Fingers numbed by the cold, she struggled to input the code on the electronic keypad to the left of the entry, praying it wouldn’t lock her out if she got the password wrong too many times, like her bank’s ATM seemed to enjoy doing. Clearly there was no hotel in Cochet, and now that she realized just how cold it was, sleeping in the car was not an option.
Success.The door buzzed, and she entered into a blessedly warm tiled foyer.
Rosalyn opened the door toChambre Chardonnayand flicked on the lights to reveal a large room with a tiled floor and pristine cream-colored walls. Near the entry stood a tall chest of drawers and a round oak table with four chairs, and at the other end a double bed and two nightstands. There was an en suite bathroom with a large shower and a separate toilet room, as well as an empty closet with shelves and a rod.
That was it. Nice, and roomy, but... sterile.
One large window would look out onto the courtyard and parking area, Rosalyn imagined, except that a rolling shutter was closed over it, the type shop owners used to keep thieves at bay. A button on one side of the window presumably operated the shutters, but no matter how she pressed it, nothing happened. Despite the bright overhead lights, the room felt dark, almost cavelike.
On the table was a bottle of champagne, atop a note written in a distinctive upright French script:
Dear Madame Acosta,
I am very sorry I am not here to greet you properly. Our man Pietro Santini will come if you need anything. His number is by the telephone. Please to help yourself to anything from the kitchen—and to champagne! It is located in the building next door.The code is 1914. The code to access the Internet is 2343sf532fhlik58089bxjk5.
Cordially,
Blondine Blé, daughter of Gaspard Blé
Waves of fatigue washing over her—it had been averylong travel day—Rosalyn propped the main door open with her purse while she unpacked the car, her ungloved hands freezing. After rolling everything inside, she pulled the door shut tightly and set about organizing her home for the next few weeks. She cranked up the heat, stashed her clothes in the closet and her toiletries in the bathroom, and set up her computer on the table, plugging it into an outlet to charge, using the foreign adapters Hugh had reminded her to pack.
Now what?
Rosalyn perched on the edge of the bed and ate half of another PowerBar, washing it down with tap water, wishing for junk food and a bottle of red.
She had been a stickler about her diet until Dash got sick, at which point she had alternated between eating nothing at all and periodically stuffing herself with junk. In her experience, hospital vending machines were stocked with exactly the kinds of rubbish foods that landed so many people in the hospital in the first place, ironically enough. In an effort to use this trip to modify her habits, Rosalyn had packed only healthy snacks. She glared at them now with distaste; eating well had seemed like a much better idea when she wasn’t hungry. At the moment, she yearned for potato chips, chocolate, the salty-sweet temptations of a PayDay bar.
What a rotten time to decide to be virtuous.
Hunger temporarily if unsatisfactorily sated, she kicked off her shoes and reclined on the bed. The quilt was filled with fluffy goosedown, and she sank into its softness with a sigh, closing her eyes, grateful to be horizontal.
Unbidden, images flashed through her tired mind: the medicine cabinet in her little cottage in Napa; Dash in his last moments, pale and cruelly shrunken on the hospital bed; the way she had run from the room. She thought of how desperately she longed no longer to put one foot in front of the other.
She was weary. Depleted. Desperate.
In France.
A country apparently devoid of twenty-four-hour convenience stores.
Damn Hugh, anyway.
Chapter Eight
Rosalyn had come to know when sleep was a lost cause. After half an hour she climbed out of bed, crossed over to the little table, started up her computer, and opened her Internet browser.
There were a few work e-mail messages waiting for her, but nothing pressing. She sent notes to Hugh and her mother to let them know she had arrived safely. None of the local champagne vintners had returned the messages she had sent earlier asking to arrange tastings, so she rooted through her shoulder bag to find the longer list of producers Hugh had suggested she meet with in Champagne.
Her hand stilled when she came across one of Emma’s old letters stuck in a side pocket.
The envelope was stamped January of 1915, by which point Émile and Doris had been corresponding for a few months. As she had on the plane, Rosalyn studied the letter with a wordless sort of reverence: the military envelope, the yellowing onionskin paper, the ink fading to a rusty brown at times so faint she could barely make it out. Dark splatters of some substance—mud? Coffee? Blood?—marred one edge.
She brought out her travel dictionary, opened the bookmarked website that translated French into English, and began to decipher the letter as best she could. There were words she didn’t know, phrases she didn’t understand—but at least very little had been cut out or censored.
It was laborious but fascinating work. From time to time, the faded ink was so hard to read that she had to squint to decipher the letters, or resort to an educated guess based upon the meaning of the rest of the sentence. Other words and phrases were legible but unfamiliar, necessitating a thorough search of the dictionary and website, cross-referencing to be sure she understood their true meanings in context. Most challenging were the idiomatic expressions, which conveyed great meaning but defied word-for-word translations—she marked those with the placeholder “xxx.”
She brought out her journal and began a list of unknown words and mysterious phrases; maybe she could figure them out later, or find a native speaker who could help.
My dear Marraine, Madame Whittaker,
