Maëlle #2
“What are you two doing?” he asked.
“Getting better acquainted with what’s in the vaults,” I said. “As long as you’re here, I have a question.”
“Of course.”
“I found the invoices for this year’s barrels. In total, there were sixty, but I only see twenty-five stored down here. Where are the others?”
“In storage in the other vault.” He looked at his watch. “Your father wants you to choose the wine for the toast tomorrow. Don’t let him do it himself.”
“I won’t,” I said. We walked past him and back to the chateau.
“There’s another vault?” Dagger asked once we were outside.
“There is. My grandfather emptied it forty years ago.”
“Quick on your feet,” Dagger said.
“You too.”
He nudged me. “We make a good team.”
I shrugged. “I suppose in some ways.”
His arm went around my waist, and he spun me around. “In every way, mon feu.”
I couldn’t argue with the kiss he gave me.
When it came time for bed, I tossed and turned for two hours as everything we’d learned in the last several days played over in my head.
None more than the idea that Géraud might very well be the “very important business associate.” What would I do if he was?
It was something Dagger and I should discuss, plan for, but not at this hour.
Not wanting to wake him, I eased out of bed and walked to the window. A light burned in the winery office.
I gasped when Dagger came up behind me. “Same one I saw,” he said.
“It has to be Rémy. I wonder what he’s up to.”
He nodded. “Come back to bed.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“I’ll sing you a lullaby.”
I cocked my head. “You will sing me a lullaby?” I repeated.
“That’s what I said.”
Deciding to call his bluff, I got under the covers and waited.
Before he was through the second verse of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” I was sound asleep.
When I went down for breakfast the next morning and found Rémy alone, I decided to ask.
“Do you always work in the middle of the night?”
He didn’t look up from the bread he was buttering. “It takes a lot more to keep this place running than anyone thinks.”
“Even during the holidays?”
“Especially then. I already explained that the co-op wants the books closed before the first. On top of that, the accountants want the quarterly and year-end reports, and your father wants to know how much money we made this year.”
“How much did we?” I phrased my question that way intentionally. With each clue Dagger and I found, it became more apparent that my cousin was either behind what I was certain was money laundering or, at the very least, aware of it.
This time, he raised his head. “Another record year.”
“I’d like to see the numbers.”
“I’ll add you to the distribution lists for annual reports.”
“I’d like to see them quarterly.”
He pushed away from the table but didn’t get up. “What’s this about, Maelle?”
I folded my arms. “Were you aware of my mother’s diagnosis?”
“What are you talking about?”
“In September, she found out she has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. It is the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”
Rémy’s face lost all color, and he gasped. “No!”
It didn’t quell my rising anger. “Yes. And my father, her husband and your mentor, told her it would pass.”
He stood, came to sit in the chair beside me, and leaned forward. “I swear I didn’t know.”
“Neither did I. And if I hadn’t come home this year, I might not have—”
“Maelle, if I’d known, I promise I would’ve told you. I’d never keep something like that from you.”
I raised my chin. “No?”
His expression changed, and I thought he might cry. “It’s what my mother had.”
This time, I gasped. “I had no idea. I’m sorry.”
“As am I. What can I do?”
My anger went away as quickly as it had come. “I’ll be staying on here. Maman’s treatment begins in January.”
“I understand, and whatever I can do, I will. I hope you know that.”
“Perhaps you could try to make my batard of a father understand.”
“Understand what, Maelle?” a voice said from behind me.
Rémy was on his feet before I turned around. My father stood in the doorway, still holding the newspaper he’d carried in.
I stood too. If he wanted an answer, he would have it.
“That Maman has cancer. Cancer, Papa. It will not pass because you refuse to say the word. Her treatment begins in January. It will be difficult. There will be weeks when she cannot leave her bed. I will take her to every appointment. I will sit with her. I will care for her. What will you do?”
“Your mother is tired. Doctors make careers out of frightening tired women. In spring, you will see I was right.”
“Say the word, Papa. Say cancer.”
“You have been home two weeks, and you lecture me about my own wife.” He tucked the paper under his arm. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At the door, he stopped for a moment, then kept going.
Rémy squeezed my shoulder on his way past. “Let me talk to him.”
“No! He needs to hear this. He needs to accept it.” I was almost out the door when Dagger stepped in front of me, blocking my way. Behind him stood my mother.
“Don’t do this, Maelle. Not now,” she said.
“If not now, when?” My eyes filled with tears, and this time, when I tried to get by him, Dagger let me.