Free A Summer in Paris by Cynthia Baxter Page B

in your face. The same nose, the same eyes ... but mostly I see that same smile. Yes, you are very pretty.”
    “Am I as pretty as my grandmother?” Nina asked teasingly, unable to resist.
    The old man thought only for a fraction of a second before answering. “Ah, I am afraid that no one could ever be as pretty as your grandmother.”
    He stood up and made his way across the room, stopping at the chest of drawers that was pushed into one corner. The top was covered with old photographs, most of them black-and-white. He opened the top drawer, reached underneath the assortment of things stashed inside, and pulled out one more photograph.
    “Here she is,” he said, his voice almost reverent. “I have saved this for all these years.”
    He brought the photograph over to Nina and presented it to her like a fine gift. Then he stood back, his eyes still on the picture. It was a photograph of her grandmother—not as Nina remembered her, but as a beautiful young woman, probably not much older than Nina was now. Her eyes were shining, and a flirtatious smile played about her lips. In her slender hands she was holding a bouquet of roses, blossoms so full they looked ready to burst with life.
    It wasn’t hard to tell from the expression on the young woman’s face that she had very strong feelings about whoever was taking that photograph.
    “I took that picture in Paris,” Marcel said, answering her question before Nina had a chance to ask it. His voice was filled with excitement. “It was just after we met.” He paused, then asked, “Do you know the story of how we met?”
    “I do know it,” Nina returned with a shy smile, “But I would like very much to hear you tell it.”
    “Ah, it was so very long ago. I was a student in Paris, studying law. I was a lawyer for many years, you know. I practiced in Paris.
    “I still remember that day as if it were only last week. I was hurrying off to class. I was late, as usual. I was running down the Boulevard St. Germaine, on the Left Bank, near the Sorbonne. I was trying to get to class on time, really I was. But all of a sudden I noticed a beautiful young woman, carrying a big art portfolio, standing on the corner. There was a flower shop there, and she had stopped to lean over and sniff a bouquet of yellow roses that was outside the shop.
    “When I saw her, I stopped. It was as if I had been struck by lightning. I knew I had to meet that girl, and suddenly nothing else mattered. Certainly not getting to class on time!”
    Marcel du Lac laughed. For a moment, all the stress, all the signs of age, left his face. For that fleeting second, Nina was able to see him as he had looked fifty years earlier—as he had looked when he was a young man, about to fall in love with her grandmother.
    “I went over to her, bold as could be, and said, ‘Ah, Mademoiselle. Do you like flowers?’ “
    He laughed, then shrugged his shoulders. “And that was how it began. After a meeting like that, how could Anna help but fall in love with a charmer like me?”
    His cheeks turned pink as he asked, “Did she ever tell you that she and I were very much in love?”
    Nina nodded. “Yes. She told me everything. Or, to be more exact, the letters told me everything.”
    “The letters?” Marcel looked confused.
    She reached into her purse and pulled out the stack of letters she had found in her grandmother’s trunk, more than twenty of them, lovingly tied together with a piece of faded, fraying pink satin ribbon.
    “Do you remember these?” she asked gently, holding the stack of paper out toward him.
    Marcel remained silent but his eyes filled with tears.
    “Oh, my,” he finally said. “My letters. She saved them.”
    “Yes. Your letters to her, and letters from friends she had written to about you and the feelings the two of you had for each other. She kept them in a special place where no one would ever find them. And she held on to them her whole life.” Nina took a deep breath. “I felt