MAËLLE
From my bedroom window, I could see the rows all the way to the village. I stood there while the gray Peugeot went down the drive, past the bare vines, and slowed at the gate. The brake lights came on, then went dark, and he was gone.
Tears ran down my face, and I let them.
Someone knocked, and I told them to go away.
The door opened, and Marthe came in with her hands folded in front of her apron and her chin up.
“I have a story to tell you.”
“Marthe, please. Not today—”
She pointed at the bed. “Sit.”
I did. My father and I had that much in common now.
In all the years I’d known her, Marthe had never used two words where none would do, and she had never once volunteered a story. I’d told Dagger that once.
“The week you came home,” she said, “your father walked the vineyards with Rourke.”
“His name is Killian.”
She nodded and kept talking. “Rourke told your father that you are one of the smartest, most capable people he knows. Your father said you plan lovely holidays for people with too much money. Then your father asked him a question. ‘Do you love her?’” Marthe’s chin came up higher. “He said, ‘I do.’”
“He didn’t mean it. We—”
“You think I am an idiot?” Her voice filled the room.
“You think I do not know true love when it eats breakfast in my kitchen? I saw everything. I saw you come home at half past four in the morning with your boots in your hand. I saw him look at you every time you were not looking, which was always. You love him. He loves you. The only person at Valais who does not know both of those things is you.”
The night we dined at her restaurant, I’d scoffed at the amount of money he left on the table when Madame Nolette brought the check.
It was enough to pay for dinner three times over.
I’d started to argue, and he’d said, “She fed the woman I love when she was a girl. I’m settling a debt, not paying for a meal.
” I told myself it was the wine talking.
Or the cover. That he didn’t really mean it.
I glanced up to find my mother in the doorway, listening.
“He’s on his way to the Dijon station,” she said. “His train leaves in an hour.”
“Maman—please don’t.”
She crossed the room and took my face in her hands. “Marthe is right. Everyone at Valais knows you love him, ma chérie. Everyone in the village knows. The only one who doesn’t know is Killian. Because you never told him.”
“What if—” I made myself say all of it. “What if he doesn’t love me?”
Both my mother and Marthe laughed—Marthe, who’d laughed perhaps five times in my whole life.
“My darling Maelle.” My mother wiped my tears. “No man has ever loved a woman more.”
“I’ll never make it in time.”
“Take your father’s car. The Alpine.”
“Papa will—”
“Your father owes you a great deal more than a car.” She pulled me to my feet. “And take the back roads. You’ve known them since before anyone allowed you to drive them.”
Marthe took the keys from her apron pocket and put them in my hand. She’d brought them with her.
Rather than argue, I ran. Down the stairs, across the gravel, no coat, into the carriage house where my father’s blue Alpine sat, looking as though no one had driven it in years.
It started right up.
I took the road behind the hills, the one that dropped through the vines in hairpins. Maman had been right. I’d driven it before I had a license.
The train would leave in eleven minutes, and Dijon was still ten kilometers away. I prayed the whole way that I’d make it in time.
I left the Alpine where it stopped, in front of the station doors, and took off as fast as my feet would carry me. Somebody shouted about the car. I kept running.
The train to Paris left from platform three. It had all my life. When I came around the corner, the doors were still open and there, about to take a step up, stood Killian. His bag was over his shoulder, and he had one hand on the rail.
“Killian!” I screamed. “Wait!”
He turned and dropped his bag on the platform. By the time I reached him, his arms were open wide, and I ran straight into them.
“Please stay,” I said. “I love you. Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
He picked me up off my feet and spun me around. He kissed me, then kissed me again, and when he spoke, his mouth was still against mine.
“I love you, Maelle. And, yes, I’ll stay.”
He set me down, reached inside his shirt, and removed the chain that held his mother’s ring. He unfastened the clasp, then slid the ring off and onto my finger. It was still warm from his chest, and it was back where it belonged.
“Will you marry me, Maelle? For real?”
“Oui!” I yelped. “Oui, oui, oui!”
Behind us, the doors closed, and the train for Paris left without him.