Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
T he past week has been surprisingly rhythmic between the now-familiar routine with the kids, French lessons with Emi, and quick passes with Jamie in the house. I try my best to not be awkward around him so his parents don’t think there’s something fishy between us and have me on the next Delta flight back to Boston.
Damien did get back to me before he disembarked on the cruise. A few apologies for missing my message and how he’d like to see me when he gets back. I like it. A man who can actually say “yes, I’d like to spend some time with you,” rather than giving silly pickup lines or crude requests.
Plus, after about an hour of sleuthing on the cruise ship’s website, I figured out how to send him mail. It was an absolute treat to put my farmers market stationery goodies to use.
A few days ago, I wrote the first letter and with Emi’s help, got the correct postage and plopped it in the villa’s yellow mailbox. I figured that I’d have something back by now. But maybe it got lost in the mail room on board. So I resolve to write a follow-up just in case.
With Milo and Josie chasing each other around the living room, I plop myself on the canvas couch and lift my knees toward my chest. Resting a notebook against my thighs. I tap my pen against my forehead. How do I not make this sound pushy or naggy or obsessive.
I’ve only written Dear Damien when someone asks, “Brainstorming your Oscar-winning documentary?”
I jolt forward, clutching the paper to my chest.
Jamie walks into the room and takes a seat on the sofa chair. He props his feet up on the wooden coffee table, catching his neck in the web of his fingers. A soft smile spreads over his mouth. It’s genuine Jamie today.
We haven’t addressed the gala night’s proceedings, and neither of us seems eager to do so anytime soon. His beef with Damien is still a mystery to me. But I won’t deny that the vibe I felt with Jamie my first day in èze, at the Cave, reemerged that night on our way back to the villa. It’s like my body and soul are drawn to him whenever I find his emerald eyes. That is until he shuts it down, flash-freezing his exterior and cooling the simmering heat. And it’s not just because of Angela’s rules. I’m sure of it, because his attitude is so back-and-forth even when she’s not around. There’s got to be something more causing him to pull away from me. What, I don’t yet know. But I can’t let myself fall into that smitten pit, not when I could actually make something really magical with Damien.
I rub the cardstock between my fingers. Loosening my shoulders, I say, “It’s personal.”
“Ah.” He nods. “Understood.” Though he continues eyeing the empty piece of paper resting on my leather notebook, overstuffed with travel memorabilia from taped-in ticket stubs to polaroids to journal entries. “Can I ask what you put in there?”
“Ideas. Details.”
“On?”
I sigh, resting the paper aside. “So when you...” I have to remind myself that Nick and Angela are somewhere in the house, and I lower my voice. “When you cook, you don’t just see a leek or a tomato or an egg. You see the bigger picture. Right?”
“I fancy calling it an ensemble of sorts.”
“Exactly. They don’t exist in a vacuum.”
This is my bread and butter. He leans elbows near his knees and tilts his head, his loose hair falling to the left.
“It’s the stuff around me that might get passed over if I look too quickly. Pieces of conversations, people’s clothes, their mannerisms, architecture. And then I tie it all together with words or film. Or at least, I try to.”
From my sternum to my stomach, buzzing butterflies flutter through. I rarely speak about this stuff to Tiff, let alone the guy I just met a month ago.
Jamie smiles. “So you’re a professional eavesdropper?”
I toss a pillow at his torso and lean back into the couch.
“It’s called inspiration,” I snap back.
“Well, I hope you use it.”
My eyebrows turn down. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I meet his green eyes, already latched on mine. My focus doesn’t waver until Milo jumps on my lap. “Kit Kat! Kit Kat!”
Angela marches into the living room, her heels attacking the terra-cotta tile. She strains her brow and rubs her temple.
“Milo. Baisse la voix s’il te pla?t.” I make a mental note of that phrase for the next time the kids are getting too loud. Angela whips her head in my direction, placing her hands over her wrinkle-free Chanel skirt. “Kat. Où est Manon?”
My stomach clenches.
“Where is she? Um...” I know this, but Angela’s unrelenting stare halts my capacity to access memory and quick thinking. “She’s, um. She’s with her friends. Elle est avec ses amis.” And even amid Angela’s foreboding aura, I manage to sputter out, “Elle sera à la maison pour le d?ner.”
“Et toi?” Angela forcibly pokes Jamie’s shoulder. “Will you be joining us?”
Jamie closes his eyes as if he forgot something. “It’s Monday, isn’t it?”
“Oui.”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that, Mum.” He doesn’t even turn around as he speaks to her.
Angela crosses her arms, an infamous eye roll following suit. “Incroyable.”
Nick walks down an adjacent hallway, hanging up his cell phone. He’d been speaking in Dutch, presumably with his infamous Amsterdam clients. Angela beckons him over.
“Nico, tell our son how much you want him at d?ner tonight, eh?”
Nick leans against a bookshelf, complying though his tone seems to know the answer he’ll get.
“Jamie,” Nick starts, but Jamie stands abruptly.
“I’ve got plans. Sorry.”
Josie bolts into the room, rocketing into her father’s leg for a hug. Milo tugs on my arm.
“Kat, Kat, Kat, Kat. Let’s go to the olive groves. Josie and I wanna play monsters and race cars.”
“Monsters and race cars?” Nick says, tickling Josie’s side.
Jamie nods in my direction. My cheeks flush with heat.
“Kat made it up. The kids love it. Even Manny.”
Angela raises her brow.
Milo swats my arm with my pen, repeating his request. But my head shake resolves him to finish with a “pretty please.” He’s giving me Benjamin Button vibes, and even Angela’s impressed with Milo’s improved manners.
“Okay, okay,” I say, stuffing my notebook in the bag at my shins. I had shoved my phone in there earlier and set it to silent while I drafted my letter to Damien. A message gleams on the screen, snatching my attention and draining all the color from my face. It’s from Noémie’s mother—Manon’s friend. Fortunately, the Frenglish she uses translates clearly. Unfortunately, the message relays that Manon bolted out of the ice cream shop and hasn’t been seen since. That text came two hours ago.
Jamie must notice the panic in my eyes, though I do my best to shield it from Nick and Angela.
“Everything okay?” he whispers, directing his attention out the window to not seem too obvious.
I nod with a closed-mouth smile and wrangle my hands around Milo’s and Josie’s shoulders.
“C’mon, let’s go for our walk,” I suggest.
Nick sips on his afternoon coffee. “Have a jolly time!” He raises his espresso cup with eyes glued to his cellphone. Angela picks up the latest volume of Lavergne designs but keeps one eye on me.
“Jamie, stay here a moment,” she orders. Licking her index finger and flicking a page, she reminds me, “Revenez avant cinq heures.”
Back before 5 p.m.? Sure, I’ll be back before 5 p.m. so you can handcuff me yourself and send me off to be deported for losing your daughter for real this time.
I stop in the kitchen to grab our going-out bag—a tote filled with water and the kids’ favorite snacks—before the mad dash across the lawn begins. I swallow gulps of air, calming my climbing heartbeat. I need to get to town. Screw the olive groves. I should’ve freakin’ suggested that we go get ice cream ourselves. Now Milo and Josie are a quarter of a mile through the villa’s grounds and making their way straight to the rows of trees ahead. I run after them, for the first time ever failing to enjoy the gentle sun or the soft breeze wafting off the ocean. Coursing my fingers through my hair and scraping my scalp, I curse as loud as an aggressive whisper allows.
“Kat.” Jamie’s voice centers me. He jogs up and hovers a hand behind my elbow. “Hey, is everything okay?”
Tears don’t brim in my eyes, but I get that tugging feeling in the back of my throat.
“Manon,” I huff. “She’s... she’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“She ran away in the village.”
Jamie rests a hand above my bicep. “We’ll find her. I think I know where she might be. Well, a few places.”
“A few?”
Jamie and I start walking quickly toward Milo and Josie.
“She’s run away from me before too.”
“Oh, so I’m not the only one she despises for no reason?” The kids’ bag nearly falls off my shoulder, so I tug on the canvas straps with a reinforced grip.
“She’s just busting your balls. She’s a real Chessley.”
“She’s a little Angela Lavergne.” I shut my eyes as if that’d erase what I just said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
Jamie surprises me by letting out a laugh. “Don’t be.”
“Where are we going?” I ask as he leads us through an opening in the stone wall separating the Chessley-Lavergne villa from the neighbors’ farm.
“Milo! Josie!” Jamie waves his siblings over. “I think she could be here,” he says, nodding his head toward a stone hut only about eight feet tall and right by the pen holding the infamous lamb and its brethren. Given the satchels of potatoes propped outside, it seems to be an old medieval dwelling turned modern pantry.
There are small muddy footprints on the granite slab step by the entrance. A smile grows on my lips.
“Manny?” Jamie kneels down and taps on the wood door. “Manon, are you in there? C’est Jamie.”
No response. He taps a bit harder until the door creaks open a few inches. A sliver of sunshine illuminates the interior stone bench. Jamie charges in, but no one is inside, just burlap sacks filled with root vegetables.
My stomach sinks. No, no, no.
“What are we doing here?” Milo asks, plowing his way onto the stone bench. “We want to see the olive groves and the castle.”
“The castle?” Jamie tilts his head.
“Yeah. The really big house way, way down,” Josie says, swatting her arm. “It’s got a little tower too.”
“But it’s on the top floor,” Milo adds. “So the queen can see everything.”
That sounds like the decrepit old chateau I caught a glimpse of on my very first day. I’ve been eyeing it at a distance on our grove walks.
Jamie nods slowly. “Ah. We don’t need to go there. Manon’s playing hide and seek, and it’s our turn to go seek her.”
“Wait, maybe...” I scan my memory. The kids always pretend to be royalty when we take picnics in the field. And Manon always insists that... “She’s the queen,” I blurt out.
“What?” Jamie rises off his knees and grabs Josie’s hand.
“What if Manon is hiding in the castle?”
Jamie looks away. “I don’t know...” He shakes his head.
“We have to try.” Milo and Josie don’t pick up on the urgency in my voice, but Jamie concedes with a reluctant sigh.
The trek across the field is reminiscent of my first day and our picnic in the tall meadow grass. Today, however, an infantry of ominous gray clouds hovers in the distance. The “castle” comes into view through the tall, skinny cypress trees, and the kids bolt off again.
A silence brews between Jamie and I. Our shoes scraping on rocks nestled in the soil serves as the only sound. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him hesitantly turn his head.
“Here,” he says, placing his palm on the canvas tote currently weighing down my left shoulder. “Let me take this.”
“No, it’s all right, it’s fine. I got it. I got this.” I pull the bag’s strap tight, the strain of both it and my personal backpack slung around my other shoulder twist my muscles. I have to be able to fix this, otherwise, I’m most definitely and completely a hot mess express that can’t handle this job.
“Please, let me help,” he insists, his green eyes full of concern. The strap digs further into my shoulder. It’s my turn to concede, and I hand him the bag.
“I hope you know,” he starts, glancing away. “I really feel awful about the gala. I wasn’t trying to?—”
“What, ruin it?” I snap my head in his direction. “No, I’m sure you weren’t trying to ruin my night, but you had no problem trying to ruin his .”
Jamie exhales through his nose.
“So congratulations, mission accomplished.” I cross my arms, hindering my balance as we traipse over some lumpy molehills.
I don’t realize Jamie’s stopped until I’m five steps ahead.
“That wasn’t my motive,” he urges.
“Don’t tell me it was because your mother wanted me with the kids. Because I asked her the next day.”
Jamie swallows fiercely, but I go on, stepping a few feet closer to him.
“She never sent you up to the roof. So explain that one.”
His cheeks redden, and he looks away sheepishly. I step closer to him with my index finger raised, prepared to point out more flaws in his logic. His crystalline green irises search mine. My chest grows warm, and I falter. Less than twelve inches separate Jamie’s nose from mine. I tear myself away. A short sigh tumbles out of my mouth. “Doesn’t matter now anyway. Like he’ll ever talk to me again. Or write back. It’s been five freaking days since I sent the first one,” I mumble to myself.
Shaking my head, I mount the peak of the hill. The chateau is less than a hundred feet from us, though a colony of chestnut trees camouflage its lower exterior. Milo and Josie trot ahead.
“The letters? Those are for him?” Jamie guesses, probably remembering the packet of envelopes I had splayed out in the living room.
“There a problem with that?”
He clenches his jaw as I roll my eyes. Annoyed, I step forcefully to the uppermost point of the hill, but I trip. My face lunges toward the grass until Jamie grasps my forearm. He pulls me back. My heartbeat races as I grip his bicep for balance. Our chests are closer than they have ever been.
The wind rustles branches from the nearby tree line. A shadowy figure sways in my peripheral vision, and I swipe my head toward the forest. My stomach clenches. Someone’s there. Watching us. I can feel it. I return my gaze to Jamie and quickly step back, regaining balance and clearing my throat. Jamie does the same.
“Jamie. We need to stop this. Whatever this is.” I look at the short distance between our bodies. Much as we’ve tried, we keep ending up inches apart and seconds away from spilling our feelings—at least I have.
“I know.” He lowers his head.
“It won’t bode well for either of us.”
Jamie pours his gaze back into mine, making my knees tremble and my heart leap.
“I know.”
“Look.” I point to the shabby building. “The castle.”
Jamie scratches below his neck. “Oui,” he affirms, taking a colorless, almost disappointed tone.
We follow the younger ones down the grass. A medieval moat surrounds the three-story chateau. Columns of limestone bricks, faded from the sun, wrap around the building’s exterior. Most of the wooden window shutters remain, though they are quite frail from years of storm battery. The charcoal-shingled roof is still intact, even with its few little towers poking alongside the chimneys. The place really only needs a little tender loving care to bring it back to what I’m sure it was in its eighteenth-century heyday.
Jamie and I take Milo’s and Josie’s hands to walk over the make-shift drawbridge. Beside the gravel walkway, a real estate sign hitched in the grass has a big “Vendu” sticker plastered across.
“Whoever bought this place...” I begin as we ascend the front porch balcony. “...is a genius.”
Jamie draws back. “A genius?” He examines a dangling shutter. “I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t buy something like this without a vision.”
Jamie shrugs. “Or a fondness for bankruptcy.”
Milo reaches for the brass lion knockers on the front door. After giving them a few thuds, no one answers.
“It’s locked,” Jamie says. I turn toward him, and he quickly adds, “It has to be. She can’t be inside. Maybe we should try the garden ’round back.”
“How do you know there’s a garden?”
“It’s France. There’s always a garden.” Jamie bounds down the front steps just as Josie twists the front door’s knob straight open. The creak makes Jamie’s head turn back toward us.
“Josie, how did you...?”
“It wasn’t locked.” Josie shrugs, and she and Milo bolt inside.
“Wait up, you guys,” I shout after them.
Jamie looks wearily through the open door and succumbs to follow me in.
“What?” I poke his arm. “Scared there might be ghosts?”
His demeanor quickly shifts, those jade eyes brightening in an instant. “Well if there are, they’re sure to fire out of here once those two start fighting.” He nods toward his younger siblings scuffing their feet on the hardwoods in need of polishing.
“They’re like our own personal sage sticks,” I kid.
Jamie chuckles, coursing a hand through his wavy hair.
Sunlight pours through the crystal windows above the entryway, piercing through the thick layers of dust bouncing around us. A grand wooden staircase marks the center, and two wide hallways spill out on either side of the railing’s banisters. The explorer in me wants to venture around with the kids, but the Continental Air hopeful wants to find Manon so I’ve got a shot left at saving my career prospects. One could call it selfish. I’ll call it coincidental multitasking.
Up the rickety stairs, a few rooms have locked doors. We knock on each but get no response. Josie pushes one open, revealing a room where someone’s started cleaning up. Floorboards have been stripped, and sitting at the ready are fresh wood pallets, paint buckets, and brushes. Whoever purchased this place has already gotten started on renovations.
Jamie rests his hands behind Josie’s shoulders. “Let’s keep going. Best not to touch anything that isn’t ours.”
It may be an old mansion, but I can’t help but revel in its sweet hickory wood and chilled limestone.
A dilapidated spiral staircase toward the end of the hall leads to the roof’s level where the towers sit. Josie runs up and pounds on the little wood door at the top. Sunlight outlines the crevices in the doorframe. A gasp from inside gives us all pause. Milo joins Josie in banging on the door.
“Manny, Manny, Manny!” they shout.
I rest my hands on their shoulders. “Hey, hey. Maybe a bit lighter, guys.”
They continue shouting until the voice on the other side of the door pelts us back.
“Go away!” Confirmed. Manon.
Jamie taps on my shoulder. Our bodies are mere centimeters away as he brushes past me, ascending a few steps to the door. Disinterested, Milo and Josie run back down and around the hallway.
“Soyez prudents!” I shout.
Be careful . Another one of Emi’s necessary-for-the-Chessley-family phrases.
Jamie knocks on the U-framed door with his knuckle.
“Manny. C’est Jamie. Will you open up? Please?”
I can see the shadows of Manon’s shoes in the crack between the door and the floor as she scuffs closer to it. Her voice doesn’t waver in aggression.
“Leave me alone.”
A sigh sinks Jamie’s shoulders.
“Let me try,” I say to him. We stand side by side on the final, narrow step. He’s disheartened but still offers me a kind half smile, and I lean my head against the door.
“Manon. It’s Kat. Can I come in?”
Her response is even more muffled this time, as if she’s talking with her elbows crossed over her face. “Why?”
“Well, we don’t get to talk much. Now’s as good a time as any, huh? Maybe you could show me the view from in there.” No response. Jamie bows his head. But I press on. “We can speak French. Show you all I’ve learned. Maybe you can help me with my R’s.”
“I don’t want to speak French ever again. I don’t want to come here anymore. I just want to go home. My real home.”
“Her real home?” I whisper to Jamie.
He rings a hand through his hair. “She wasn’t born here. Mum and Dad had her in England, but the rest of us here. Just worked out that way.”
It clicks with me then. She had gone to get ice cream with her friends, but with her lactose intolerance, she can only get the nondairy options, sparsely available in this neck of the woods. That shop in èze for sure doesn’t have any, which is why I’ve only taken the kids to Nice for gelato.
Manon boasts the culture but can’t claim citizenship by birth or consume a foundational food group in the region’s cuisine. For someone so proud of her heritage, I wonder if she just doesn’t feel French enough.
I lightly tap on the door with one hand and fish around my backpack for my journal.
“Manon. Can I show you something?”
“What?” She sounds depleted.
“You’ll like it. I know it.”
Her feet approach the door, and the knob twists to the right. Jamie and I raise our brows to each other. She cracks open the door an inch wide. Enough to see her puffy red eyes and cheeks.
“Only you,” Manon says, pointing to me. Jamie gestures me in, and I join Manon in the tower. It’s only about six feet wide. A stone bench horseshoes the perimeter, giving way to the trifold windows latticed with copper rods. It’s like Brothers Grimm came here before crafting Rapunzel. The view of the ocean and mountain ridges is immaculate, but I can’t see below the treetops. No wonder she hadn’t seen us approaching. And the headphones she wears explains why she hadn’t heard us come inside.
“Twice?” I point to her phone. She doesn’t respond. Still holding on to that grudge for making her miss the ticket window, I see.
Manon takes a seat on the bench and stuffs her knees to her chest. I smile awkwardly at her, trying to make eye contact.
“I know how you feel.”
She looks out the window. “No you don’t.”
I brush the dust off my palms from the cool stone seat. “Well, I can imagine how you feel.”
Manon huffs and shakes her head.
“You know,” I say, leaning my elbows on my thighs and playing with a hair tie. “Sometimes—well, more like six times outta ten—I feel like a stranger wherever I go. Fish out of water, you know?”
Like I just keep getting into situations that I think will feel right, but never do. My memory trails all the way back to college applications that seemed right at the time. To internships I had no interest in. To walking across the graduation stage, collecting a degree that doesn’t really light me up.
Manon keeps her head toward the window, but her eyes trail to me.
“All that to say. I know what it feels like to be a bit lost. Out of place.”
“It’s not fair,” Manon says, kicking her heel against the stone bench. Her strawberry-blond bangs falling out of her ponytail and shield her eyes.
“Can I read you something?”
“Whatever.”
Exhaling through my nose, I open my journal to June 7 and clear my throat.
“‘Today, Milo, Josie, Manon, and I went to the grocery store. Manon took care of nearly all the shopping. She knew where to get everything on the list. She even ordered for us at lunch because I had yet to comprehend the fact that entrée means starter, not the main.’”
I sprinkle in a few of my major fails, garnering a laugh from both Manon and myself. A light smile lingers on her mouth until I close the journal and her moodiness sets in again.
“Did you know you have a type of citizenship your brothers and sisters don’t?”
“Yeah, rub it in.”
“No, no.” I scoot closer. From the international law class—thank you, business school—I had taken last semester, one of the principles had stuck. “You have jus sanguinis .”
Manon scrunches her brow. “Ew.”
I chuckle. “It means you are French by blood.” I hold out the underside of my forearms. “It runs in your veins,” I say, trailing my finger along the blue lines visible through my pale skin.
Uncrossing her arms from her chest, she examines her own with curious eyes.
“Plus, I know someone who doesn’t do anything dairy either.”
“Who?”
I nod to her graphic tee with song lyrics printed across the front. “Billie Eilish.”
Manon widens her eyes. “Really?”
A spark of hope is there that I latch on to. “Mm-hmm. And Lizzo.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
She does a quick Google search on her phone to fact-check me, her jaw dropping when she gets her answers.
I lean closer. “You’re not any less French for not eating yogurt. Besides, coconut milk ice cream is super underrated.”
The smallest smile of satisfaction crosses Manon’s face. It’s maybe one of the four times I’ve seen her not looking like a sourpuss. And then, she does the unexpected. She wraps her arms tight around my waist, nestling her head against my side.
“Merci, Kat.”
I return the hug. The door creaks open. Jamie leans against the doorframe, his face alight with relief. As Manon and I unravel from our little embrace, my hip lowers back onto the stone, and something in my back pocket pokes at my tailbone.
Solange’s business card. I must’ve left it there from last week. Recovering my contact info from Estelle, Solange had sent me an email last Friday outlining her need for an editor in chief to help run her French Riviera magazine while she focused her efforts on her up-and-coming travel business.
Manon gets off the bench and runs over to Jamie, who tousles her hair.
“There she is,” Jamie says. Mid-hug with Manon, Jamie sends a grateful smile in my direction.
We may have mended this fence between us, Manon and I, but holding it together will be another thing. At this point, the key to me keeping this job is keeping her happy. And what does Manon enjoy more than berating my pronunciation? Autonomy. Before I know it, I agree to Solange’s offer.
“Manon.” She turns back around, her smile slowly evaporating. “How would you like to help me with something?”
The rest of the way back to the Chessley villa involves Josie and Milo climbing up nearly every tree with branches low enough to grab, Manon changing the name on her social profiles to Assistant Editor-in-Chief, and Jamie and I sharing amused glances.
Just before we step onto the terrace, Jamie leans into my shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispers in my ear.
When we step inside the villa, it’s like we cross an imaginary border, and he dissolves from my side. Hopefully, the potential stalker didn’t see the smitten gaze I just shared with Angela’s eldest son. Otherwise, she will surely send me packing for US customs.
Down the hall, Angela and Nick have gotten to chatting with Sylvie over the dinner menu. The little ones are back to racing around the house, and Jamie has disappeared.
Manon struts past me, clapping for my attention. “C’mon. We have work to do.”