them again on TV. His wife had never commented, and left the room quietly when Carole was on the screen. She knew. Right till the end. It was a subject they no longer touched on in the last years of their life together. She accepted his love for Carole, and the fact that he had never loved her in the same way, and never would. His feelings for his wife had been very different. They were about duty, responsibility, companionship, and respect. His feelings for Carole had been born of passion, desire, dreams, and hope. He had lost the dreams, but not the hope or the love. They were his forever, and he kept them locked in his heart, like a rare, precious jewel in a safe, out of harm's way, and out of sight. Carole could feel the emotions he still had for her, as they sat in her hospital room and talked. The room was alive with all that was unsaid, and still felt, by him at least.

“I haven't liked the scripts in the past few years. I don't want to do stupid roles, unless I do something really funny, which I've thought about lately too. I've always wanted to do comedy, and I might one of these days. I don't know how funny I am, but I'd love to give it a try and play with it. At this point, why not? Otherwise, I want to do roles that are meaningful to me and make a difference to the people who see the films. I can't see the point of just keeping my face on screen, so people don't forget who I am. I want to be really careful about what parts I accept. The role has to matter to me, or it's not worth doing. There aren't a lot of parts like that around, particularly at my age. And I didn't want to work for the year my husband was sick. Since then I haven't seen a single script I liked. It's all junk. I never did junk, and I don't want to start now. I don't need to do that. I've been trying to write a book,” she confessed to him with a smile. They had always had interesting conversations, about movies, politics, their work, views about the human condition, and life. He was an extremely cultured, well-read, philosophical person, with master's degrees in literature, psychology, and art and a doctorate in political science. He had many facets and a razor-sharp mind.

“Are you writing a book about your life?” He looked intrigued.

“Yes and no.” She smiled sheepishly. “It's a novel, about a woman coming of age and examining her life after her husband dies. I've had about a dozen false starts on it. I've written several chapters, from different angles, and I always get stuck at the same place. I can't figure out what the purpose of her life is, once he's gone. She's a brilliant neurosurgeon, and she couldn't save him from a brain tumor, in spite of all her knowledge. She's a woman accustomed to power and control, and her failure to alter destiny brings her to a crossroads in her life. It's about acceptance and surrender and understanding herself and what life is really about. She's made some important decisions in her past, which still impact her. She leaves her practice and goes on a journey, trying to find the answers to her own questions, the keys to the doors that she has left locked for most of her life, while she was moving forward. Now she has to go back, before she can go forward again.” She surprised herself with the recalled memories of her book.

“It sounds interesting,” he mused, looking pensive. He understood perfectly that it was about her, and the decisions she had made, and so did she. The choices, and the forks in the road she had taken, and not least of it, the decision she had made about him, to leave France, and the relationship she had seen as a dead end for her.

“I hope so. Maybe even a movie someday, if I ever write it. That's a part I'd like to play!” They both knew she already had. “I like writing the book though. It gives me the narrative voice, which is all-knowing, all-seeing, not just dialogue between characters, and facial expressions on a screen in film. The writer knows everything, or is supposed to, I think. As it so happens, I discovered that I didn't. I couldn't find the answers to my own questions, so I came to Europe to find them, before I go on with the book. I hoped it would open some doors for me, and unblock my writing.”

“And did it?” He looked intrigued, and she smiled ruefully.

“I don't know. It might have. I went to see our old house the day I arrived in Paris, and I had some ideas. I was going back to the hotel to do some writing, and the tunnel happened between the house and the hotel. And it all blew out of my head, along with everything that's ever been in it. It's very strange not knowing who you are, or where you've been, what mattered to you. All the people and places and events you had collected disappear, and you're left standing alone in silence, with no idea what your history is, or who you've been.” It was the ultimate nightmare, and he couldn't imagine it as he looked at her. “It's coming back now, in bits and pieces. But I don't know what I've forgotten. Most of the time, I see pictures and faces and remember feelings, and I'm not sure how they fit into the scheme of things, or the jigsaw puzzle of my life.” She remembered more of him than of anyone else, which seemed odd to her. She remembered more about Matthieu than about her own children, which made her sad. And she remembered almost nothing of Sean, except what she'd been told, and a few high points of their eight years. Even the memory of his death was vague. And she was able to recall Jason least of all, although she knew she loved him in a kind, brotherly way. She had different feelings about Matthieu. Her memories of him made her uncomfortable and brought back the memory of intense joy and pain. Mostly pain.

“I think your memory will come back. Probably fully in the end. You have to be patient. Maybe it will give you greater insights than you would have had otherwise.”

“Maybe.”

The doctors had been encouraging, but they couldn't promise full recovery yet. She was doing better, and moving forward quickly, but there were still times when she came to a dead stop. There were words, places, incidents, and people that had disappeared right out of her head. She didn't know if she would ever find them again, although the therapists were helping her. She was relying on others to share their history with her, and jog her memory, as Matthieu had. And in his case, she was not yet sure if it was a blessing or not. What he had shared so far had made her sad for what they'd lost, even a child. “If my memory doesn't come back,” she said practically, “I'm going to have a hell of a time working in future. It may be all over for me now. An actress who can't remember lines isn't likely to get a lot of work, although I've worked with a lot of those,” she said, and laughed. She had been an amazingly good sport about the loss she had sustained, and was far less depressed than her doctors and family had feared. She still had hope. And so did he. She seemed remarkably alive and alert to him, given what had happened, and the impact to her brain.

“I used to love watching you film your movies. I went to England every weekend, when you were doing the one after Marie Antoinette. I can't remember the name now. Steven Archer was in it, and Sir Harland Chadwick.” He tried to jog his memory, and without even trying, Carole blurted out the name of the film.