Free Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto Page B

that it was my father’s.” Paolo’s voice shook. “But now … Ibelieve it might have been someone else’s.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes.
    His neck, Shelley thought, seemed to be straining under a much heavier weight than the thin chain that hung from it.
    “Shelley, I think Julien was …”
    Shelley willed Paolo to stop speaking. There were certain things that were never meant to be put into words: your age after you turned twenty-five, your weight after the holidays, and how the man you married could possibly be more than two centuries old. She jumped out of her seat and ran to the lavatory, hoping to outrun what Paolo was going to say next.
    Absurdity and possibility collided against each other and bounced off the walls of the airplane’s lavatory. Shelley ducked and hit her head on the stainless-steel sink.
    Paolo knocked on the door. “Shelley? Is everything okay?” Concern replaced the trembling in his voice.
    She found his question highly amusing. Max was Julien and she was anything but okay.
    “Shelley?”
    “I haven’t flushed myself off the plane, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She had in fact tried to but had only squeezed half a foot into the bowl when Paolo’s theory about Julien and Max had ricocheted over her head like shrapnel. Shelley unlocked the door. Paolo stood outside, the locket tucked beneath his shirt.
    “You better not. You can’t bail out on me now.” Paolo eyed the reddish bruise forming on Shelley’s forehead. “Do you, uh, need some ice for that?”
    “No.” She brushed past him and marched to her seat. She pulled out the in-flight magazine and flipped blindly through its pages. Max’s voice and his stories rang in her head. She was certain that they had grown loud enough for the other passengers to hear. She forced herself to look at the magazine. Sand. White, like baby powder. And palm trees. Boracay. She slammed the magazine shut and took a deep breath. “If Max was Julien,and I’m not saying that he was, why would he tell complete strangers about his story? Why would he risk letting his secret out?”
    “It wouldn’t have been much of a risk, would it?” Paolo said. “I mean, you and I can now see the similarities between Julien and Max—his sense of family, his protectiveness …” He paused, tracing the shape of the locket beneath his shirt with his thumb. “But I don’t think any tourist would believe that their tour guide was actually sharing with them an autobiographical account of events that happened more than a century ago, right? To them, what he shared was just a story.”
    Shelley’s chest tightened. Max had left her with more than just one story—each gilded with razor-sharp details waiting to carve out more of the husband she remembered. “Paolo, Julien was just one of many men and some of them weren’t like Max at all.”
    PARIS
    Five Years Ago
    T he tour group trailed Max out of the cemetery like a procession of mourners leaving a funeral.
    “Why so glum, campers?” he asked. “I told you we needed to get the end of our story out of the way. Now that that’s done, it’s all tales of randy sex and comedy from this point on. Well, at least most of it is.”
    “Max, what planet are you from?” Brad said. “I mean, really, how many happy pills did you pop this morning?”
    “Yeah,” Dex said. “And where can I get some?”
    “Turn left down that street and look for a man in dark glasses,” Max said. “Tell him I sent you. He’ll give you a good price. As for the rest of you, we’re off to our next stop.” He offered Shelley his arm.
    She clung to it, eager to leave the cemetery and its ghosts behind. “Where are we going next, Max?”
    Max stopped. He opened his backpack and took out a small leather drawstring pouch, then handed it to Shelley.
    “What’s this?” She felt the weight of the bag in her hands.
    “Go on, luv. Open it.”
    Shelley dug into the pouch. Her fingers brushed against