The Vineyards of Champagne

by Juliet Blackwell

  He stopped short and frowned. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. . . . I didn’t mean . . .” Rosalyn trailed off with a frustrated shrug. She had no words for the emotions pummeling her.

  “Why are you suddenly angry at me? You have nothing to feel guilty for because of what happened in the caves, Rosalyn. We may have gotten a little carried away, but it wasn’t that surprising, was it? This sort of thing is inevitable.”

  She snorted. “How very French of you.”

  “Maybe I am being ‘very’ French, but a few intimate moments together—however wonderful—does not constitute a contract. I made you a business offer, nothing more.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think perhaps I have misjudged things. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “It’s just— Why does everyone seem to have an idea about how I should spend my life?” demanded Rosalyn. First Dash, then Hugh, then Emma . . . Rosalyn felt disloyal, inadequate, and so incredibly sad. At that moment, all she wanted was to be back in her hermitage. Solo. No connections, no expectations, no words. “Why doesn’t everyone just leave me alone?”

  “Whatever you say, Rosalyn,” said Jérôme. “I certainly wouldn’t want to stand in your way.”

  * * *

  Full of regret and weathering an onslaught of unnamed emotions, Rosalyn caught a ride back to Cochet with Monsieur Bonnet. But as soon as he dropped her off at Blé Champagne, she found that her desire for solitude was not to be satisfied.

  Blondine was waiting for her, and the look on her face made Rosalyn ask, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you, Rosalyn, but Emma is sick.”

  “What happened? Where is she?”

  “André took her to Paris. She wouldn’t give me any details, but something’s very wrong. I wanted to go with her, but we have a huge sales meeting tomorrow that I can’t miss. Also, she yelled at me and told me not to come.”

  “Sounds like Emma.”

  “Rosalyn, I think it is very serious.”

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Rosalyn tried both Emma and André on their phones, but neither answered. Then she called the Hôpital Universitaire Pitié-Salpêtrière, where Emma had gone the last time she was in Paris; they confirmed that one Emilia Kinsley had indeed been admitted that evening. Visiting hours began at eight in the morning.

  Rosalyn arose early the next morning and drove to Paris. Consumed with worry for her friend, she scarcely noticed she was facing down the ghosts of Paris that had kept her away before.

  On the third floor of the hospital, she spotted André standing out on a large terrace, smoking. They shared a hug without speaking.

  “How is she?” Rosalyn asked when she finally pulled away.

  “Grincheuse,” he said, which meant “grumpy.”

  She smiled. “I’ll bet.”

  “She won’t be happy to see you,” he said in that measured, thoughtful way of his. “She does not like people to think of her as being sick. She is always so full of life; she wants people to think of her that way.”

  As she went to find Emma, Rosalyn wondered: Was it just human nature to wear a mask?

  “Knock, knock,” she said as she strode into Emma’s room. The accommodations were very nice, for a hospital: Hers was a private room, with a sitting area and a window that looked out over the rooftops of Paris. Emma wore a hospital gown with a blanket over her knees, and she was seated in an armchair by the window. She looked pale and tired.

  “You are quite the intrepid investigator, Rosalyn Acosta. Or did André spill the beans?”

  “No, I figured it out all by myself.”

  “Like I’ve been saying all along, you really are in the wrong business.”

  Rosalyn sank into the chair opposite hers. “Emma, what’s going on? Why are you here?”

  “Well, I adore those little Parisian boutique hotels, but with this cast, they simply won’t do. . . .” She trailed off with a shake of her head. “Nothing quite like elevators when you’re out of commission.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  “Care for a drink? André snuck in a bottle of Scotch—it’s a nice change from champagne.”

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

  “Stickler.” Emma laid her head back and closed her eyes.

  “I want to be a friend to you, Emma,” said Rosalyn. “Please let me be.”

  Emma let out a long sigh. “I hate to heap things on, Rosalyn, what with what happened to your husband and all. But I fear I’m not much longer for this world. That’s why I was in San Francisco. I had a consult with a specialist at U.C. San Francisco Medical Center. But that was pretty much my last attempt.”

  “What is it?”

  “A rare form of cancer, lymphoma—sarcoma—something or other.” She waved a hand in the air. “Not worth going into. A lot of this sort of thing is curable, but apparently not my version. In this, as in all else, I like to think of myself as a maverick.”

  “Is it connected to what happened to your leg?”

  Emma let out that raucous party laugh again. “No, as a matter of fact, that really was a dastardly taxi, though I would no doubt recover more quickly were it not for this other thing.”

  “But surely there’s something that can be done?”

  “Remember how you told me how people say stupid things when you’re grieving, and they try to give advice? Just try being sick and having people ask you: ‘Have you tried coconut oil? Crystals? The finest medical care money can buy?’”

  “Excellent point. I apologize.”

  Emma shook her head and gazed out the window. “The doctors here insisted on running more tests, and are urging me to try yet another experimental treatment that is about to start clinical trials in San Francisco, but at some point, I’m going to have to call it quits. And truly, I’m not afraid of death; it’s what’s next. Circle of life and all that. What I despise, though, is leaving things unfinished—like getting someone to take over my wine business. Say, you’re sure you don’t want to take the reins? Great excuse to come visit a certain cute vintner in France.”

  “I’m not sure that particular vintner wants me darkening his doorstep anymore.”

  “Lovers’ spat already? You work quick, Rosie. I’ll give you that.”

  Rosalyn smiled and shrugged, looking away and trying to act casual, to ignore the screaming in her head, but of course Emma noticed.

  “Seriously, Rosalyn? What happened?”

  “It was just too much, too fast, I guess. Maybe. I don’t know, with Lucie’s cave and everything. . . .” She trailed off.

  “Maybe it’s the meds, but I’m not following you, sweetie.”

  “I slept with Jérôme,” Rosalyn finally blurted out, letting the tears come, and turn into sobs.

  “Crikey, was it that bad?”

  “No. It was wonderful. More than that. Absolutely amazing. I had forgotten how it could be.”

  “But?”

  “But as soon as it was over, I felt . . .” Rosalyn’s voice wavered. “I feel like I’ve betrayed Dash. I know he’s been dead for years now. I know he’s never coming back, but it still feels like a betrayal, as if I’m forgetting him, letting him go.”

  “I think it’s more than that.”

  Rosalyn sniffed loudly, and Emma passed tissues.

  “I think you need to forgive yourself for loving Dash,” Emma said. “For loving him despite the fact that he screwed up royally. He left you in debt, and given that he was human, I assume there were a few other thoughtless or stupid things he did.”

  “Like hiding from me the fact that he was sick.”

  “Dash didn’t tell you?”

  Rosalyn shook her head. “Not until he had to. Sometimes I wonder . . . maybe if he’d gone to the doctor earlier, if he had t
aken better care of himself, if he had let me help him . . . maybe things would have been different.”

  “Maybe. But then, maybe not. My point is this: It’s all right to love deeply flawed people. You can be angry at Dash and yet still love him; you can love other people and still honor what you had with him. In a way you’re betraying yourself by seeing Dash as perfect.”

  She could love Dash even though he was flawed. She could mourn him even though she was angry at him. Rosalyn was going to have to ponder that one further. Still, she felt like a weight was lifted off her back—not the boulder she usually hauled around, but a stone, at the very least.

  “But I really didn’t come here to talk about me,” said Rosalyn. “Back to you, and your wine business . . . I could . . . I mean, if you really need someone to take over for you . . .”

  The weight settled right back on Rosalyn’s shoulders. She would do this for Emma; she would do anything Emma wanted her to do. But running a wine business, going back into sales . . . Her heart dropped at the thought. It was one thing to bring in the harvest, maybe even to try her hand at making wine, but never again did she want to have to sell.

  “For the love of God, Rosalyn,” said Emma, “you are incapable of keeping the emotions from your face. Listen, it was just an idea. You don’t want to do it, I’ll find someone else. I’ve got a little time, several months, at least, maybe more.”

  An idea occurred to Rosalyn. “What about Blondine? I could help out until she gets her feet under her—I don’t mind consulting. I just don’t want to run the thing. I was planning on introducing her to my boss, Hugh; maybe you three could form a partnership of some sort. An international concern, with Blondine as liaison, and André here on the ground in Champagne.”

  Emma smiled. “I like the sound of that. I’ll look into it. But back to you: If you don’t want to work for Hugh, and you don’t want to stay with that luscious vintner Jérôme . . . what is it that you do want, Rosie? You want to go back to Napa?”

  “Not permanently.”

  Rosalyn’s life in Napa had been all about Dash: what he’d wanted and what he’d needed. And she had loved it. But she realized now that even if Dash hadn’t gotten sick, things would have changed. He would have had to admit the money problems, and given their different approaches to the world, their dynamic would have shifted. Perhaps they would have weathered the storm; perhaps it would have put them on a more even keel as partners. But things would have changed, no matter what.

  Fairy tales didn’t last. But maybe that was okay.

  Her life couldn’t be about what Dash wanted anymore. It had to be about what she wanted.

  “Hey, you’ll never guess what Jérôme and I found in the Pommery caves,” said Rosalyn, eager to share her news—and to change the subject. She brought out her phone and scrolled through to show Emma, but it was hard to make out very much in the photographs.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s Dakar, the niche Lucie’s family lived in, in the Pommery caves. Jérôme got us permission to explore. See? They had carved their names into the wall! And at the back, there was a crumbling section of wall, and we busted through and found the little area Émile wrote about, the ‘attic’ of Dakar.”

  Emma sat up straighter. “Are you serious? You broke through a wall in the cellars? I knew we were on the same wavelength.”

  “It’s hard to tell in the photo, but we found Doris’s letters.”

  “Finally!”

  “They’re in terrible shape, though. And it felt like stealing to take them, so they’ll have to go through official channels before we can get our hands on them.”

  Emma made a tsking sound. “Drawing the line at stealing, are we? Now you’ve disappointed me.”

  “But here’s the best part: Jérôme’s great-grandfather was a veteran of the Great War, and he was severely injured, and believed dead for a while, and lost a hand.”

  Emma blinked. “You think Jérôme’s great-grandfather was Émile Legrand? Our Émile?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet; Jérôme said he’d try to find his name in a genealogy or family documents to confirm it. But it seems awfully coincidental, doesn’t it?”

  Emma nodded. “It certainly does. So, if true, Jérôme and I are cousins. A few times removed, but cousins nonetheless.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “While you were destroying private property and canoodling with Jérôme—”

  “Canoodling?” Rosalyn asked with a smile.

  “—I made a discovery of my own. André got his hands on the orphanage ledger from Madame Bolze.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  “The man has a way with old women—I’m a case in point. I don’t ask questions.”

  Rosalyn stilled. “Have you looked through it?”

  Emma nodded slowly, a smile on her face.

  “What did you find?”

  “It’s over on the nightstand, by the bed. Check out the bookmarked page.”

  Rosalyn rose to retrieve the ledger and flipped through its ancient pages. Where the bookmark held the place, she ran her finger down the names, pausing at: Narcissa Emilia Maréchal LeGrand, Reims; agée moins d’un an, adoptée, Madame Doris Whittaker, veuve, Australie. Narcissa Emilia Maréchal LeGrand, less than a year old, adopted by the widow Doris Whittaker from Australia.

  “You’re kidding me.” Rosalyn stared at Emma. “Doris adopted Lucie and Émile’s daughter? But I thought . . . Didn’t you say Doris didn’t have any children?”

  “She didn’t. Not according to the family tree, anyway.”

  “Would she have kept the adoption a secret for some reason?”

  “I can’t imagine why. She was a wealthy widow, and known to do pretty much as she pleased. But I started thinking about the timeline. . . . Doris didn’t live past forty. We know that Narcissa was born in nineteen eighteen, which means she would have been only a few years old when Doris died.”

  “Oh, the poor thing,” said Rosalyn. “She lost another mother? What happened to her then?”

  “Ah, that’s where things get even stranger. Doris had one brother, Louis. He and his wife—my great-grandparents—had ten children. The youngest child, who was my grandmother, was named Narcissa.”

  Rosalyn stared at Emma. “That’s not a very common name, is it?”

  Emma shook her head. “And here’s the kicker: My full name isn’t Emma—it’s Emilia. It was my grandmother’s middle name.”

  “Emilia . . . as in Émile? So this means you are Narcissa’s granddaughter, and the great-granddaughter of Émile and Lucie,” said Rosalyn, a note of wonder in her voice. “No one in your family ever said anything about Narcissa being an orphan from France?”

  “I’m sure they were aware of it at the time, and I always knew we had French blood in the family, but I never heard about it. Then again, my great-grandparents had ten children, so I imagine they just folded her into the brood and raised her as one of their own. Maybe that’s why I was so fascinated by the letters—maybe I was meant to find my cousins, eh? I have two brothers who can follow up on that. They’ll like Jérôme; I bet they’ll get along like wildfire.”

  “What does your mother say about all of this?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her yet. I . . . I don’t want to call her until I know what’s going on with my health situation, and decide what my next steps are, assuming there are any.” She let out another long sigh, and closed her eyes. “By far, the worst thing about all of this is imagining what my death is going to do to my poor mother. But I can’t do anything about that—death is the ultimate relinquishment of control, after all. And she’s got lots of grandchildren to console her. Still, I always meant to leave a legacy of some sort. I never had kids, so it should have been something else. Something . . .” She left off with a shrug.

  “Maybe part of your
legacy is bringing Émile and Lucie’s story to light, however tragic it might be.”

  “Is it tragic, though? I think Gaspard had a point: We want Émile and Lucie to have lived, but they would have been dead by now no matter what. All stories have to end sooner or later, and there’s really no ‘right way’ to exit, when you think about it. Ultimately we’re all just the contents of our own letters, which someone in the future might read; everyone dies eventually.”

  “That’s very philosophical,” said Rosalyn, leaning forward and putting her hand over Emma’s. “And I accept any decision you make, of course. But, Emma, if the doctors think this new experimental protocol might work, I hope you’ll try it. And I want to go with you. I need to take care of a few things in Napa, but it’s not far. I can be there for you, Emma. I want to be there for you. And if you still want to pay me to write Émile and Lucie’s story, I would love to accept. Turns out, I really need a job.”

  “You’re hired, on one condition: Apologize to Jérôme. Don’t be an ass, Rosie. The man’s adorable; he works the fields during the day, reads poetry at night, and busts through walls. Assuming he’s good in bed, he’s the real deal.”

  Rosalyn laughed. “I will. But hey, you’re going to want to stick around long enough to read my book—our book—when it’s done. With all these new revelations, it ought to be a bestseller. I see Hollywood blockbuster written all over it.”

  Tears in her eyes, Emma squeezed Rosalyn’s hand and blew out a long breath. “Are you sure you can handle this, Rosie? The great likelihood is that I’ll die, just like Dash did. Just like we all do, eventually.”

  Rosalyn had fled from Dash’s hospital room at the last moment, so fearful was she of facing loss. But loss was part of life; it was inevitable. She was no longer afraid of death. As a matter of fact, she was no longer afraid of facing life, either.

  “I want to be there, if you want me to be.”

  “All right, what the hell? If the tests reveal I’m a good candidate for it, we’ll head back to California. I want to meet this Hugh character I’ve heard so much about.”