Chapter 348: My Dad Thinks It’s Spring

Aria took the phone and put it on speaker. The screen read 2:16 a.m.

“Elias?”

“He’s out.” His voice was hoarse. “Out of the OR two hours ago. Awake for one.”

Aria sat up. Damien had his back against the headboard, listening.

“Is he okay?”

“The surgeon got what he went in for. Clean margins. His vitals are boring.” A pause. “Boring is what I want.”

Aria pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth.

“Can I talk to him?”

“He’s asleep again.” On his end a door closed, and the hospital noise dropped away. “There are gaps.”

She lowered her hand. “What kind of gaps?”

“He knows his name. He knew me. He knows he’s in a hospital.” Elias ran through it like a chart. “He thinks it’s spring. He doesn’t remember the flight out here. He asked the nurse twice where his wife was.”

“Which wife?” Aria asked.

“He just said ‘my wife.'”

Damien’s eyes came up from the phone to her face.

“Some confusion after this kind of surgery is normal,” Elias said. “Most of it clears in a few days. With his history, I can’t tell you yet which gaps are new.” A pause. “He has already complained about the pillows. That part of him is intact.”

Aria held the phone in both hands.

“He asked for you,” Elias said. “First thing. Before the wife.”

She swallowed.

“I’m coming,” she said.

“I assumed.” Paper rustled on his end. “Visiting hours start at ten. He’ll be more himself by then. Or less. We’ll know.”

“Elias. Thank you.”

“Thank the surgeon. He held the knife.”

The line went dead.

Aria set the phone down on the sheet and laughed. It came out wet and too loud for two in the morning.

“He thinks it’s spring,” she said.

“He’s awake,” Damien said.

“He’s awake.” She wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

“What time is it there?”

“A little after five in the afternoon,” Damien said. “He’s been in that hospital since before six this morning.”

Damien reached over and brushed her hair back off her cheek.

“I want to go today,” she said.

“Then today.”

He swung his legs off the bed, picked his phone up off the nightstand, and dialed. When someone answered, he spoke French, low and even. Aria caught “Marseille” and a number.

From behind, in the glow from the screen, she could see the old scars across his shoulder blades, pale ridges she knew better by touch than by sight. She leaned in and kissed the one below his left shoulder.

He stopped mid-sentence.

The voice on the line asked him something. Damien cleared his throat and started the sentence again from the beginning.

Aria smiled against his back.

He hung up. “Car at seven. Wheels up at eight.”

“Leo?”

“Comes with us. Jade too.”

Aria pulled her knees up under the sheet and wrapped her arms around them.

“We’re leaving France with her still out there,” she said.

“My men stay,” Damien said. “You’re going to see your father.”

She rested her chin on her knees.

“What do I say to him?” she asked. “He’s asking for a wife. I don’t know which version of him is going to be in that bed.”

“Start with hello.”

Aria let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

“Hello,” she repeated. “Okay. I can do hello.”

***

Aria pulled Damien’s sweater on over her head and went down the hall barefoot.

Two of his men stood outside Leo’s door, and two more at the top of the stairs. Jade sat on the floor across from them with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up, still in her jeans.

She was on her feet before Aria reached her. “What happened?”

“Nothing bad. My dad’s out of surgery. He’s awake.”

Jade’s shoulders came down. “Good.”

“We’re flying to California at eight. You and Leo are coming with us.”

“California.” Jade said it like the name of a planet. “I’ve never been.”

“Has Leo?”

“No. He’ll act like he’s been a hundred times.” She looked at the door. “Do I wake him?”

“Let him sleep.”

“He’s not asleep.” Jade sat back down against the wall. “He’s lying very still so I’ll go to bed.”

Aria lowered herself to the floor beside her. One of the men at the door shifted his weight and fixed his eyes on the opposite wall.

“He asked for me,” Aria said. “My dad. When he woke up, before anything else.”

Jade turned her head. Then she bumped her shoulder against Aria’s.

“Go back to bed,” she said. “I’ll have him ready at seven.”

“Will you sleep?”

“No.”

***

When Aria came back, Damien was sitting on the edge of the bed with his phone to his ear.

“Ken,” he said, and put it on speaker.

“They’re here, sir.” Ken sounded wide awake, the way a man does after he has given up on sleep. “Your men. Two vans. Madame Séverine met them at the door.”

“And?”

“She put them in the barn.” A pause. “With blankets. She made them carry the blankets out themselves.”

“Good.”

“The children slept through it. Mostly. Margaux came down and counted them.” Ken lowered his voice. “Sir, Madame Séverine was in the kitchen when I got here. On the phone. She hung up when she saw me. She’s still there.”

Aria sat down on the bed beside him.

“She’d like to speak to Mrs. Sinclair,” Ken said.

The phone changed hands with a rustle.

“Aria.” Séverine’s voice was rough with the hour.

“I’m here.”

“Le gar?on. Il va bien?”

“She’s asking if the boy is all right,” Damien said.

“Tell her yes. Tell her he ate pizza.”

Damien told her. On the line, Séverine breathed out.

“And tell her I’m going to California today,” Aria said. “My dad’s out of surgery. He’s awake.”

Damien translated.

The line was quiet long enough that Aria checked the screen to see if the call had dropped.

“Va le voir,” Séverine said.

“Go see him,” Damien said.

Then Séverine spoke again, lower, with a pause between each word.

“Revenez vite. La famille sait que tu es ici.”

Damien’s hand closed on Aria’s shoulder.

“Come back quickly,” he said. “The family knows you’re here.”