Page 60 of The Vines Between Us
Alexandre's mother asked me to walk with her in the church garden while Alexandre spoke with relatives. Her request surprised me—we'd barely exchanged more than polite greetings since arriving in Lyon. She looked different than I remembered from that last summer. Smaller, perhaps, but somehow more present.
"Hugo," she said when we reached a stone bench beneath a flowering tree. "I've waited so long to speak with you properly."
She gestured for me to sit beside her. Her hands were like Alexandre's—long-fingered and elegant, though hers showed signs of age that his did not yet bear.
"Madame Moreau—"
"Marie," she corrected gently. "Please."
"Marie," I amended. "I'm not sure what to say. I'm sorry for your loss seems... inadequate."
A smile flickered across her face, surprisingly genuine. "It's no loss, Hugo. It's a liberation."
She turned slightly to face me, her eyes—so like Alexandre's—searching mine.
"I knew about you and Alexandre that last summer," she said quietly. "I saw how he looked at you. How you looked at him. It was the happiest I'd ever seen my son."
My heart stuttered in my chest. "You never said anything."
"I couldn't." Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. "Pierre would have... well, you know about his threats now." She looked down at her hands. "He said he'd hurt me if Alexandre continuedseeing you. That he'd make my life even more unbearable than it already was."
I swallowed hard, remembering what Alexandre had told me about his father's manipulations.
"He used me as leverage," she continued. "Always. Alexandre stayed away to protect me." She reached out and took my hands in hers. "Every night after Alexandre left for Paris, I prayed he would find his way back to you someday. When he would call, I could hear the emptiness in his voice. The loneliness. I knew what was missing."
Tears welled in her eyes, but they seemed like tears of release, not sorrow.
"Thank you," she said, squeezing my hands. "For being patient with him. For giving him time to find his way back to himself."
I had to clear my throat before I could speak. "Thank you for giving him life. For protecting him as much as you could."
"He has my heart," she whispered. "But my heart was always too soft for this world." Her grip on my hands tightened. "Promise me you'll take care of my boy, Hugo. Promise me you'll love him the way he deserves to be loved."
"I promise," I said without hesitation. "I'll love him every day for the rest of our lives. You don't have to worry anymore."
She nodded once, releasing my hands to wipe away her tears. "Good. That's good." She stood, smoothing her black dress. "We should go back. He'll be wondering where we've gone."
As we walked back toward the church, she added quietly, "Be patient with him still. He's learning how to be happy without waiting for the blow to fall."
"I know," I said. "I have all the patience in the world for him."
She smiled then, a real smile that transformed her face. "Yes," she said. "I believe you do."
ALEXANDRE
The church was half-full for the service. We sat in the back while my mother received condolences from people who'd known my father as a respected businessman, not the monster he'd been at home. His brother, my uncle Bernard, delivered a eulogy full of platitudes about family values and moral character that made me dig my fingernails into my palms.
I watched my father's relatives—the aunts who'd seen my mother's bruises and said nothing, the cousins who'd witnessed his drunken rages at family gatherings and looked the other way. They all wore appropriately somber expressions, maintaining the charade they'd participated in for decades. The great conspiracy of silence that had protected him and imprisoned us.
"His side of the family knows," I whispered to Hugo. "They've always known what he was. Look at them—not one genuine tear in the place."
Hugo's hand found mine between us on the pew. "They have to live with that knowledge," he murmured back. "You don't, not anymore."
He was right. The tension that had lived in my mother's shoulders for decades was gone. She stood straighter, spoke more clearly, even smiled—something I hadn't seen her do in my father's presence since childhood. Her black dress was simple but elegant, and for the first time I noticed how much she resembled the photographs of her youth, before my father had diminished her.
After the service, when the last mourners had filed past the casket, my mother approached us. She embraced me first, then turned to Hugo.
"Thank you both for coming," she said. "Would you join me for dinner? There's a little bistro near my apartment that Pierre would never take me to. Too bohemian for his tastes."
