“What do you mean by ‘the green fairy’?” Maëlle asks.
“Absinthe,” answers Guy, another of the men, with a knowing smile. “The military used to issue it to the troops in Africa, to prevent malaria. But it has a way of grabbing a man and not letting go.”
Maëlle watches the doors of the café until it is time to go over the paperwork, checking off each box as it is unloaded from the train and transported to the steam engine.
The train trip has been one long, grueling disappointment. But surely Château Clement, she tells herself, will make up for everything. There, she and Léon will work side by side with no one to disapprove.
At the château everything will be different.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
PRESENT DAY
CHÂTEAU CLEMENT
Cady
Cady wasn’t sure what she thought might be behind the red hallway’s door number one, and was relieved to discover an innocuous bedroom with a dramatic slanted roof. It seemed almost Spanish in style, with dark wood beams across the white stucco ceiling and walls and an earth red tile floor. A bare mattress sat on a heavy, dark wood frame so tall that there was a small stepstool placed beside it. There were two nightstands, a slipper bathtub in one corner, and what looked like a down comforter hanging over a quilt stand. There were no decorations or paintings, not even curtains or shades on the dormer window that opened out onto the courtyard and the outbuildings.
As in the rest of the house, the doorframes appeared to have been carved by hand, each unique in its design. They featured delicate flowers and flitting birds, unfurling leaves and plump berries. She ran her hand along their contours, promising herself she would inspect them further tomorrow, in the daylight.
Curious, she continued down the hall. The next room had twin beds, a fireplace, and a desk, and the stucco walls were painted arobin’s-egg blue. A shaggy cream-colored rug covered the tiles before a fireplace, which was black with soot, though there were no ashes or signs of a recent fire.
Cady shivered again. As was true in the rest of the house, a deep chill emanated from the stone walls. A fire would be lovely right about now. Or a shower. Fabrice had suggested she take a bath, so presumably there was hot water available.
The next door revealed a bedroom with two rough stone walls and two stucco walls painted a pale yellow that contrasted cheerfully with the beamed ceiling. A queen-sized bed stood near a large leaded casement window. Cady felt compelled to look at the rest of the rooms on the floor. All were variations on the same themes: beamed or stucco ceilings, stone or stucco walls, a few with fireplaces that hadn’t seen flames for many years. They carried a scent of dust, stone, and emptiness, and several had water stains on the ceilings and walls.
Near the end of the hall she found a bathroom that looked as though it harked back to the thirties: White subway tiles, a few cracked, ran along the walls, and the toilet had a tank fixed high up on the wall. She did a test flush, praying it worked. It seemed to.
She was tempted by the big claw-foot tub, but wasn’t brave enough to fill it with hot water and sit back and relax. Not in this silent stone house with a man she barely knew—Fabrice appeared to be old and frail, but Cady had read more than her share of horror stories. Back in the day, Jonquilla had made it her mission to expose all the younger kids to horror stories featuring old homes and mysterious recluses.
A huge steamer trunk with brass fittings sat at the end of the hall, its black sides sporting tags from countries like Morocco, Italy, and Wales—the sort of trunk travelers used to take to visit unknown countries. Very Indiana Jones.
As Fabrice had promised, inside it she found clean towels and sheets.
Cady decided on a room with stone walls and a large bed, with an armoire and desk and a window that looked out over theoutbuildings. She selected two flat cotton sheets, old and in need of an airing but incredibly soft. For some reason she couldn’t stop thinking about the first night she had spent with Maxine, bundled up on her lumpy couch.
Maxine had tucked her in and said, “I’ll say one thing for you, Cady: You’re not picky.”
She closed the oak door to the hallway, and as she shook out the sheets a delicate sachet of lavender flew up in the air. Storing the sheets with lavender sachet seemed out of character for a man like Fabrice, but she shouldn’t make assumptions. The sheets were a little musty but smelled vaguely of the flowers, and she made the bed as best she could. She remembered reading an old book that mentioned “hospital corners,” but she had no idea what those were as she’d always had fitted sheets. No doubt there was some arcane trick to it, but she didn’t know what it was.
On top of the sheets went the down comforter, and for good measure she grabbed the one she had spotted in the other room.
Cady went to the bathroom, locked the door, gratefully stripped off her wet clothes and hung them over the sides of the tub, then stood before the sink to bathe as best she could with a washcloth. Shivering, she pulled on her pajamas and topped them with an “Oaklandish” fleece sweatshirt zipped all the way up to her neck.
She sank onto the side of the claw-foot tub to dry her rain-wet hair with a towel, feeling more comfortable in this small, utilitarian room than in the grand bedroom.
“What in the world are we doing here, Drake?” she asked aloud.
Cady had spooked herself, thinking of scary stories and the scenario of a lone woman out in the middle of nowhere with a mean old man and his very large dog. In the movies the dog would be trained to do horrible things, and the apparently frail Fabrice would turn out to be faking it... or would have evil minions lurking in the cellar, or a crazy woman in the attic.
Or Jean-Paul would return in the dead of night, revealing his true self as a homicidal maniac.
“We’re fine.” She tried to reassure herself, brushing her teeth. “We’ll deal.”
But there was no “we” anymore. Just a few months ago she had sat with Maxine at the little table in the room behind the shop, a baby in her belly, sharing corn bread and talking about what the future might bring. Never in a million years would they have anticipated what had actually happened.
Sadness washed over her, and she stifled a sob. She wished she could see this as a grand adventure, as she had described it in her head to Olivia, but at the moment she just felt exhausted, inexplicably afraid, and unbearably alone.
