by Ellen Crosby
“Good for you,” Quinn said. “I think the guy’s a jerk, too.”
“Had you seen him before that evening? Since he became the winemaker at La Vigne Cellars?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I found out that he was there by accident. Robyn Callahan is organizing a surprise party for Toby’s seventy-fifth birthday, so she called two months ago and asked us to cater it. You can’t repeat any of this, but it’s going to be a big affair, with friends flying in from all over the country and even overseas. Everyone they know in Washington is coming as well, it seems. Robyn told me Jean-Claude would be handling the wine. Of course I didn’t tell her I already knew him. She’s been to the Inn to choose the menu and I’ve gone over to Wicklow when Toby was out of town to discuss how we’re going to stage it. Fortunately I never ran into Jean-Claude.”
“He came here a lot.” Eli picked up a fork and started to attack the extra-large slice of cake the waiter had brought. “He spent plenty of time in the bar.”
“I’ll take his money,” she said. “As long as he pays his tab and behaves himself. But I won’t let him treat my staff the way he did that night at dinner.”
“Do you remember much about him when he was still living in France?” I asked. “Do you know why he had to leave Bordeaux or who his father paid off to keep quiet about it?”
“You mean, aside from sleeping with every woman he laid eyes on?”
“Well … yes.”
Dominique folded her hands on the table and leaned in closer to the three of us. “I heard rumors—that were never proven, of course—that Jean-Claude got caught trying to sell de Merignac grand cru vintages that had been cut with Algerian wine,” she said. “One of the dirty secrets about Bordeaux is that more wine is bottled every year than could possibly be produced from the actual tonnage of grapes grown. It’s robbing Peter to pay the piper.”
“I’ve heard about that practice,” Quinn said. “So that’s why he can’t go back to Bordeaux.”
Years ago the winemaker at the California winery where Quinn had worked had been caught in exactly the same scandal, selling adulterated wine in Eastern Europe. The result had been jail time for the winemaker and the owner was forced to shut the vineyard doors. Quinn had been tarred with that brush ever since, though he’d known nothing about the illicit wine. We almost never talked about his past, but it was the chief reason he’d left California for Virginia.
Dominique finished her espresso. “I suspect that’s why he can’t return, but, as I said, nothing was ever proven. A journalist who tried to write about it was sued. His newspaper defended him but Armand de Merignac won. When you have as much money as that family has, you can make anything happen. Make any scandal go away.”
“Any scandal?” I said, puzzled. “Was there something else?”
“I think you were too besotted with Jean-Claude to realize what was going on the summer you stayed with us,” Dominique said with unaccustomed harshness. “He hurt a lot of people. Used them and then discarded them.”
She meant women.
“Including you,” I said. “I did know, Dominique, and I’m sorry about what he did to you.”
The bitterness in her laugh surprised me. “You didn’t know all of it, Lucie. Nor you, Eli. Jean-Claude’s father cleaned up his son’s messy affairs,” she said. “Paying for abortions, putting up the girls at clinics. Paying them off to say nothing.”
“Jesus,” Eli said. “How many were there?”
“At least two that I knew of.”
For a long moment no one said a word. It seemed as if time had stopped and everything and everyone around us went sharply out of focus. I tried thinking back nearly twenty years ago to that summer, wracking my brain to try to remember … something.
Why no one explained Dominique’s abrupt departure for a “little vacation” in the countryside. How she returned a week later, unaccountably sad and withdrawn.
My cousin lifted her chin and stared at all three of us, her eyes blazing and her expression fierce and unforgiving. “That’s right,” she said. “One of them was me.”
Eight
We left the Inn soon after that.
“I wish you had told me,” I whispered to Dominique as we said good-bye. “Why did you have to bear it alone all these years?”
“My parents knew,” she said. “That was hard enough. I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone. You were only thirteen, Lucie. I would never have told you.” She took a deep breath. “And, to be honest, Jean-Claude never knew, either. It was just one time—isn’t that crazy?—but once was enough for me to get pregnant. I paid for the abortion out of my savings. I wasn’t about to be bought off by Baron de Merignac like the other one, whoever she was. To this day the de Merignacs have no idea. Certainly not Jean-Claude. I never told another soul until this evening … I’m not even sure why I told the three of you.”
“Because it was time. I’m glad you did. Though you must still be so angry, even after all these years. How could you forget something like that?”
She gave me a lopsided smile. “Oh, I wanted to kill him for a long time. Then I wanted to kill myself,” she said with a candor that stunned me. “Finally I had to make peace with what happened, learn to live with it. So when I threw him out of my restaurant the other day after he gave me the perfect excuse, it felt good.”
I wanted to kill myself. All these years Dominique had never said one word about any of this. Maybe that was why she had thrown herself into her work, made it her life.
“What happened that night will be in tomorrow’s newspaper,” I said.
She shrugged, the earlier anger now gone as if she were too weary to sustain the energy required to keep it stoked. “You know, you can only sweep the rug under the carpet for so long. Sooner or later, people are going to find out who the real Jean-Claude de Merignac is. He’ll get what’s coming to him. I guarantee it will happen.”
* * *
QUINN AND I SAID almost nothing on the drive home, each of us lost in our own thoughts. His, I was sure, had to do with Armand de Merignac saving his son’s precious hide after Jean-Claude tried to pass off adulterated bottles of his family’s coveted world-class wine as the real thing. As for me I couldn’t stop thinking about what Dominique had gone through that summer and for years afterward—her abortion and then the blame and self-recrimination after that. How deep her despair had been.
Eli followed behind us, driving a little too close, his headlights flashing in the rearview mirror like strobe lights as both cars drove down the dark, deserted country roads back to the vineyard. After Persia told us what a perfect little lamb Hope had been and left for her apartment above Eli’s studio in the carriage house, the three of us split up. Eli claimed he needed to work on some drawings in his studio, Quinn wanted a cigar and a cognac at the summerhouse, and I said I needed to catch up on email and a few business items, so I’d be in the library. The truth was, none of us could face going to bed just yet.
Quinn poured me a drink from the bottle on the dining room sideboard before taking the cognac bottle and a glass for himself outside for his own drink. I wondered how empty it would be when he finally put it back.
Before he left he gave me a kiss and said, “Meet you in bed, okay? I won’t be long.”
I nodded. “Me, neither. I just need to clear my head. And I do need to catch up on email.”
I closed the library door and drew the curtains, lighting only the lamp on the antique partners desk that had belonged to Leland. Everything else seemed to soften and colors faded in the dim light, turning the room into a warm, sheltering cocoon. The gilded pages of the Montgomery family Bible, which lay open on one of the bookshelves, gleamed faintly.
Earlier this evening Win Turnbull had told Kit and me about the forensic anthropologist who would be coming by in the morning to begin excavating the grave where the skull had been found. In addition to my father’s genealogical records, our Bible contained a detailed family record of births, deaths, and marr
iages inserted between the Old and New Testaments. It was a family tree, some of it in spidery handwriting and faded ink, which dated back to the early 1800s. Maybe figuring out who the mystery woman was could be as simple as checking those pages as Quinn had suggested, once I knew more about how long she had been in that grave.
The computer squawked when I booted it up. I sipped my cognac, waiting for the login screen to appear.
The first thing I did was search for Jean-Claude’s name, which gave me thousands of hits, mostly relating to other vineyards where he worked before joining La Vigne, along with photos and links to charity fund-raisers and social events, many on behalf of his family’s Formula One racing team where he’d usually appeared with some breathtakingly stunning woman who cast an adoring glance at him as she hung on his arm. I plowed through those for a while before giving up. Then I searched for “de Merignac” plus “Algerian wine.” All I found was a small article in an arcane French wine blog that mentioned the possibility that fifteen years ago Château de Merignac’s Bordeaux and Pauillac wines had been adulterated with Algerian wine but, as Dominique had said, nothing had been proven. Armand de Merignac had shut down the rumor mill entirely. Wasn’t it amazing what money and influence could do?
I abandoned that search and clicked on my email, listening to the ding-ding-ding of a flurry of incoming messages landing in my inbox. Thirty-seven new emails. I scrolled through them, deleting almost everything. No, I didn’t want to meet married men looking for adventurous women, consult a psychic, or try sexual performance–enhancing drugs. Then my eyes fell on an email that was fifteen hours old; in fact, based on the time stamp, it had come in while I was at the cemetery talking to Jean-Claude. The subject line said Your Reports Are Ready.
The sender was the Genome Project.
Did I really want to do this right now? Maybe it would be better to wait until morning to learn the results they’d gleaned from my vial of spit. What if I was related to a serial killer or a notorious criminal? Hadn’t I learned enough devastating secrets for one night?
I’d had more alcohol in the last eight hours than I usually did in two days, beginning with that glass of wine with Kit on the terrace at the villa, followed by a cosmo with Toby and Robyn, more wine at the Inn, and now a potent glass of cognac. What the hell.
I clicked on the email. A cheery one-line message said, Welcome to You! We’re thrilled to let you know your results are available, above a green button that said View Reports. My computer key chain signed me in to the website once I clicked on the link.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it came as a surprise when I realized that I’d been holding my breath. My ancestry report showed—quite sensibly—that I was mostly of northern European heritage; heavily Scottish and English, which would be on Leland’s side, and French on my mother’s. At the bottom of the page was another link. Connect With Your DNA Relatives and a warning that I should be aware I could potentially discover the identity of individuals I didn’t know were related to me or allow individuals I might not want to hear from to find me as well. I was in this for the whole ride. It took a few seconds to set up a profile.
I hit Enter and another screen appeared. I stared at it for the longest time. Not a serial killer who was a previously unknown relative, but something else just as shocking. It felt like a bomb had exploded under me.
We have found a very high probability of a brother-sister relationship between you and David Phelps through your father Leland Montgomery.
Who the hell was David Phelps? My father had another child, another family that none of us knew about? When? Where? Before he married my mother? After?
I scrolled some more but there was no additional information on David Phelps. Then a moment later, as if it were preordained, my email dinged again. The subject line read: From your half brother.
The sender was David Phelps.
The door to the library opened and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Quinn poked his head around the corner as my hands flew to my chest and I tried not to look as if I’d just learned news that had knocked my world completely off-kilter.
I said, half-breathless, “Oh, God. Sorry, but you scared me to death. Next time please knock, okay? I thought you were going straight to bed.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you ready to go upstairs?” He gave me a puzzled look. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine. Perfectly fine. I’m not quite ready for bed. I have one more email to take care of and then I’ll be up,” I said. “It won’t take long. I’ll join you soon.”
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“Positive.” I couldn’t tell him about what I’d just learned. Not yet. Still, he knew I was upset and I had to say something. “Actually, it’s Dominique. I can’t get over what she told us. It just breaks my heart.”
It was the truth.
“I know. Me, too.”
He glanced over at Leland’s gun cabinet. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, custom-made by Amish carpenters who had designed the hand-etched glass doors and carved molding on the solid cherry cabinets to my father’s exacting specifications. Inside his substantial collection of weapons and ammunition were secured by heavy-duty steel bars and an internal steel safe. Tiny spotlights inside the glass cabinets made it look as if you were viewing a museum display.
Quinn’s gaze shifted from the guns back to me. I knew without checking that the cognac bottle was a lot less full than it had been earlier and that he was a bit drunk, too. The anger in his eyes unnerved me. If what happened to Dominique had happened to me and Quinn found out about it, he wouldn’t let it go. Even after twenty years. He’d do something about it.
He’d make Jean-Claude pay.
Thank God the guns were locked up and Jean-Claude was nowhere nearby.
“You ought to get some sleep,” I said. “We’re all too emotional about this right now, plus harvest has been exhausting.”
He nodded. “You really never know about people, do you?” he said in a soft voice.
“No. You don’t. Go to bed, love. I’ll try not to wake you.”
He closed the door, leaving me by myself again and momentarily regretting that I hadn’t decided to go upstairs and join him in bed. David Phelps had just written to me, only minutes ago, from somewhere in cyberspace. It hadn’t taken him long—practically the wink of an eye, mere seconds after I set up my profile and clicked on that green button—to realize I’d joined the universe of people who agreed to share DNA information, searching for long-lost relatives or seeking more information about who they really were.
To find me.
How long had he been waiting? A week? A month? Years? What if I went to bed right now without reading his letter and waited until morning when the curtains were open and sunlight streamed in through the mullioned window, lighting all the dark corners of the room? When nothing seemed as spooky or eerie as it did at this moment.
Except I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I didn’t know.
I pressed Enter and David Phelps’ email appeared in a separate window. No clues about his identity—a job or a location—from his address, which was a plain vanilla Gmail address.
His letter was short and succinct.
Dear Lucie,
I saw that you recently submitted your DNA to the Genome Project database and indicated that you were willing to let individuals who are related to you contact you. I do not know if this will come as a surprise or a shock, but through a distant relative of your family who was in the database I was able to learn that your father, Leland Montgomery, was also my father. He had a brief relationship with a woman who I was able to determine is my biological mother and the result was me. That woman gave me up at birth and I was adopted and raised by Margaret and Joe Phelps, my wonderful “real” parents, who loved me and cherished me as if I were their own son.
Sadly, both of them passed away—my mother two years ago from breast cancer and my father three years before that fro
m a heart attack. I miss them every day. Neither one ever told me anything about my biological parents; either they didn’t know themselves or they were trying to protect me. Though I always wanted to know who my biological mother and father were and possibly understand why they gave me up, I did not seek any information out of respect and love for my mom and dad. However, after my mother passed away, I began searching for my biological parents in earnest.
I am aware that Leland Montgomery died a couple of years ago; however the woman with whom he had the affair is still very much alive. She occupies a position of considerable influence and power and, unfortunately, does not want to hear from me. Which leaves you, if you’re willing to be in touch.
There are several pieces of information that I think might be important for you to know—some of which, I suspect, might be difficult for you to learn—but first and most important, I would like to know if you would be interested in being in contact with me. Either by email or by phone, and perhaps eventually, in person.
I hope to hear from you and I apologize if this email causes you any pain or unhappiness, as it certainly is not my intention.
Sincerely,
David Phelps
I don’t know how long I sat there trying to take in the information that I had a half brother out there somewhere who had known about me for nearly two years. Too late to meet Leland, but I wondered if my father would have wanted to meet or even acknowledge that he had a son with a woman he hadn’t married. Had he known about the child? Dominique never told Jean-Claude she was pregnant, but then again she’d also had an abortion.
And who was this woman, David Phelps’ birth mother? He’d said she had an important and influential job, but apparently didn’t want to acknowledge him as her son. Whoever she was, she was the only one still alive who could answer his questions.