“I only said that because you hardly gave me any information about the woman before you told me you wanted to buy her a property. So tell me about her.”
I gently detach my hand from hers and then lock both of mine behind my head, settling deeper into my chair. “What do you want to know?”
“Hmm. What are your favourite things about her?”
I laugh—really laugh—for what feels like the first time in days.
“How much time do you have?”
* * *
Grand-mèrepasses awayin her sleep the same night I arrive.
The nurse they hired to care for her wakesMamanand I up just before dawn. She tells usGrand-pèrehas been sleeping in the chair next to the bed every night and didn’t want anyone to know. He was there holding her hand when she passed.
The funeral is a small one. We could have called in half the French aristocracy, but most of them would only have come for appearance’s sake; my grandparents retired from society a long time ago. The black-clad crowd is a mix of extended relatives, household staff, winery employees, and a few of my family’s oldest friends from around Bordeaux. I haven’t seen any of them in years, and I hear the murmurs every time someone recognizes me.
It’s a strange thought, and probably not even an appropriate one, but I can’t help imagining what it would be like to have Monroe beside me, holding my arm and wearing a black dress to match my suit. I know it would make today easier.
The sun is beating down on the earth as we layGrand-mèreto rest. It’s a day for cold drinks on porches, for reading books in lawn chairs and wandering between the rows and rows of vines. Somehow, it seems like the right day for a funeral, for the end of a long life well lived. She may have been a prime example of an aloof and icy Frenchwoman staring down at the world with her chin held high, but my grandmother left this world with a husband who loved her like she was the first star in the night sky and a daughter who will treasure her memory far more than any of the possession’s she’s left behind.
I holdMamanasGrand-pèrestands stiffly beside us, watching the coffin get lowered into the dirt. I hold her the way I wasn’t there to hold her when she said goodbye toPapa.
We’re the last ones to leave, the crowd dispersing to give us our privacy.
“Could I have a moment with her?”Mamanasks, her voice steadier than I expected.
Grandpèreslips silently away. I squeeze her shoulders before turning to do the same.
“Julien,” she calls, making me pause. “I think you should go see him.”
My throat closes up. Blood rushes in my ears, and the ground seems to lurch under my feet. I spread them wider apart to steady myself.
I knew he was buried here, but I’d been doing my best to ignore it.
“I ca—” I start to say those same words again, that admission of defeat, that surrender to a power greater than anything I could want for myself, but I’ve said them enough. I’ve backed myself into that corner too many times. “I will. Where...?”
She doesn’t make me ask the question, doesn’t force me to admit I don’t know the way to my own father’s grave. She just points.
It’s only a few spaces over from where they putGrand-mère. The headstone is black marble, glinting sharply in the bright afternoon light, but the letters carved into its surface seem to make my whole world go dull.
Pierre Antoine Joséph Valois.
My father.
My father is dead.
I stop caring about who might be watching or thatMamanis only a few feet away. I drop to my knees.
“Mon père.” I feel the press of soft earth and hard stones through the fabric of my black dress pants. Birds are singing in the trees at the edge of the cemetery. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a vineyard just beyond the little forest at the top of the hill. “Papa. I...I’m sorry I wasn’t there for her when she needed it. You would have been ashamed.”
I glance over atMamanwhere she’s murmuring to herself byGrand-mère’s headstone. I can only imagine what she must have felt facing the same moment here at my father’s grave all by herself. I turn back to the stoic letters in the marble.
“But that’s all I’m sorry for. You...You were my hero. I still believe you were a good man. A great man. I would never ask for a different father, but I don’t need a hero anymore. I don’t need an idol. All my life I’ve been trying to build something for myself, but I’m starting to see that maybe a lot of me was building it for you. I lived so much of my life trying to make you proud. I wanted to measure up. That was always my motivation, but...it can’t be. Not anymore.” I lay my hand on the stone, my fingers shaking as they trace the shape of his name. “This needs to end. This needs to end so I can begin.”
I leave the graveyard with my mother. Just as we’re about to step out onto the gravel drive and head to the waiting car, she lays her hand on my arm. I pause when she stops walking.
“He was proud of you, you know?” She shades her eyes and stares into the cemetery. “The day you left for Cambridge, he told me it didn’t matter what you did. It didn’t matter where you went or who you decided to become. It just made him happy to see you living your life. Everything you did made him happy because you were his son.”
