I don't want to boast, but I've just pulled off a real masterpiece. At the age of seventy-five, I have become the unrivaled outrageous old lady of Moussy-lès-Limas. I live in this peaceful little ... [+]
Billy got in touch. We must meet and soon. I have a secret to reveal that only you can understand – a true exquis. As if we hadn't lost touch years ago. The charge of his excitement ran through me. An exquis – our private language for something beautiful and rare not everyone would appreciate: a secret mulberry bush beyond the woods, heavy with sharply-perfumed fruit; a four-hundred-year-old diary in the chained library; a creased map of plans for a Blazing New World. How could Billy have slipped from my mind? How could I have stopped loving someone as luminous and gentle and playful as him? W