Ульяна Солнечная – Its Never Too Late - As Long As Youre Alive (страница 15)
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Too many new things in one day.
She took out her phone and texted Barbara:
Made it to Dallas. Waiting for Paris. Scared.
A minute later, Barbara replied:
Be scared and go anyway. Garfield says hello and requests cheese.
Kate smiled and put the phone away.
For the Paris flight, they invited seniors and passengers with children to board first.
Kate used that privilege for the first time in her life.
She felt a little awkward about it, but the awkwardness vanished the moment she stepped into the aircraft.
It was enormous.
Double-decker.
Three seats on either side.
Wide aisles.
Rows and rows of strangers heading somewhere else.
She sat down, buckled her seatbelt, and suddenly felt her eyelids growing heavy.
The strain of the sleepless night had finally caught up with her.
She fell asleep before the plane had even left the ground.
What woke her was light.
Bright, golden light spilling through the airplane window.
Kate rubbed her eyes and gasped.
Outside was dawn.
The plane was flying above the clouds, and they were burning pink, orange, and gold — as if someone had lit the sky from within.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the flight attendant said with a smile as she passed. “Two more hours to Paris.”
Two hours.
Kate stared at the sunrise and thought of how many dawns she had slept through in her life.
How many mornings like this had gone unnoticed while she was making coffee, packing lunches, sending Tom off to work.
And yet they had always been there.
Always.
She simply had not looked.
“Not anymore,” she promised herself.
“I won’t miss them anymore.”
Paris
As the plane began to descend, Kate suddenly saw it.
The city.
From above, it looked like a toy — tiny buildings, green patches of parks, the curved ribbon of the river. Then the plane turned, and she saw the tower.
The Eiffel Tower.
Thin, elegant, gray in the morning light. It stood in the middle of the city as if it had been waiting for this exact moment — for Kate Morgan from Oklahoma to finally see it with her own eyes.
Kate began to cry.
Quietly, soundlessly, the tears simply came. She didn’t wipe them away. Let them stay.
“Are you all right?” asked the woman sitting next to her, who sounded French, judging by her accent, and lightly touched her hand.
“Yes,” Kate said, smiling through tears. “I’ve just waited a very long time.”
The woman nodded with understanding.
Perhaps French women understood things like that.
Disembarking. A long corridor. Passport control.
With trembling hands, Kate handed over her passport to the officer. He looked at her, then at the photo, stamped it, and said:
“Bienvenue à Paris, madame.”
Kate understood.
Welcome to Paris.
“Merci,” she whispered.
One word. One French word they had learned with Thomas.
And it worked.
The officer smiled.
The luggage took a long time to arrive. Kate was afraid her suitcase had been lost, but then it appeared on the belt — silver, shiny, as if it too were happy to be traveling.
She took a taxi.
It was expensive, but Cheryl had said, “Mom, don’t try to save money on the first day. Take a cab, get to the hotel, rest. You can figure everything else out later.”
The driver turned out to be talkative. He spoke English with a heavy accent, but Kate understood almost everything. He talked about the weather, the traffic, and how there weren’t enough tourists this year, which was a shame because Paris was beautiful in every season.
Kate stared out the window and could hardly believe it.
Narrow streets.
Old buildings with balconies.
Bakeries that smelled like fresh bread even through the closed windows of the car.
People sitting at café tables — drinking coffee, reading newspapers, simply watching passersby.
And the light.
So different from Oklahoma.