The Winemaker's Wife

by Kristin Harmel

  Late that evening, with the lights out and Theo’s weight on top of her in bed, Céline closed her eyes and tried to drift away, to find herself in another place and time. But as Theo grunted and pushed himself inside her, covering her jaw in dry, hungry kisses, it was Michel’s face she saw in her mind, Michel’s voice she heard in her ear, making promises he couldn’t possibly keep.

  Startled and embarrassed, she forced her eyes open and clung to Theo’s back, trying in vain to hold on.

  eleven

  JUNE 2019

  LIV

  Liv woke at midnight to the sound of strangers’ laughter in the hall outside the hotel suite and realized she had fallen asleep on the couch in the parlor. She sat up with a start and fumbled her way in a panic to Grandma Edith’s door, which was closed. She quietly cracked it open and breathed an audible sigh of relief when she saw her grandmother sleeping soundly there among a pile of fluffy white pillows. The older woman had obviously come back while Liv slept and hadn’t bothered to wake her. Liv closed the door and crept into her own bedroom, but after she had washed her face and changed into pajamas, it took a long time to fall back asleep, her annoyance at her grandmother’s mysteriousness simmering just beneath the surface.

  “Where were you last night?” Liv asked when Grandma Edith finally emerged into the parlor, already fully dressed, just before ten the next morning.

  Grandma Edith hesitated before dropping her gaze. “Watch your tone, Olivia,” she said mildly. “Perhaps you forget that I’m a grown woman who has the right to come and go when and where she pleases.”

  “I never said you didn’t,” Olivia shot back, aware that she sounded like a sullen teenager. “I was just worried about you. You said you didn’t feel well, and then you vanished.”

  “Yes, well, here in France we believe in the benefit of a walk from time to time.”

  “But you didn’t tell me you were going out.”

  Her grandmother opened the suite’s small refrigerator. “I assumed you would piece that together when you noticed I was no longer here. I see you didn’t use any of your time alone to go to the market. That would have been nice.”

  “You wanted me to go grocery shopping?”

  “First of all, no one calls them grocery stores here.” Grandma Edith closed the refrigerator door. “Secondly, are you telling me you did not leave the hotel? In a city you’ve never been to before?”

  “I wanted to be here when you came back.” She glared at her grandmother. “By the way, your attorney dropped by with some paperwork.”

  Grandma Edith’s head snapped up. “My attorney?”

  “Ah, finally a reaction,” Liv muttered. “Yes. Julien Cohn. You’ve been with his family’s law firm for seventy years? In Reims, a city you’ve never once mentioned? Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

  “Not particularly.” Grandma Edith scratched her arm and gazed out the window. “But I suppose I’ll have to at some point. That’s the reason we’re here, isn’t it?”

  “What’s the reason we’re here?”

  Grandma Edith didn’t answer. Instead, she strode toward her room. “Get dressed, Olivia. I have a call to make, and then we’re going out.”

  • • •

  “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

  They were the first words Grandma Edith had uttered since leading Liv out of the hotel and onto the bustling street. Liv glanced around but saw no one particularly notable, except perhaps for a silver-haired man sipping coffee at a table outside a blue-awninged café to their right. “Him?” she asked.

  “What? No!” Her grandmother looked scandalized. “I was talking about Julien Cohn. Obviously. I hoped you had not lost all sense of good taste after your divorce.”

  Liv narrowed her eyes, but Grandma Edith just smiled innocently.

  “Well?”

  “Does it matter?” Liv thought of Julien’s wedding ring. “So is that it? You’ve dragged me to Reims to look at unavailable, handsome men for the purpose of evaluating my sanity?”

  “So you admit he is handsome, then?”

  Liv shrugged. “Well . . . yes, of course. My divorce just made me single—not blind.”

  “Then there is hope for you yet. Now, here we are.”

  Grandma Edith stopped abruptly in front of a brasserie on a side street, and Liv looked up. “ ‘Brasserie Moulin,’ ” Liv read aloud, and her grandmother nodded, but she didn’t go in. Instead, she stood frozen on the sidewalk, her eyes suddenly glassy. Though it was still early, the tables outside were already packed with people talking, laughing, enjoying their coffees and their glasses of champagne. Liv’s mouth watered as a waiter bustled by with a steaming basket of pommes frites.

  “It has hardly changed,” Grandma Edith murmured, more to herself than to Liv. She took a small, tentative step forward, but her knees buckled, and Liv grabbed her elbow just in time to keep her from falling.

  “Grandma Edith! Are you all right?”

  Grandma Edith regained her balance and yanked her arm away. “Of course. Perfectly fine. Well, what are we waiting for?”

  Liv followed her grandmother inside, staying close in case the older woman faltered again. As Grandma Edith asked a young, dark-haired waiter for a table in her elegant, clipped French, Liv gazed around.

  The brasserie was dark with wood paneling, an expansive bar area, and droplights overhead spilling narrow pools of light into the aisles. The tables matched the wood of the bar, and each was lit with its own small lamp. Though the windows in the front opened to the modern street outside, there was something timeless about the furnishing of the interior, something that made Liv think this place had probably looked the same fifty years ago, maybe even one hundred years ago, as it did today.

  “Voilà,” said the waiter as he led them to a table and pulled out chairs for them both with a flourish. He handed each of them a double-sided laminated menu as they sat down, then whisked away, back to the front of the restaurant to help the young couple that had just entered.

  “Have you been here before?” Liv asked, scanning the list of appetizers.

  “Oui.” Her grandmother didn’t elaborate, but the color had drained from her face, and her hands were trembling.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Grandma Edith?”

  She finally made eye contact. “Would you stop asking me that? I’m not about to keel over, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

  “You just seem”—Liv hesitated—“shaken. I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, do not be.” Her grandmother returned to studying her menu.

  “Okay,” Liv said slowly. “So, um, is there anything you recommend?”

  “Don’t be foolish. I’m quite certain the menu has changed since I was here last.”

  “Well, when was that?”

  “Oh, seventy-five years ago, give or take.”

  “Seventy-five—” Liv began to repeat, but she was interrupted by the arrival of another young waiter, clad all in black, who ran down a list of specials in rapid French that Liv couldn’t entirely follow, mostly because she was too busy trying to puzzle out what her grandmother had just said. Seventy-five years?

  Grandma Edith ordered a coupe de champagne for each of them without consulting Liv and then excused herself to les toilettes as soon as the waiter hurried away. Liv watched her go before shaking her head and returning to the menu. She scanned the front—a list of tartares, a few salad options, a potato cream soup, a house terrine—and then turned the menu over. The back featured several main courses—seared tuna with sesame seeds, sea bream in pistachio oil, a burger with fries—and a specialty cocktail list. At the bottom of the page was an italicized paragraph entitled Histoire de la Brasserie.

  Liv began to skim the restaurant’s history, translating the French as she went. She was impressed to read that it had been here since 1888, and as she read on, she learned that the original owner, Gilles Moulin, had passed the brasserie on to his son, Pierre Moulin, who had n
o children of his own and thus passed the brasserie on to his sister’s eldest son, Edouard Thierry, in 1936.

  Liv stopped reading and looked up in the direction her grandmother had disappeared. Thierry was, of course, Grandma Edith’s last name and Liv’s maiden name. Grandma Edith still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom, so Liv turned her attention back to the menu, her curiosity piqued. Surely it wasn’t a coincidence that the older woman had chosen a restaurant whose past owner shared their family name, was it? She read on.

  Soon after Champagne was occupied by the Nazis in the summer of 1940, Edouard and his wife became active in the French Résistance Along with a local network, they helped disrupt Nazi movements in and around the Marne, and ultimately provided Allied troops with information that proved crucial in battle. Edouard and his wife moved away at the end of the war, and the brasserie was passed to Edouard’s younger brother, Guillaume, who sold it to Humbert Bouchet, a young World War II veteran, in 1950. The Brasserie Moulin is today owned by Humbert’s grandson, Edouard Bouchet, who was named in honor of the proprietor who showed so much courage in the face of the Nazi Occupation.

  When Liv looked up again, Grandma Edith was finally on her way back to the table, shuffling slowly and gazing around as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “Have you decided on something to eat?” she asked once she’d settled, with some difficulty, back into her chair. The waiter arrived with two tulip glasses of champagne, and Grandma Edith held hers up and clinked it against Liv’s without missing a beat. She took a small sip and said, “I might be in the mood for a salade niçoise. Or perhaps an omelette.”

  “Are we related to the Thierrys who used to own this brasserie?” Liv asked instead of replying.

  Grandma Edith set down her champagne and put a shaking hand to her forehead. “Pardon?”

  Liv held up the menu and pointed. “It says that a man named Edouard Thierry owned this place during World War II.”

  Grandma Edith glanced at the menu, and for an instant, her features melted into something soft, mournful, almost open. “Why, yes, Edouard,” she whispered.

  “Grandma Edith, was he your husband?” Liv knew only that her own dad had never known his father. Grandma Edith never spoke of him. “Were you involved in the Resistance like Edouard was? Is that why you’ve never told me that you had a connection to Reims?”

  Grandma Edith blinked at Liv. “It says that? That Edouard was involved with the Résistance?”

  “Yes, but you haven’t answered my—”

  “My God,” Grandma Edith murmured. “If he had lived to see his secret printed up on his own brasserie’s menus like—” She stopped abruptly, and Liv leaned forward, sure that her grandmother was about to reveal something.

  But before she could continue, they were interrupted by the arrival of their waiter. “Bonjour mesdames, avez-vous fait votre choix?” he asked, utterly oblivious to his terrible timing.

  Grandma Edith looked confused, and then she frowned and gestured to her champagne glass. “Je ne veux pas de cette coupe de champagne. Je veux un martini. Du Gordon’s, s’il vous plaît, avec une olive.”

  The waiter glanced at Liv and then nodded, whisking the champagne away and hurrying toward the bar.

  “Well?” Liv asked.

  “This was an important place in many lives,” Grandma Edith said after a long pause. “Lives that were saved. Lives that were lost.”

  “Edouard, you mean? Did he die after the war?”

  The waiter arrived again, silently setting down a martini with a single green olive on a spear and then hurrying away. The older woman took a sip. “The war was a long time ago, Olivia. We all made our choices.”

  “Grandma Edith, please! What are you talking about?”

  “I—I want to tell you. But it’s very hard, you understand.”

  “You wanted to tell me what? Is that why you brought me here? Were you here during World War II?”

  Grandma Edith didn’t answer. Instead, she swirled her olive around before popping it into her mouth and then draining the remainder of her martini in one long swallow. She opened her handbag, withdrew two twenty-euro notes, and placed them on the table. “It seems I’ve lost my appetite. I’m sorry. Please feel free to stay and enjoy lunch without me.” She rose, and not waiting for an acknowledgment, began to hurry toward the exit.

  “Grandma Edith, wait!” Liv grabbed her own purse and rushed after her grandmother, but the older woman was moving surprisingly quickly and was already out the door by the time Liv reached it. Just before Liv followed her outside, though, she noticed something on the wall to the right of the entryway, an old framed black-and-white photo with a plaque beneath it. She hesitated, the words engraved there catching her eye: Edouard and Edith Thierry, 1939.

  Her heart thudding, Liv looked to the grainy image of a tall, handsome man with thinning black hair, and his small, dark-haired wife, both of whom were posing in front of the Brasserie Moulin with proud smiles on their faces. The woman was Grandma Edith, Liv was sure of it. The photograph was eighty years old, and not terribly focused, but her diminutive size was just right, and her slightly mischievous smile matched Grandma Edith’s exactly. Liv stared in awe, reaching up to touch the young Edith Thierry’s face, before reminding herself that it was the older Edith Thierry, the one who was ninety-nine and stubborn as a mule, who needed her now.

  She pushed out the door, scanning the street for her grandmother, who had nearly been swallowed up by the crowd on the sidewalks. But Liv could still see her, a block down to the left. “Grandma Edith!” she called. “Wait!”

  But her grandmother didn’t slow, and after pushing through a cluster of tourists, Liv reached the door to their hotel at the same time Grandma Edith did. “Grandma Edith!” Liv cried, and finally the older woman turned as Liv opened the hotel door for her.

  “Olivia? What are you doing here? I thought you were going to stay and have some lunch.”

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You were Edouard’s wife! What happened, Grandma Edith?”

  She sighed and walked into the hotel lobby. Liv hurried after her.

  “Grandma Edith? I saw the picture. You and Edouard, outside the brasserie in 1939.”

  “What picture?” Grandma Edith stepped into the open elevator and held the door for Liv, but she avoided eye contact.

  “It was just beside the front entrance. The plaque said Edouard and Edith Thierry.”

  “Well, then, it seems you already have your answer.”

  The elevator doors slid open on the sixth floor, and Grandma Edith got out. Liv scrambled after her but stopped short as she rounded the corner toward their suite and saw Grandma Edith’s attorney standing in front of their door, clutching the same manila envelope he’d had yesterday.

  “Madame Thierry!” he said, his face brightening. “Just the woman I was looking for.” He held up the envelope, but his smile fell as Grandma Edith snapped it from his hands, bustled past him without a word, and breezed into the hotel room, slamming the door behind her. He turned to Liv. “Is she all right?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” When Julien gave her a puzzled look, Liv added, “We just came from the Brasserie Moulin, which was apparently owned during World War II by my grandmother and my long-lost grandfather. But she won’t tell me a thing.”

  “Ah.” Julien glanced at the closed door once more and then back at Liv.

  “Do you know her story? About whatever happened at Brasserie Moulin?”

  Julien hesitated. “Some of it.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . Liv, I cannot tell you, I’m afraid. But, ah, I would just remind you that things are not always what they seem.”

  “Oh good, more cryptic statements,” Liv muttered. She dug through her purse, searching for her own key. “It’s not just her story, you know. It’s mine, too. My father died when I was just a little girl, and my grandmother refuses to talk about the past. She’s ninety-nine. If I don’t start putting the pieces together, they’ll be
lost forever.”

  “And I think that is why she brought you here.”

  “To dance circles around the truth while drowning herself in gin?”

  Julien laughed. “Perhaps.” His expression softened, and he added, “She hasn’t spoken of the past in many, many years. It must be painful.”

  “But—”

  Julien held up a hand. “But you’re right. You deserve to know. And so I suppose there is no harm in telling you at least that your grandmother did live for a time here in Champagne. In fact, she met my grandfather here many years ago, during the war.”

  “So your grandfather knows about her past, too?”

  “The pieces she chose to share, yes, and the pieces he witnessed himself. But I’m sure there’s more to the story.” Julien reached out and squeezed Liv’s hand. “Give her time.”

  She was struck by the warmth and strength of his fingers against hers, and she quickly pulled away. “Thanks.”

  “Pas de quoi. And remember, Liv, the best things in life are worth waiting for.” And then, with a murmured au revoir, he was gone.

  twelve

  FEBRUARY 1942

  INÈS

  After the harvest ended, autumn turned to winter, the days shortening, the nights turning frigid as ice crusted the vines. Michel had grown colder, too, bit by bit. Inès had tried to make him understand why she’d needed to see Edith, but it had been months now, and he hadn’t forgiven her. Not that she needed his absolution, but it felt as if he’d closed himself off to her since September, and that was a long time—in the midst of a war, no less—to continue feeling as if you’d made an enemy of the person who was supposed to love you most. Then again, she’d been losing him long before that.

  “It is not that I’m angry at you,” Michel said wearily late one night in early February as he climbed quietly into bed beside Inès and found her awake, shivering beneath the thin blankets. Outside, snow fell lightly. “It is that my trust in you is shaken.”