Chapter 24 Gustave
Gustave
It’s September. Les vendanges* in Burgundy. I should be heading to Pommard to forget the city and the names that haunt it, but I don’t want to go.
Not without her.
I have had time to think—too much time—and the truth is that I fucked up. Now that I’m not being driven by fear and outrage, I know Tara would not have done what I accused her of.
I should have talked to her. I should have listened. I should have been careful with her.
I wasn’t.
I tried to reach her. But she’s blocked me.
I tried to talk to Cece. She told me to go fuck myself in both French and English, then called me an idiot.
“Can you at least tell me how she is?” I pleaded.
“No,” Cece snapped. “Because you don’t deserve to know.”
I called the Louvre and threatened them until my voice was hoarse. They sent her an email, telling her they’re rescinding her termination. She turned them down.
Not surprising.
I have no sway in the United States, so I can’t undo what Giselle did by having Tara fired at her job in Philadelphia.
“Giselle will pay,” I tell Philippe one night, bitter.
He rolls his eyes. “You are the problem, Gustave. Simone is the problem. Not Giselle.”
He isn’t wrong.
“I want to make this right. Apologize for how I behaved. I tried to call her, but—damn it, Philippe, she’s blocked me.”
“Non!” he says in mock horror. “What the fuck did you expect?”
I know I have lost her. I always knew it would end eventually, but not like this. Not so ugly. Not by my own hand.
Guilt crawls under my skin. It won’t leave.
She haunts me.
My life feels like it has stalled. I don’t know how to start it again.
I’m contemplating that on a Saturday evening, in my study, staring at the Cimabue I paid too much for. The colors used to comfort me, but now…nothing.
“Papa?” I hear Aubert before I see him. He comes in without ceremony and perches across from me.
“I rang the bell,” he says, concern written in the lines of his face. “You didn’t answer.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear.” I set my glass of whiskey down and try to look like a man who has it together.
“You should get Tara back.”
He says it like it’s obvious.
I look at him like he asked me to join the Paris Ballet Corps as a prima ballerina.
He sighs, shaking his head as if in disbelief. “Papa, you love her. She loves you.”
Now, I shoot him a glare brimming with frustration. “You know what happened. It’s better this way. I…I’ll ruin her life.”
You already did, Gustave.
“You can protect better her next time,” he says simply.
“From what? The newspapers? The paparazzi?” I let out a brittle laugh.
“From Maman.”
I suck in a breath. “Aubert.”
He studies me, then reaches for my half-filled glass of whiskey. He downs the rest of it and then speaks coolly, “I overheard something.”
“What?”
“She took the photo from my phone.”
“Who?” But I knew.
“Maman.”
The world comes to a stop. I forget to breathe.
When I finally can make sounds again, I ask, “How do you know?”
“I heard her. She was talking to Tante * Emma. She was bragging. Maman said she sent the selfie to the photographer she always has on call. The one who makes sure she looks good in the photos? She said it would teach you a lesson and that you’d come crawling back to her.
She said she’d invite you to a gala now that everything is quieter and get you back. ” Aubert’s voice is small, disgusted.
The floor tilts.
Simone and her sister are close, and I’m not surprised she’d tell her the truth.
My anger spikes, fracturing into something uglier: fury at Simone, at Giselle, at the world…but mostly at myself. I was the fool who’d done what I did. And hadn’t I done it even though I was full of doubts about how Tara was not the person that the article said she was?
After all these years, I had believed a fucking tabloid. And there was no way around why I did it—I wanted an excuse to end us, so I wouldn’t do something stupid like ask her to stay and be with me…forever.
I did that once before, and look how that turned out.
“You heard your Maman say she’d get me back?” I ask, my voice low.
“Yes,” Aubert replies. “Maman…she wants you to appear weak and then be grateful when she offers you her hand.”
Simone is his mother, but I can’t protect him from her any longer. In any case, she should be careful about what he hears when he’s at her place.
“I didn’t think she did it because the photo had you in it,” I say honestly. It’s the only reason I ever dismissed Simone.
Aubert’s lips twitch. “She wants you that badly.”
I want to smash something. I want to call in every favor, reach into the old boys’ club, and have Simone quietly erased from polite society. I want to find Tara and beg until she forgives me.
But I don’t even know where she is. Philadelphia? Los Angeles? Somewhere else entirely?
Aubert watches me, his expression softening. “Papa, the way Tara is with you—it’s real. Don’t lose her to pride.”
“It’s not pride, Aubert. It’s….” I gesture around the office, to the polished wood, the inherited portraits, the suffocating weight of lineage. “This world crushes people.”
“Not Tara.”
“No.” The truth lands heavy in my chest. “I crushed her.”
I close my eyes, and the weight of what I did—and everything I failed to do—presses down on me.
“Papa,” Aubert says quietly, “bring her back.”
“I don’t even know where she is.”
He hesitates, licking his lips. “She’s in Los Angeles.”
My head snaps up. “How do you know that?”
He swallows, a little sheepish. “Ah…her sister is on Instagram. I follow her.”
I narrow my eyes.
Aubert grins. “What? Marisol posts everything. Tara’s working at her father’s restaurant. It’s called Mi Tierra. It’s in Boyle Heights.”
He unlocks his phone and hands it to me. I hungrily go through the photos.
Tara. Laughing behind a counter, sunlight in her hair, wearing an apron.
A painful knot tightens beneath my ribs. I haven’t seen her in forever, and now, even through a screen, my heart remembers what it means to live.
“Ah… I’d like to come along,” Aubert says, a little self-conscious but bright-eyed with hope. “You know, to check out UCLA and USC. Application deadlines are coming up soon.”
I don’t have to think about it, not anymore. I’ve always known what I have to do. Until now, I just didn’t know how to go about it.
I pick up my phone and call my secretary. When she answers, I say, “Two tickets, Juliette, to Los Angeles, as soon as possible. One for Aubert and one for me.” When she asks about when we’ll return to Paris, I look at my son and reply, “Open-ended, please.”
She asks a few more questions about hotel accommodations. I advise her to consider the proximity of our lodgings to a restaurant called Mi Tierra in Boyle Heights.
I ask to meet Simone at her house, the one where I lived only two years ago, the house that still feels like a prison.
She played me like a fool. She destroyed Tara. I let her.
Shame scalds me, thick and choking. The memory of Tara’s tear-streaked face, her desperate insistence that she hadn’t betrayed me, it brings me to my knees.
I didn’t believe her.
I didn’t trust her.
I cast her out.
“Gustave.” Simone gives me air kisses when her butler leads me into the living room.
She’s in silk and diamonds, dressed for society.
“Drink?” she asks.
“Champagne,” I reply.
She glances at her butler and nods. He slips away, and I take a seat on one of her beloved Rococo settees—curved and gilded, wrapped in pale blue silk. It fits her perfectly—beautiful, but comfort-resistant.
“I’m so glad you wanted to meet, Gustave. There are things I want to say to you.” She smooths her dress as she sits across from me on a velvet couch, like she’s at a photoshoot.
She’s beautiful. No doubt about it. But she doesn’t compare to Tara, whose beauty isn’t skin deep; it runs through her, all the way down to her soul. Tara’s loveliness is light that embraces, while Simone’s is dark, bloody, and cold.
Her butler sets champagne flutes and a silver bucket on the Louis XVI giltwood guéridon between us.
He pours two glasses and sets the bottle in the ice bucket. He hands Simone her glass first and then me mine.
Les dames d’abord*!
“What are we cheering to?” she asks once her butler leaves.
“To love.” I clink my glass with hers.
She smiles elegantly and sips her champagne. “You used to be romantic like this when we first met. Always champagne and caviar.”
I smile at her. I should’ve done this right after the divorce. Put her in her place.
“You know I bumped into Benoit Clérisseau recently,” I say conversationally.
I didn’t bump into the publisher of Le Monde du Luxe.
I sought him out and got answers to my questions.
He didn’t give me any of those sources are secret bullshit—not when I told him I’d make sure he got pictures of me proposing to the love of my life when it happened.
That opened his mouth like nothing else could.
“Oh.”
“Interesting, isn’t it, that the photograph that upended my life, my son’s, and my girlfriend’s came from you.” I sip my drink like I didn’t just drop a bomb.
Simone’s eyes flash surprise and anger.
She arches a brow, unbothered. “I protected you and the family.”
I shake my head as if amused. “Now, now, Simone. Let’s be honest. You did it to get rid of Tara. Did you really think that I’d come back to you if that happened?”
Her smile is brittle, venom beneath the gloss. “She’s not one of us. You’d have destroyed the de Valois name with your little American experiment. I did what was necessary.”
“Necessary?” I echo.
“You’re a de Valois, Gustave. You can choose who you take to your bed as long as you are discreet.” Her voice is icy like her—like our marriage. “You were born into duty, not desire.”
“The de Valois name is mine, Simone,” I remind her.
“Mine, too,” she snaps. “We were married for nearly two decades.”
I flick a speck of imaginary dirt on my suit trousers. “And now we’re divorced. I let you use my family name out of courtesy, one that I can rescind any time I want.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”