Fifteen Years Ago

Christmas Eve. Our train speeds through the countryside north from Marseilles toward Paris. I sit by the window, my husband on the aisle, our daughters behind us with their books and music, their innocent laughter. Outside is a bucolic scene, a vast uncluttered landscape, the occasional cottage and garden, low stone wall, trees, all covered in a thick, gauzy snow-like frost. I cannot take my eyes from the beauty of it, the stillness, the repose, mile after mile as far as the eye can see. Nor can I look from the face reflected in the glass, the one superimposed over the sparkling winter white, the one filled with endless sadness as it watches me watching the world go by.

Paris overflows with Christmas. We have dinner, climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower, float down the Seine in cold so brutal it forces me back inside the boat. We walk along the river, past the closed booksellers stands. Later we happen upon Notre Dame and enter the vestibule of the packed cathedral, filled with warmth and candlelight and hymns to the glory of God. After, in our hotel, gifts exchanged, I lie awake, waiting not for Santa, but for resolution, for absolution, knowing that here, in the City of Lights, in the most romantic place in the world, in the wet, the gray, the cold, the charm, the beauty, the history, the love, the last vestiges of an already crumbling marriage have finally been swept away. 

Written to a prompt in a group I'm part of. Limit 250 words about a celebration, any kind.