Chapter Thirty-nine
The cottage is humble, with blue painted shutters at the deep-set windows and a roof missing a few of its shingles. I try to imagine the sophisticated brunette in the Marchesa wedding gown as a girl playing with her dolls in the small garden beside the cottage. Did she gaze out over the marshes at the sea and dream about the day she would escape the tiny island? Did she pinch salt between her fingers and wish for a knight-errant to carry her off to his château?
My chest aches for that little girl, even though I don’t know her. It aches for Xavier, who loved and lost.
“Here goes nothing,” Olivia says, lifting the brass door-knocker and rapping it against the door.
I reach for Olivia’s other hand, childishly clinging onto it. The door creaks open and a stoop-backed old woman eyes us warily.
“Bonjour,” Olivia says, smiling. “Êtes-vous Madame Verite?”
“Oui,” she says, looking behind us.
Olivia introduces herself and tells the woman I am Manderley de Maloret, Xavier’s new wife. Madame Verite inhales sharply, the air whistling between teeth. She looks at me with open hostility.
When Olivia says something else, Madame Verite shakes her head and tries to close the door. Olivia sticks her foot in the opening.
“Wait!” she cries. “Où se trouve Marine? Avez-vous vu votre petite-fille récemment?”
“Non!”
Madame Verite shuts the door with a final, firm bang.
“What did you ask her?”
“I asked her if she has seen her granddaughter recently and she said no.”
My shoulders slump. I want to curl up on Madame Verite’s doorstep and cry tears as salty as the water in the marshes. I don’t blame the woman for not wanting to talk to us, strangers who suddenly appeared on her doorstep demanding information about her granddaughter, the ex-wife of my husband. She can’t know how much I have risked in coming to see her.
“I am not giving up that easy,” Olivia says, reaching for the door knocker. “I said you were going to have answers before the sun sets, and I intend to get them even if it means I have to pull a Liam Neeson on the old broad and threaten her with my special set of skills.”
“No.” I grab her hand. “Maybe this is a sign that we aren’t supposed to be here, prying into Xavier’s past.”
“Sign-schmine,” Olivia says, pulling her hand away. “Don’t you want to know about Marine?”
“What do you want to know about Marine?”
A stocky man with ruddy cheeks chapped and wrinkled from years of working by the sea is walking up the path, a long wooden rake resting on his shoulder.
“Are you Monsieur Verite?” Olivia asks.
“Oui.”
“Bonjour, Monsieur Verite,” I say, stepping closer. “My name is Manderley de Maloret.”
“Manderley de Maloret, you say?” he says, his accent thick.
“Yes.”
“We don’t wish to pry, monsieur, but we have a few questions about your granddaughter we were hoping you could answer,” Olivia says.
Monsieur Verite lifts the rake off his shoulder and rests it against the side of the house beside the door. “You already spoke to Madame Verite, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“She wouldn’t answer your questions.”
He says it as statement rather than a question, but Olivia still answers.
“No, she wouldn’t.”
“Come,” he says, gesturing for us to follow him. “We can talk in the barn.”
We follow him into an old stone gite filled with rakes like the one he had been carrying, wooden wheelbarrows, and battered wicker baskets, to a scarred oak picnic table. He flips on an overhead light and invites us to sit on one of the benches on either side of the table.
“What is it you wish to know about my granddaughter”—he folds his wrinkled hands on the table in front of him—“and why have you not asked your husband these questions?”
“You’re right, monsieur. I shouldn’t be here,” I say, guilty heat fanning over my cheeks. “I should be at home, waiting for my husband to return from his trip. It’s just . . . you see, we didn’t know each other long before we eloped, and my friend has heard rumors.”
“What rumors?”
Olivia shares everything Caro told her with Monsieur Verite. He listens carefully, without interrupting, and then says, “In France, we have a proverb: Dans une bouche close, il n’entre point de mouche. It means, ‘A closed mouth catches no flies.’ Saint-Maturinus is full of people whose mouths are full of buzzing insects.”
“Are you saying the rumors aren’t true?”
“I do not pretend to know what happened between Marine and Xavier and I refuse to speculate, but you should understand something, madame. My granddaughter was une mauvaise femme.”
A bad woman.
“I knew something wasn’t right with Marine when she was still a young girl. She seemed incapable of expressing genuine warmth. She didn’t laugh and play easily with the other children on the island. She was arrogant, bossy, and at times, cruel. She would manipulate the children into giving her their favorite toys, not because she wanted them, but because she didn’t want them to have more than she had.” Monsieur Verite stares at me vacantly and I realize he is caught in a complex cobweb of memories. “As a teenager, she would steal money from my wallet and lie about it. Even then, Marine could not admit when she had made a mistake.”
“Do you think she started the rumors?”
Monsieur Verite is still lost in his cobweb. It takes a few seconds for my question to reach him.
“It would not surprise me, madame.”
“Do you know where she went after she left Xavier?”
He shakes his head. The flat, vacant look in his eyes has been replaced by sadness, and resignation, perhaps.
“My best guess is that a better opportunity presented itself and she grabbed it with both of her greedy little hands.”
If there is a better opportunity than being married to a kind, generous man like Xavier de Maloret, I don’t know what it is.
“What about Coco?”
He frowns. “Her little dog?”
“Yes. She left her behind.”
“Bah!” He waves his hands. “She never cared for that dog, any dog, really.”
“Did Xavier give Coco to Marine?”
“Non.” Monsieur Verite shifts in his seat. “Marine was never a faithful person, you see? She would tell Xavier she was coming to stay here and then go sailing with that man. The dog was a present from him.”
“Xavier knew she was having an affair?”
“He called here once, worried because Marine was late in coming home. If Madame Verite had answered the phone, she would have given him an excuse, but I answered. I would not lie for Marine. She stopped visiting after that, stopped calling her grandmother.”
“Poor Xavier,” I say, remembering how I once likened him to a jungle cat with a thorn in his paw. He had a thorn, alright, but it wasn’t lodged in his paw, it was lodged in his heart.
“Oui,” Monsieur Verite says, exhaling heavily. “I am certain Marine did many things to hurt Xavier. She only married him because he was a de Maloret.”
Outside a bolt of lightning zigzags across the leaden sky, followed by a drumroll of thunder.
“Thank you, Monsieur Verite,” I say, standing. “I appreciate your candor.”
“Go home to your husband, Madame de Maloret. Go home, put your worries to rest, and wake tomorrow grateful that you are married to a good man.”
“Thank you, monsieur. I will.”
We are halfway to the door when Monsieur Verite calls after us. “If you don’t want the burden of caring for Coco, you could return her to my granddaughter’s gypsy boyfriend.”
Olivia grabs my arm and we both turn around to look at Monsieur Verite.
“Gypsy?”
“Oui,” Monsieur Verite says. “The vagrant who lives in the toll house on the mainland. His name is—”
“Nicabar!”