“It’s something we say in English if someone was hurt in a fight, like the other guy had it worse. Never mind. Some things don’t translate.”
Something about the way Johnny held himself, his defensiveness, made Cady wonder if there was something else going on.
It’s none of my business,she reminded herself. She had already butted in far more than was expected, or probably socially acceptable, given that she was an interloper in a small village, a foreigner who would be leaving soon.
She put the teenager to work covering up the graffiti tags with paint she’d found in the shed by the old car. Then she had him take the measurements of the windows he had broken and sweep up the glass. He didn’t speak much, mostly grunting his replies, not unlike a certain grumpy recluse.
“So, why have you been over here vandalizing Fabrice’s things?”
“He’s a jerk.”
“A lot of people are jerks. But you know, when someone makes you mad, there are other ways to deal with it, rather than lashing out.”
“Whatever.”
“Why did you slash my tires?”
“I thought Fabrice got a new car,” he said, dumping glass shards into a plastic trash bin. He shrugged again. “My mistake.”
While Johnny worked, Cady brought her cameras out and started snapping photos of the old buildings, the shadow of a cypress on the gravel drive. She loved the slanted spring light of mid-April. It was chilly in the shadows, warm in the sunshine—she wanted somehow to capture that feeling on film.
She noticed Johnny sneaking glances at her while she twisted this way and that to get just the right angle.
“Want to try?” she asked, holding out her Leica camera.
“Nah. I have a phone.”
“Taking pictures with a phone is really different. And this way I get to develop my own photos.”
He rolled his eyes. “You sound like the tile guy. He’s always going on about old-fashioned photography.”
“Really? The tile guy? Here in town?”
“Yeah, there’s a tileworks on the outside of town. There’s an old Italian man there, named Guido.”
Just as she had with the dimensions of the new glass for the windows, Cady jotted down the information in her journal.
“What do you keep writing down?”
“Everything. Things I need to remember, like phone numbers and names. And other things, too: ideas, or recipes, or just... anything. Since I’ve come to France, there are lists of French words and phrases I need to look up.”
He turned his attention back to scraping the glazing from the window frame.
Cady tried again to peek into the outbuilding that held the carousel, but as before, she couldn’t see much more than amorphous black shapes.
She thought about what Fabrice had said about showing her the carousel, and what she’d promised: to take him to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse when his ankle was better. She hadn’t been entirely sure she’d still be in France, much less Provence, in “a day or two.” Jean-Paul would probably be happy to see her gone. The charge to change her flight reservation was not insignificant, and she had assumed she would be back in Paris in time to make her plane. But now...?
Oakland seemed less and less real to her lately. The wind-tossed scents of lavender and thyme—the aroma of Provence—seemed to be seeping into her, holding on, making her feel almost as if she belonged in this foreign country, in this small village, in this decrepit château.
She wasn’t going anywhere, at least not for the moment. If she could get access to the antique carousel, she would change her ticket in a heartbeat and damn the expense.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
1900
CHÂTEAU CLEMENT
Maëlle
