Page 2 of Meet Me in Paris

He folded his arms. “The better question is, why are you sleeping tonight? This is the last night of our childhood.”

“Technically,” I corrected, “it’s the first night of adulthood. Remember commencement today and Ms. Glasgow’s speech about new beginnings?”

“Pretty sure I slept through that part. Are you coming down?”

I stared at the shards of glass sparkling from my carpet, strangely pretty in the moonlight. “You seriously want me to leave this mess and sneak out?”

“I’ll clean it up first thing. You’re going to Paris in the morning, so this is our last chance. You coming or not?”

My mom wouldfreakoutif she saw this. She’d freak out if she even knew I considered sneaking out with a boy, even my best friend. This was the parent who searched far and wide for long shirts and even longer shorts to cover every remotely possible inch of myskin. Mom lived life with an abundance of caution.

Given what she’d been through, though, I couldn’t blame her.

The middle sister of us three, Alexis, now lived with my dad in Maine. I hadn’t seen her once in the year since the divorce. Dad probably fed her all kinds of lies about Mom being “controlling” and whatever. Thankfully, the youngest, Jillian, opted to stay with Mom and me. Our family no longer felt whole, and we scraped by financially, but we made do.

The child in me had searched the audiencefor them today. But that child no longer existed. I had to remind myself that things would never be the same again.

“You graduated with a 3.97 GPA,” Hunter pointed out. “Your mom will forgive your acting like a teenager just once.”

Glass crunched under my granny slippers—literally, since Grandma bought them for me—as I shifted my weight, hesitating again. If Mom came in and found me missing and a broken window, I could only imagine the scenarios she’d dream up. Cringing, I envisioned myself coming home to a line of police vehicles in front of the house. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility with Mom. “I’d better not.”

“Neddie,” Hunter said, the mirth gone from his voice. His words held a depth I rarely heard, making something within me shiver. “Be spontaneous for once in your life. I want to show you something. I swear we won’t be gone long.”

I glanced across the fence at his own window, still open. How many times had we made faces at each other through our bedroom windows? And used the secret language—the one that looked suspiciously like Morse code but involved flicking our lights on and off—we assumed nobody would ever crack?

I’d memorized every inch of that side of the Morrison house. The chipped paint on his windowsill, the splatter of bird poop above his window from an old nest in the eaves, the cracked brick from our potato-gun incident, still mortared into place. The picket fence that never really separated us once five-year-old Hunter discovered how to swing the slat aside and crawl through.

“Trust me,” he said. “Please.”

Dad and Alexis were a part of a childhood I felt all too eager to leave behind. But Hunter was also my childhood,and I didn’t think I could leave him behind in a hundred years. He probably felt the same considering he’d chosen to join me at the community college a city away in the fall.

“Fine,” I said, trying to sound exasperated but accidentally letting my curiosity shine through. “I’m coming.”

“I know you are.” He didn’t try to hide the triumph in his voice.

As I satin a tight leather chair around a shiny, fake wood conference table, I stared at the redheaded attorney in utter bafflement. This whole meeting felt like a dream. But, no, not a dream, because that required experiencing something in your mind or even longing for it.

This I wouldn’t have considered possible in three lifetimes.

“Let me get this straight,” I said slowly, leaning forward as if that would help make everything clear. “Our grandfather was a millionaire?”

My youngest sister, Jillian, shook her head next to me. She wore an Asian-cut white jacket over a baby pink tank that contrasted with her heavily highlighted medium-brown hair. Must have been a new outfit because I couldn’t remember seeing it in the laundry before. Her shopping addiction had only worsened since she quit college and became a social media influencer.

Who, ironically, made more than I did as a travel agent with a hospitality degree. Go figure.

“Sorry,” Jillian said, “but I’m having trouble believing this. We’re talking about Grandpa Howie, right? The guy who wore overalls to church?”

The attorney, Eleanor, smiled. Her shoulders bounced asif she struggled to contain a laugh. “A multimillionaire, actually. At the time of his death, his assets were valued at thirty million dollars.”

Thirty.

Million.

That was alotof zeros.

How did our grandparents hide wealth of that magnitude and never tell us? Grandpa drove the same rickety old truck my entire life and never said a word. He and Grandma never went on trips. They’d bought us decent birthday and Christmas gifts, but I always assumed that to be good, old-fashioned grandchild spoiling in action. But thirtymillion?

He could have lived anywhere in the world with that kind of cash. With only the smallest percentage of it, I could have gone to Paris anytime I wanted. I could even move there.

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