One foggy morning on the bullet train heading 4:46 Eurostar to Paris, two passengers sat across from each other, avoiding the other’s gaze, and pretending to be strangers. The man had sat across from Sylvia since the train pulled out of St. Pancras Station in London. He had seemed familiar at first, the way strangers often remind us of our friends. But slowly it dawned on her that this was someone she used to know. It was Yves. She recognized him from when they were young, running in the cobblestone streets of their village until their mothers called them home to supper. It took some time for her to place the sparkling blue eyes hidden under lines from years out in the harsh sun, and the dark brown hair the color of chocolate mousse now streaked with grey. Despite his age, she could see a shadow of his younger self, and with it, a glimpse of what might have been.

When she first recognized him, she was shocked, and thought to herself first, what if he doesn’t remember me? And then, what if he does? Both situations made her heart beat faster in her chest. Slowly, Sylvia glanced at the clock, noticing that there was still over an hour until they reached their destination. They were not scheduled to pull into Gare du Nord until just after seven. She began to question her notion of getting on this train in the first place. Did she really want to return to France and all the memories and pain it held? Did she really want to become Sylvie again, when she had been Sylvia for so many years? Why had she ever left her peaceful Welsh home? Wales was a place where the locals spoke in an endearing dialect, and the sun never shone, but she loved it nonetheless. She loved the way the sheep bleated as they meandered around their muddy pasture, the rolling hills, and the way her small yellow car bumped over the unevenly placed cattle grates. She loved the few rare days each year when the sun shone, casting an angelic glow about the farm. Chickens, plants, and sheep were her only companions now, ever since her husband Richard had died the previous winter, and she had found herself rather alone, wishing to make peace with the demons that waited for her in France. As she thought about all that was right with her life in Wales, she found herself slipping into a light slumber, the kind that you wake up from feeling simultaneously refreshed and confused.

Sylvie had first met Yves at the village school, made up of a few rooms, the air thick with chalk dust. He sat in the desk behind her, but she paid him no mind. Sylvie had all the friends she needed, pretty girls with long brown braids, nothing like Yves, the farm boy with perpetually muddy knees. One day, her mother, who owned the patîsserie, frantically asked Sylvie to run to the farm to pick up more eggs. The closest farm that kept chickens happened to be Yves’s. Walking down the lane, dusty soil warm under her bare feet, Sylvie eventually reached the farm, momentarily distracted by the beautiful fields of sunflowers and grape vines twisting towards the sun. Then she saw him. Yves. Refusing to give her eggs, he asked for payment in the form of a game of hide and seek. Something magical happened to Sylvie and her new friend in the hazy late afternoon sun that day. Two people, united by circumstance, so different in life, yet with such similar essence and joie de vivre. Over the next few years, friendship would turn to love, many nights spent lying in the middle of the vineyard on a tattered blanket, staring up at the infinite stars above them, and sharing the occasional secret kiss.

Her daydreams always returned to her youth, and this sunny morning was no exception. Sylvia thought to herself, perhaps that is why I felt called back to France? Her mind could see the patisserie, the boulangerie, the boucherie, and her childhood home. She could smell southern France, the way that the salty Mediterranean air mixed with the sour smells of the fish market, and the rich scent of freshly baked bread.  When she woke up, she found herself thinking about lies, particularly the lies that had driven her to wake up one morning and impulsively drive as far away from her village as was humanly possible with only the clothes on her back. Sometimes we tell lies to protect people, other times we use lies to protect ourselves, and sometimes we let others write our lies for us. However honorable the intentions, lies create chasms. A chasm so jagged and wide that you are unable to build a bridge across it back to the other person. Sometimes the crack is small enough that it can be fixed by a shared éclair and a hug. Over time though, the crack worsens, getting wider and wider, deeper and deeper. This fault line will never fully heal, leaving a scar, a mark on the relationship and everyone involved.

When Sylvia woke up, she rediscovered her predicament. She decided, after a half hour of questioning herself and her decisions, to swallow her pride and reintroduce herself. She looked at him and those intelligent blue eyes of his caught her stare immediately. Speaking quietly at first, in a halting voice she said, “Bonjour Yves, c’est moi. C’est Sylvie.” As she spoke to him, she felt the memories resurface, the memories she had worked so hard to forget…