The Ruby Notebook (26 page)

“It’s in Spanish,” I murmur. “Sea, sky, music …”

“Maybe his native language,” Wendell says. “Can you make out the fourth word?” I squint at it.

It looks like … 
Layla?

“Layla?” Wendell whispers.

“It’s really him,” I manage to whisper. Any last doubt is gone. “My father. He wrote this.” I run my fingers over the letters, tracing their smooth pathways.

Wendell pulls out his camera and starts snapping pictures. “But why this collection of words?”

“Maybe it’s a list of beautiful things in life,” I say. “Things worth getting out of prison for.”

“But he wasn’t in prison.”

“Maybe he felt like he was. In his letters to Layla, he seemed really depressed after she left him.”

“Understandable,” Wendell says in a raw voice. I can’t see his face, hidden behind his camera.

Suddenly, the darkness feels claustrophobic with its teasing slivers of blue light. I turn to Maurice. “Can we go on the roof?”

“
Bien sûr.
” He leads us up another staircase, through the doorway, into sunshine and wind. The view over the wall makes me catch my breath—the expanse of water and sky and unfathomable openness. There couldn’t be a more complete contrast, emerging from such darkness into such endless light.

I try to enter the state of my father’s mind when he wrote Layla’s name on the wall.

Sea, sky, music
, and
Layla
. Were these his pigeons? His treasures? What gave him hope? What kept him going from day to day despite his sadness?

It’s sunset as we putter back to the port in Maurice’s blue dinghy. Golden orange light dances over the water, softly, gently, compared to the glaring light of midday. At the dock, as we climb out of the boat, I notice a word painted across the side in bright white letters.
Mercedes
. “Maurice, is your boat named after the car or a woman?” I ask.

He chuckles. “A woman. And not just any woman. The true love of Dantes, the one he was about to marry the day he was arrested. And nearly twenty years later, the only person able to see past his disguise as the Count of Monte Cristo, into his true self.”

“Did they ever get together?” Wendell asks.

“Dumas leaves it open to interpretation. But if you ask me, they do.” He winks. “True love is tough. It can survive for years and years, flowing underground like a spring. And now and then, you think it’s disappeared, but it’s been there all along.”

We pay Maurice, throwing in a big tip. Wendell and I take turns shaking his thick, rough hand, thanking him. I write his number in my notebook in case we have more questions, and then make one last-ditch effort. “Maurice, are you sure you don’t remember where Jimmy went? Or his last name? Anything else about him?”

Maurice thinks, studying his boat. “I’m sorry. It was so long ago.” He squints at me in the evening light. “Can I ask,
mademoiselle
, who is this man to you?”

“I’m the daughter of Layla. She’s the woman he fell in love with in Greece seventeen years ago.”

He stares. “He’s your—”

“
Mon père.
”

Maurice closes his eyes for a long time, as though he’s digging into every last cranny of his memory. “Jimmy wore a pair of silver sunglasses, the round kind. He kept a little Walkman clipped to his jeans. He wore his hair long and shaggy. Oh, and a necklace. Made of leather and shells and a nut from a tree. Said it protected him from the evil eye. Deer’s eye, that’s what he called the nut.”

I memorize each detail to write later in my notebook. Each detail is filling out a little piece of my father, until I almost have a picture of him.

“
Bonne chance, mademoiselle. Bonne chance
. He’s a lucky man, Jimmy. To have a daughter like you.”

For some reason, these last words push me over the edge. “
Merci
, Maurice,” I manage to say, just before turning to leave. Then the tears well up, warm and unstoppable, spilling down my cheeks. I walk faster and faster, wiping my face on my arm.

Wendell jogs beside me, trying to keep up. I wish he would put his hand on the small of my back, the way he did to catch me on the boat. I imagine his hand there, barely touching the curve in my back, as we walk in the dusk, toward the bus stop, keeping a meter’s distance between us, a space wider than an ocean.

On the way home on the bus, Wendell and I talk in the gathering darkness. My tears have stopped but my head’s still full of fuzz.

“So let’s go over what we know,” he says, in a reassuring, businesslike voice. “Maybe you should take out your notebook?”

I pull it from my bag and, feeling better already, turn to a new page. I write:

We talk about the clues, examining them from every angle. Soon our conversation meanders, naturally and comfortably, to other topics—Madame Candelaria, Maurice,
The Count of Monte Cristo
.

“The Castle of If,” I say, musing. “What a perfect name.”

“Why perfect?” Wendell asks.

“A prison fortress made of
if
s. Made of assumptions. Like
the prison Jean-Claude’s made for himself.
If
he talks to his parents again, all his pain and guilt will come back. Or
if
he tells his friends about his past, they’ll think he’s terrible.”

Wendell nods. “Or
if
he lets himself love his parents, he’ll lose them, too.”

After that, we fall silent. I wonder which
if
s have formed my own walls.
If
I become closer to someone, it will hurt more when I lose him.
If
I break up with him before I lose him, maybe it will hurt less.

Wendell leans his head against the window, lets his eyelids fall shut. It’s probably been hard, I realize, excruciating even, for him to be with me all day. He’s been so careful not to touch me or look at me too long or too closely.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper.

I don’t think he hears me. Maybe he’s fallen asleep.

My mind wanders to my father and his dark cell and his music that calmed the hearts of criminals. I wonder about his love for Layla, and Dantes’s love for Mercedes, flowing underground for years. I wonder about true love, if that’s what J.C. had for my mother, even after one night. I wonder about Vincent and Madame Chevalier, and what their lives would have been like if they’d admitted their love years ago. I wonder about eternal life, if it would get boring, if you’d get sick of yourself and your thoughts and the world … or if things would seem new and different every day. I wonder if living forever would be terribly sad, always loving people, then leaving them behind. I wonder how you’d survive so many losses and still be able to love.

I let my eyes linger on Wendell’s face, which is only safe to do when he’s asleep. His face looks tender with car headlights passing over it. I wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t broken up with him. There are oceans of things I don’t know about him, things I want to know. I watch him breathing rhythmically, a lock of hair fallen over his face. I look at him the way Vincent looks at his room full of dusty old treasures.

S
team rises from two small capuccino cups, swirling upward between Layla and me in the morning sunlight at Café Cerise. Layla’s listening carefully as I read my notes about Jimmy. She’s been unusually quiet since I came home last night. I gave her the highlights of my trip to Marseille, and her reaction was surprisingly subdued. She said she was tired, and I looked exhausted, and we could talk about it later.

After reading the deer nut necklace item, I close my notebook. “Any of that jog your memory, Layla?”

She licks some cinnamon-specked foamed milk from her lip and tilts her head thoughtfully. “Well, obviously, J.C. wasn’t wearing sunglasses at night in the ocean. The necklace is a definite maybe. I
am
drawn to guys who wear necklaces.”

I can’t believe she’s taking this so lightly. It’s a huge, life-changing revelation. “But it has to be him, Layla! There’s the Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. The Greece connection. Not to mention he was so in love with you he wrote your name on a prison wall!”

“Okay, Zeeta. So it’s him. I’m just not sure what to say. You’re not really any closer to finding him. Yes, it’s nice he cared about me—”

“What if this was your shot at true love, Layla? And you missed it?”

“Oh, no. If it was true love, our paths will cross again.”

“Shouldn’t you
try
to make your paths cross?”

Layla fiddles absently with her tiny spoon, staring into space. “What if I try, and he’s some stuffy businessman now? Or a cheeseball politician? I’d rather leave it up to the universe.” She twirls her finger around her hair. “Anyway, we’re fine how we are. Completely fine. We don’t need a man to come in and ruin everything.”

“How do you know he’d ruin anything?”

She rubs her temple. “What if he doesn’t like how I’ve raised you, Z? What if he says I’m not a fit parent? What if he interferes? Tries to make you settle down somewhere? Makes me feel guilty for not doing it sooner?”

“Layla, he doesn’t exactly seem too stable himself. A normal man would just introduce himself without playing games.”

“But what if he has a good reason? What if he’s spying on
us to see if I’m a decent parent? What if—” She looks at me, her eyes welling up.

I see it now. She’s trapped in her own castle prison of
ifs
. “What if what?” I ask.

“What if he’s everything you ever wanted in a parent? Everything that I’m not?”

In the weeks after the eventful day in Marseille, my days fall back into a pattern. I wake up early, which is easy since I go to bed early. Layla and I spend evenings together, making Provençal food or flower crowns or found-object mobiles or broken-pottery mosaics. Whatever she’s in the mood for, I go along with it. Sometimes Sirona comes over and teaches us ancient Celtic dances or gives us basic lyre lessons. One night she lit a candle and recounted old Celtic legends in verse. Another time she described all Salluvii’s seasonal festivals, showing us how to cook some traditional specialties. I take dutiful notes to share later with Madame Chevalier and Vincent, who can never get enough of this stuff.