“Do you see it?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you grow up surrounded by all of this beauty, do you relish it, or do you just take it for granted?”
Jean-Paul paused and looked back out over the little valley. “I loved running around the village as a kid, that much is true. But the house has always been a mixed bag for me. My father passed away a few years ago, but before that he was... troubled. And my grandfather lives here now with my mother, which can also be challenging.”
Inside, the home looked lived-in and rustic but well appointed; there were lace curtains in the windows, a huge fireplace in the living room, and a table set up forapéro.
“Cady, this is my mother, Louise Mirassou,” Jean-Paul said as he introduced an older, birdlike woman whose salt-and-pepper hair was styled in a practical bob. A scar under her right eye looked white against her subtly rouged cheek.
“It is such a pleasure!” Louise smiled broadly and left Cady in a faint cloud of perfume as they traded kisses. “I have heard so much about you, from my son and now everyone in the village, it seems.”
“And this is my grandfather, Gerald Clement.”
Gerald was not the imposing figure Cady had expected; he seemed shrunken, small. He shared a family resemblance with Louise and Jean-Paul, but unlike them he had an imperious expression, and when he spoke, his voice had a commanding edge.
They traded pleasantries. Gerald and Cady were directed to sit at the table while Louise and Jean-Paul poured glasses of wine and brought out a few small plates.
Cady tried to ignore the fact that Gerald was staring at her, without speaking, across the table.
At long last Jean-Paul and Louise joined them and they toasted to each other’s health.
“I don’t understand why Fabrice allows you to stay at the château when he won’t allow anyone else, including Jean-Paul,” Gerald said, shoving a cracker into his mouth. “What are you doing out there? What are you after?”
“I help him with the dog, and the groceries, and I cook.” Cady wasn’t about to volunteer information about the carousel, much less the film cartridges she had found.
Gerald harrumphed and sat back in his seat.
“It’s hardly Cady’s fault if Fabrice likes her, Grandfather,” said Jean-Paul. “At least he’s letting someone help him.”
“He should have been carted off to a nursing home a long time ago,” said Gerald.
“He wishes to stay in his home for the last days of his life,” Louise said. “We can hardly blame him for that.”
“We can blame him for keeping a château that is not rightfully his,” Gerald replied.
Louise patted his arm and made a soothing murmur. She was like her son, Cady thought: a peacemaker.
Gerald turned back to Cady. “You’ve been asking questions about the carousel.”
“Yes. What can you tell me about it?”
“If he’s planning on using that infernal carousel to save his château—”
“I don’t believe he’s planning on doing any such thing,” interrupted Cady. “But then again, I’m certainly not his spokesperson. If you’d like to know his plans, might I suggest you speak to him directly?”
“It’s not that easy, as I believe you know.”
“I was wondering, would you happen to know the whereabouts of any of the missing pieces of the carousel?” Cady asked. “I know Toinon has one, and thought perhaps others in the family might possess some of the other figures.”
He fixed her with an intimidating look. Sitting here now, Cady thought, he seemed ridiculous, a pigeon with his feathers ruffled. But she wondered what Gerald had been like as a father to young Louise, ranting about the château he—and then she—should have inherited, or simply fixing her with that glare if she dared forget to make up herbed or talked back. This was the part about having family that Cady did not miss.
“Now you listen to me, young lady,” Gerald said. “That carousel is none of your concern, and neither is Fabrice, or any of the Clement family, for that matter. I think it’s high past time that you left our little town.”
“Grandfather—,” Jean-Paul began, but Cady waved him off, holding the old man’s gaze.
“I’ll leave when it suits me. By the way, can you tell me anything about an apprentice carousel carver who might have stayed at the château?”
