Chapter Thirty-Three
Gervais had barely pulled the van in to park in front of the inn when Elliott, still fuming from his fight back at the chateau with Bastien, threw the door open and beelined inside, his heavy footfall as he stomped up the stairs practically shaking the inn’s already unsteady foundation. Odette’s head snapped up from some papers she was holding behind the front desk, her eyebrows slumped with concern as her gaze trailed Elliott up the steps. Agnès, startled by the sound, hurried into the salon from the dining room clutching a pot of tea with the edge of her apron to see what all the noise was about.
“Ah, Prune, it is you,” she sighed with relief as she eyed the now-empty staircase. “I thought perhaps a stampede of truffle hogs had broken loose and made their way into the inn,” she joked.
“Not so much a hog ... more like a bull in a china shop. But it was just Monsieur Schaffer. He’s um ... not in a great mood.”
“Really? But M. Schaffer is usually so bubbly and full of smiles,” Agnès teased again. “Not to worry, he just needs a bit of tea and some cookies, I believe. That always seems to do the trick.”
I nodded and moved to make my way up the stairs as well, but Agnès placed the teapot on the desk and said, “I wasn’t expecting you until later tonight. I haven’t quite fixed anything for our dinner yet.”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about us. Elliott and I can fend for ourselves.”
“But I am just about to rustle something up. If you can wait for a bit, we’d love for you to join us.”
“Yes, please do. It will be so much more lively that way,” Odette said, coming out from behind the reception desk.
“Oui, go shower and clean up and come back down in fifteen minutes. I will have at least a petit amuse-bouche for you both,” Agnès said. “Pascal was hoping you might be home a bit early tonight for your lesson. He found some of Odette’s old books from l’école primaire, or how you say in the States ... elementary school? He thought they might be useful.”
“I know Pascal has refused, but you must let me start paying for my lessons. He has already given up so much of his time.”
She leaned in close to me. “He would never admit this, but I think he is enjoying playing the role of teacher. There is so much around here that he cannot improve—the foundation, the roof, the pipes. But your French? With that, he can make much improvement.”
Agnès and Odette shooed me upstairs to wash up while they shuffled off to the kitchen to prepare some light snacks. I couldn’t hear the shower running anymore, so I figured Elliott had finished and I could hop in for a quick rinse. I quickly shimmied out of my clothes, wrapped a fresh towel from the stack on the bed around me, grabbed my toiletry caddy, and headed down the hall to the bathroom.
The door had been left ajar, and grabbing for the handle, I burst in—and straight into a still soaking, half-naked Elliott who was shaving in the mirror. His back muscles were impressive, and my mouth fell open as my eyes trailed all the way down to his—
“Excuse me! What are you doing?!” he yelped.
I picked my mouth up off the floor and swallowed. “Um ... what are you doing? The door was half open! Seems reasonable to have thought you’d finished.” I shrugged with a bit of sass, but the motion caused the towel to start to slip and my edge quickly gave way to mounting embarrassment.
He held up his razor and continued to eye me through the still mostly fogged-up vanity. “I had to let some of the steam out so the mirror would defog and I could see what I was doing. The light in here is bad enough as it is, I didn’t want to cut my face to shreds ... again.”
I put a hand up in retreat. “Okay. Okay. Finish up. I’ll wait.”
He grimaced at me from the mirror and said, “Well, actually, I think you’d need to wait anyway. There’s um ... no hot water. Sorry about that.”
Throwing my head back, I groaned. “Ugh!” I turned on my heel, making an effort to nudge Elliott with my caddy as I left and not ogle the broadness of his shoulders ... again. Returning to my room to change back into some clothes, I resigned to just shower before bed, once the hot water was restored.
When I came back downstairs to the dining room only about ten minutes later, Agnès and Pascal were busy setting up a small buffet of assorted cheeses and canapés paired with pieces of warm crusty baguette while Odette set a round table in the back of the dining room. Along with the cheeses, Agnès set out a small plate of paté and a bowl of fat green olives rolling around in their golden oil, which was flecked with herbes de Provence.
“Hmm ... these look incredible. What are they?” I asked, my mouth watering at the different scents of thyme, rosemary, and citrus as I scanned the savory dishes.
Agnès slid a few more items around the table to make sure they were evenly spaced and nodded with satisfaction at her work. “Oh, you must try. This here is salmon rillettes, a creamy dip made of smoked salmon, cream cheese, lemon juice, and dill served with slices of cucumber. It is very fresh, the fish. I just bought everything at the market this morning.”
I plucked a cucumber slice from the serving platter, used the small knife to plop a dollop onto the round base, and took a crunchy bite. She was right. Not only was the fish bright with flavor, the lemon a prominent contrast to the salty salmon, but the cucumber—which was equally fresh—brought a clean crunch to the whole profile. If I wasn’t careful, I was certain I could eat the whole plate! A few minutes (and a handful of cucumber slices) later, Elliott clomped down the stairs, freshly showered, shaved, and looking (and smelling) like a million francs.
Pascal grabbed a bottle of wine with a nondescript label and five glasses and said, “Let us first feast and then immerse ourselves in study, for no one can truly learn on an empty stomach.”
We eagerly heaped our plates with delectable morsels and settled into our seats at an intimate table tucked away at the room’s far end, removed from the lone remaining guest who was leisurely sipping an after-dinner cup of tea. Pascal, with an inviting smile, poured us each a generous glass of the wine, urging both Elliott and me to taste.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s really delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite like it.”
“Prune, en fran?ais s’il vous pla?t.”
“Le vin est délicieux.”
Pascal clapped his hands together. “Très bien.”
I arched my right eyebrow and teased, “Hey, I thought we were eating, then learning?”
“We can do both, non?”
“Agnès, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. But I’m not gonna lie, this is awesome,” Elliott confirmed as he took another sip between bites of his baguette and paté.
“Oh, I love that word awesome!” Pascal squealed with delight as he clapped his hands together. “It is just so American, is it not?”
“Papa, Parisians say awesome all the time. In fact, they have adopted many American words and phrases into everyday speech. Walking around you would almost think you are in Californie,” Odette said, a wistful longing in her voice. It was clear she missed her life in Paris.
I turned to Odette. “Will you be going back to La Sorbonne soon?”
“Unfortunately, non. I have decided to ... how do you say ... postpone my studies next semester to help Maman and Papa with the inn.”
Odette kept her face bright as she explained, but I could see, as someone who fiercely understood what it was like to put on a brave face, that there was something not quite settled behind her eyes. I’m sure she didn’t want to make her parents feel guilty about her decision, but I could tell, from all the conversations we had before and now from the look in her eyes, that half her heart was in Paris, even though the other half remained here.
I felt foolish for unintentionally bringing up such a sore subject and tried to steer the conversation back to the incredible wine. “So”—I held the wineglass up high as if to inspect it—“what is this we’re drinking? It’s delightful! I want to send my father the name of the vineyard so that maybe we can carry it at our B and B? My father’s been on the hunt for a prize-winning white for forever. Even though it’s not his, he might jump at the chance to have something this delicious as a nice substitute.”
Agnès held up the wine bottle and proudly displayed it around the table. “If you can believe it? The wine, it is from Chateau Mirabelle.”
“Chateau Mirabelle? But how?” I asked.
“Only a few crates remained after the cellars were bombed. The Muniers gifted one to us at our wedding. We only drink it at the most special of occasions,” she explained, her smile reaching all the way up to her twinkling blue eyes.
I glanced down at my shirt, still stained with a faded purple splotch from my failed attempt to hoover my melty mess of lavender ice cream earlier, and my very wrinkled shorts. I cringed. “If I had known I would’ve ... made more of an effort to clean up. You see, Elliott used up all the hot water so ...”
He rolled his eyes, barely looking up from the plate of food he hadn’t stopped eating.
“If my English is not clear, forgive me. Tonight is special because you and Elliott are special. You have come to Maubec, and you have shared with us your stories and a little bit of your lives ... for us here in this small town, this has been a whole new adventure. It is nice to have new blood surge through this place. More than nice ... it has been ... what is the word ... nécessaire?”
“C’est le même ... necessary,” I replied. “Holy merde! Did I just say that in French? Like correctly?”
Pascal clapped his hands enthusiastically, “Oui, mon chou! You did! ‘C’est le même,’ means ‘it is the same.’ Félicitations! By this time next week, you will be teaching me French, non?” he joked.
I lifted my glass of wine off the table. “Well, this whole experience has been necessary for me too. I know my life may have looked perfect from the outside—everybody assumes it is, that I am, that my family is—but we are far from it, especially me. Your hospitality ... your inn ... your town ... that is what’s special. I know people believe Maubec lost some of its vitality when Chateau Mirabelle was destroyed, but it’s still here, in every single person I’ve been lucky enough to meet, well maybe except for Monsieur Grenouille ... he and I still have a ways to go. Anyway, I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to come here and meet all of you.”
I glanced around the table to meet each of their gazes, my paltry attempt at expressing an iota of the gratitude that was filling me up to the brim. Pascal—his hazel eyes filled with patience and kindness, his cheeks rosy and flecked with a distinct and oh-so-French beauty mark right under his left eye, and his dark hair messy on his head as he animated his stories with wild hand gestures. Agnès, so maternal and so commanding; I was incredibly impressed by how much of the inn and property she ran compared to Pascal, whose arthritis wouldn’t allow it. This was her show, and she was not afraid or ashamed to wear the proverbial pants in order to get things done. I loved that about her. And Odette, who loved her parents so much she was willing to put her own dreams on pause to try to help them hold on to theirs. Together they reminded me that families, though sometimes messy and often complicated, make up the very best parts of who we are, keeping us forever rooted to home no matter how far we may stray.
Finally, I took in Elliott with his brooding physique and floppy boy-band hairstyle. Like a more rugged Beckham in his ’90s glory days, Elliott was remarkably more handsome than I remembered him being this morning when I had been surprisingly taken with his empathy and interest in our research at Camp des Milles. I couldn’t keep myself from staring at him across the table as I remembered how closely we stood lighting candles at Saint Orens, how he guided my trembling hand with his own to make sure the match touched each wick. We’d shared something unspoken in that moment, and I knew that despite our past, something had irrevocably shifted between us.
I sucked in a breath, bolstering up the courage to say this next bit in only French to show my deep gratitude and appreciation for all they had given to me. “Je veux avoir un préservatif pour mon c?ur toujours!”
Odette started to choke and practically spit her wine back into her glass. “Um, Plum, what is it exactly that you were just trying to say?”
“That I want to preserve ... you know, capture ... hold on to ... this moment in my heart, always.” I thought back to the gaffe with Pascal a few weeks ago when I said to him that I was très excitée about starting French lessons with no idea of the phrase’s sexual connotation. “Why? Oh God, what did I actually just say?”
The table erupted into giggles—except for Elliott, who seemed just as lost as I was.
Odette did her best to stifle her laughter. “Préservatif ... it does not mean ... it loosely translates to ... a word in English that is more like—”
“Condom,” Agnès finished, causing the table to burst into uncontrollable fits again, including Elliott, who finally understood the meaning.
Odette, still rife with giggles, managed, “What you said was, ‘I want to always have a condom for my heart!’”
“Well, that’s one way to express your gratitude,” Elliott teased, his smile so genuine and heartwarming as it reached all the way to his eyes.
My face flushed with heat, and I pressed my palm, cold from holding my wine, to my feverish cheek.
Pascal, still chuckling, said, “My dear, now you really do look like a mirabelle!”
And the table again erupted into giggles, and at the sheer silliness of my error, I too couldn’t keep the tears from leaking out of my eyes through my uncontrollable fit of laughter.
Pascal, wiping the corners of his eyes with a napkin, stood up from the table and extended his arm out to me. “Come, it seems there is no better time for us to get back to our lessons. It appears we still have much work to do.”