Free Hidden in Paris by Corine Gantz

phone. Tripped over the damn rug! Who’s this?”
    “I’m sorry you had to run...fall,” Althea stammered.
    “Nah, I like to live dangerously. What’s your name?”
    “Althea Hoyt.” Althea waited for a second. “I’m sorry.”
    “Are you kidding? Anything to bail out of my kid’s homework! What do you want to know, Althea?”
    Althea
. That was her name. Why did it sound different in this woman’s mouth?
    “Well,” Althea asked, improvising, “is this a bed-andbreakfast? How much do you charge? Do you still have a room? Is month-to-month okay? Is it furnished? I am...I’m thinking of taking a...sort of...sabbatical.”

Chapter 6
    Wrapped in her red poncho and sitting on the cold grass of the soccer field, Annie watched her boys and Lucas run with the ball. She was gathering pebbles in her hands. Amazing the quantities of stones that were heart-shaped when you started looking. Maxence was getting stronger she noticed. He could keep up with Lucas’s pace. The four of them playing soccer in the park was a bittersweet sight. Johnny had been too busy to do these kinds of things with the boys. He had meant to, but later. Everything was always for later. Johnny was a big talker, a man of promises, often broken ones. But the promises he made were made with gusto; with such details and enthusiasm that you could almost trick yourself into thinking they might actually come true. Future adventure-filled voyages in mysterious locations, future gourmet picnics by the moonlight, or future epic soccer games. She should have forced him to not miss out on the kids. But who was she to talk; she who at the moment sat on the ground collecting pebbles, lost in the past, entirely incapable of getting up and playing with her children?
    Lucas, in his Adidas shorts and knee-high socks, his skinny legs surprisingly hairy, was cleverly mastering the triple task of convincing each kid that they were beating him. Lucas threw his hands up in surrender. “I need a break.
Jouez sans moi,
” he said, and he jogged towards her and sat down, his breathing no heavier than after a stroll. The kids ran towards them, high socks and knees covered in mud, breathing like freight trains.
    “You’re just afraid we’ll beat the crap out of you!” Maxence said.
    “The poop out of you,” Annie suggested.
    “Let me catch my breath.
Je suis crevé,
” Lucas said. Maxence turned around, kicked the ball hard and ran. Paul and Laurent sprinted after him.
    “Her name is Lola and she lives in Bel Air!” Annie said.
    “
Quest-ce que c’est?
”
    “Hello? Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”
    Lucas shook his head. “A prince?”
    “Will Smith?
Men in Black
?” Lucas’s expression was genuinely clueless so she gave up. “It’s in or near Beverly Hills.”
    Lucas made a sound of recognition. “Ahh!”
    “She sounds so nice. Very normal. Just a mom with children, you know, like me. I kind of fell in love with the idea of that, you know, a lost mom with a daughter and a toddler boy, and me helping her out.”
    “And the father?”
    Annie considered the pebbles in her hands and had a vision of herself chucking them at Lucas. “Out of the picture. An abusive monster. Horrible.”
    “Did you fall in love with that, too?”
    “That what?”
    “The notion of an abusive husband?”
    Now her eyes were resting on much larger stones. “What is that supposed to mean? Of course not! I gave her some advice.”
    “Such as?”
    “I told her she needed to follow her instinct and put some mileage between them.”
    “Is all this her instinct or yours?”
    Annie sprang to her feet like a jack-in-the-box. “I don’t like where this conversation is going, so I’m ending it. I’ll be at home.”
    Annie walked away fuming, her poncho bouncing with each step. She left the field and didn’t turn around. What a French asshole! She trotted towards the house, crossed boulevard Suchet and made the turn after Musée Marmottan, and grumbled all the way to La Muette.