She could see the bob of his throat as he swallowed. ‘You want the honest answer?’
Mia nodded.
‘The honest answer is that I haven’t trusted anyone who isn’t already part of my life for a very long time,’ he said. ‘My family thinks I need to forget about the past and move on, but I don’t find it easy to trust.’
‘When Ethan died, everyone was so supportive and understanding, but after two years had passed, it was as if they just thought I’d move on. It was like they expected me to erase the past.’
Joe threaded his fingers through hers. ‘What I went through was nothing like you experienced, Mia. Your pain, I don’t know how you dealt with it, truly I don’t.’
‘Maybe it is different, but it’s still a part of our past. It makes us who we are, and nothing anyone can say can change that. Our trauma is still our trauma.’
‘Do you still think about that day? Is it impossible to stop thinking about, sometimes?’ He searched her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine it’s something you can ever forget.’
She nodded and slowly let out a breath. ‘We were working side by side one minute, and the next he was gone, and afterwards I kept thinking what a beautiful day it had been. It was like I couldn’t stop thinking about the sun shining and the wildlife I was photographing. About how we were just having such a great time until the exact moment it happened, and that’s where my mind always went when I thought back on it. It still does. It’s not to the moment he slipped or the second the water took him from me, it’s the before, and that’s what’s been so hard to let go of.’
Joe squeezed her hand and looked as if he was about to say something else when there was a tap on the window, just about making Mia jump out of her skin, quickly wiping at her damp eyes.
But the moment was over, and Mia hoped that the man tapping was more receptive to her questions than his mother had been.
There’s only one way to find out, she thought as she pushed open her door and stuck out her hand, saying bonjour in her friendliest voice, relieved when he gestured to the house and invited them inside.
Once Joe had introduced them and she’d sat quietly while he’d told them who his family was and their connection to the industry, the man turned to Mia.
‘You see, this bottle is very familiar to my mother, because her great-grandmother had one just like it.’
The woman nodded. ‘Before she passed, it was one of the things she was most determined to have with her. I still remember being a girl and hearing her muttering about a lostbrother and that she hadn’t deserved to inherit the family business.’
‘I’m sorry to ask, but you’re certain it was the same bottle?’ Mia asked.
‘It was the very same. I remember the fairy on the design, because she used to point at it sometimes, but she was so hard to understand by the end, and all we really grasped was that she’d lost someone, and that somehow it was connected to the bottle.’
Mia thought through what she’d just been told, trying to piece it together with what she already knew.
‘This brother that she spoke of, do you know anything about him?’ she asked. ‘Could he be the link to the bottle?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Perhaps. If my mother were alive, she might have been able to answer your questions, but it was such a long time ago.’
Hope nodded, disheartened but still appreciating the information they had gleaned.
‘Why don’t you come and we can show you around the distillery,’ her son said. ‘Even if we can’t help you with your search, we can show you a little of the past. Hardly anything’s changed about the way we produce our spirits here in a hundred years.’
Mia and Joe both stood and followed the man outside, walking until they reached a large barn that had been immaculately preserved. She glanced over at his mother, who’d said something in French.
‘She reminded me of the old photographs we have in the office,’ he said. ‘You have a look around while I find them, just in case they’re relevant. I won’t be long.’
Once they were alone, they made their way past stainless steel vats and machines that Joe explained to her, all part of the distilling process, and she found herself wondering if Hopehad ever been in this very distillery or whether she’d been somewhere else nearby.
‘These are the photographs,’ the man said when he returned, passing over a few frames. ‘Sorry, they’re very dusty.’
Mia reached for them and held them close to her face, carefully studying the black and white pictures.
‘The woman in that one is my great-grandmother, and the other one here, this is her when she was young, with her brother. The stern-faced couple are her parents.’
Mia scanned each of their faces, wishing someone looked familiar to her.
‘Does anyone know what became of her brother?’
He shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not. I imagine he might have been lost during the war, or he could have left France entirely and never returned.’
