Chapter Eleven

In contrast to their busy holiday, the week between Christmas and New Year was uneventful. The weather was bad, and it rained most of the time. The house was quiet again without Gabriel and Alexandre, who reported to their mother that they were having a fabulous time at Lake Tahoe and meeting lots of women. They wanted to know if they could bring two of them back to the château to stay with them, and Maxine didn’t think it was a good idea. Even if Christophe had left on his trip by the time they got back, Camille would tell him. He had treated them to the trip to Tahoe, and she didn’t think the boys should push and add women to the mix staying at the château. Christophe had been very welcoming and generous with them so far, and had footed the bill for all their expenses since they left France, including their air tickets. She could see that the frequent incidents created by the boys, the damage to his property and cars, and being constantly surrounded by people in his home was beginning to wear thin. He never lost his temper about it, but he looked exhausted and could no longer get any peace at home, nor could Camille. Maxine and her sons had taken over every inch of their home.

In the end, the weather was so bad on New Year’s Eve, and the roads so dangerous from heavy rains, that Camille decided not to go to Florence Taylor’s party, and she spent the evening with Simone instead at the cottage. She made her famous cassoulet, which Camille was surprised she liked, and Simone brought out cards and they played poker. They wished each other a happy New Year and drank champagne at midnight that Camille had brought, and she stayed till two in the morning, and then went back to the château in the pouring rain.

According to his wishes, Christophe and Maxine had gone to bed long before that, and had a quiet night. He was leaving at six in the morning, to catch his flight to Paris at ten A.M. It was scheduled to land in Paris at nine P.M. San Francisco time, which would be six A.M. in Paris the next day, which would get him to his hotel at seven-thirty or eight, to shower and change and start his day of meetings. And he was going to Bordeaux at the end of the week. He had thought of taking Maxine with him, but he had too many appointments and people to see to spend time with her, and she didn’t want to miss out on being with her sons when they came back from Tahoe. They were staying in the States for another two weeks.

Having woken up early from the heavy rains, Camille heard her father on the stairs as he was leaving. She tiptoed out of her room in her nightgown and bare feet to kiss him goodbye, and he smiled when he saw her, happy to have a last chance to hug her.

“Take care of everything while I’m gone,” he said, but didn’t need to. He knew she would anyway. She was so conscientious about her job and their home. “I’ll see you in two weeks.” She hugged him again and he waved at her from the bottom of the stairs and put his hat and raincoat on, and she heard the door of one of the winery SUVs close outside. A vineyard worker was driving him, and as the car rolled down the driveway, she went back to bed, and woke up again at ten o’clock. The rain had stopped but it was a dreary day and she knew her father was in the air by then. He had texted her just before they took off to tell her he loved her.

It was New Year’s Day and she had nothing to do. She stayed in bed till noon, and then dressed and went to see Simone, who was in the garden checking on her chickens, in her tall rubber gardening boots. Simone invited her to stay for lunch. They had oeufs en cocotte, eggs baked in ramekins with little bits of sausage and tomatoes, that were delicious. They talked for a while, and Camille helped her build a fire and then went back to the house around three. She lay on her bed for a while and read, and fell asleep. It was a lazy day, and she woke up at six.

She was thinking about going downstairs for something to eat, when she heard the television on in her mother’s old office, and assumed Maxine had it on. Camille wandered past, and saw her stepmother watching CNN with the remote in her hand, and she turned to look at Camille with a shocked expression.

“Did something happen?” Camille was relaxed from her easy day, and Maxine spoke in a hollow tone.

“Your father’s plane went down over the Atlantic. It disappeared an hour ago.” The whole scene had an unreality to it as Camille’s heart pounded and she went to sit next to her and stared at the TV. The Air France flight had sent out a distress signal in heavy weather, and twenty minutes later, it vanished from the radar screen. They had no idea what had happened, and there had been no further information from the captain. No one knew if foul play was involved, or just the weather, but there was no sign of the plane. Naval ships and tankers were heading toward the area, but there were none in the immediate vicinity. Camille felt faint as she listened. It wasn’t possible. He was just going to Paris and Bordeaux. He had said he would be back in two weeks. He never lied to her. If he said he was coming back in two weeks, he would. The two women sat in silence for the next hour, watching and listening to the reports. The announcer said it was most likely that the plane had gone down in the Atlantic, and there was no land within reasonable distance of where they had been for them to land safely if they had a mechanical failure of some kind.

Simone had seen the report on the TV in her cottage, and let herself into the château. She followed the sound of the television to the upstairs study, and saw them both sitting there. She sat down on the couch next to Camille, and held her hand. Half an hour later, all three of them were crying. It had been confirmed that the plane had gone down. A tanker in the area had finally reported seeing an explosion in midair, and a ball of fire sinking into the sea. Ships were steaming toward the area, but there were no survivors expected given the description from the tanker. The announcer looked grim, and said that two hundred and ninety people were thought to be on the plane, including the crew. They gave the flight number and it was Christophe’s. Camille sat rocking back and forth in Simone’s arms as she held her fast, and Maxine stared at them as though she didn’t understand what had been said or what they were doing, and left the room. She came back half an hour later and looked like she’d been crying too. She said in a hoarse voice that she had called the boys and told them, and they were coming back from Tahoe in the morning. There was too much snow on the road that night. Maxine stared at Camille then, and the two women exchanged a long look.

“Your father’s dead,” Maxine said to Camille in a quavering voice. “What am I going to do?” Camille had no answer for her. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t imagine her world without him. What was going to happen to all of them? And how could this be? Things like this only happened on the news, not to people you knew. Not to her father. He traveled all the time. They still didn’t know what had caused the explosion, but it didn’t matter now. The plane and everyone on it were gone, without a trace. Divers were already searching for wreckage, bodies, and the black box that would have recorded their last moments.

Simone went down to the kitchen and brought back water and tea for both of them. She didn’t know what else to do. It was Camille she was worried about, whose life revolved around her father. Maxine would always be a survivor and find a way to reinvent herself, but not this child. She looked shattered by the news, having lost her only living parent fifteen months after her mother had died.

The phone rang half an hour later. It was Sam looking for her, and Camille held the receiver in her shaking hand. “Was he on that flight?” he asked in a breaking voice. He had seen Christophe two days before and knew he was flying to Paris on New Year’s Day. He had been seized by a wave of panic when he heard about the crash on CNN.

“Yes,” Camille said in a whisper and Sam burst into sobs, and then offered to come over as soon as he composed himself. But she didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to see anybody. She wanted her father, not his friend, although she was grateful for the call. “No, I’m okay,” she said, sounding like a child again and she felt like one. He promised to come and see her the next day.

The airline called them after that, to tell them the news but they already knew. They still had no idea if the failure had been mechanical, or an act of terrorism. It sounded like a missile from some of the early reports, but that didn’t seem possible or likely. There was no reason for it. They planned to continue searching for the remains of the plane in daylight, and the black box, although the plane had gone down in very deep water. Camille heard what they said, though from a great distance, and then Phillip called. He was in Aspen where he had gone skiing with Francesca and some friends.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, sounding as protective as ever and almost as shocked as she was. He was worried about her. The question was a moot point. How could she be okay now? She had just lost her only surviving parent, and Christophe was such a good man, and a wonderful father. Sam hadn’t been able to stop crying himself when he had called Phillip to tell him. Christophe had been like a brother to him.

“I don’t know,” Camille said honestly, she was dazed.

“I’m coming back tomorrow. Tell me whatever I can do to help you. I’m so sorry, Camille.” Neither of them knew what to say, and nothing would change the horror of what had just happened. And she wasn’t ready to be on her own at her age. It had never occurred to her that she could lose her father. “You’re going to be all right,” Phillip tried to convince her as well as himself, “and Dad and I will do anything we can to help.” Even at his age, Phillip couldn’t imagine losing both parents. He was still deeply affected by his mother’s death four years before. “Is Maxine being decent to you?” She would have to be in the circumstances. Even a woman as calculating and manipulative as his father claimed she was would have to be compassionate now, and it was a blow for her too. Phillip promised to come and see Camille as soon as he got back, and they hung up. After that, Simone gently led Camille to her room and put her to bed and offered to stay with her that night.

Camille nodded, and when she finally closed her eyes, Simone went to check on her daughter, who was lying on her bed and staring into space.

“Why are you being so nice to her?” Maxine asked her mother in an accusing tone.

“Someone has to be. She just lost her father. You lost a man you were married to for three months and hardly knew.”

“I just lost my future and my security,” she said harshly. “What do you think will happen to us now?” She sounded frightened, which was rare for her. Christophe had been the solution to a problem. Now the solution was gone, and the problem was still there. She had a mother, herself, and two unemployed, expensive grown sons to support, and no way to do so. She hadn’t had a job in years. She lived by her wits and the men she had married, the last two anyway. Her marriage to Charles and her security had vanished into thin air when he died, and his children got rid of her. And she hadn’t been married to Christophe long enough for him to provide for her. They had been off to a good start, and now it was over.

“You’ll figure something out,” her mother said quietly. “You always do. We have to take care of Camille now.”

“She has nothing to worry about,” Maxine said coldly. “She has all of this. She’s his only heir. I’m sure he left her everything.” She sounded angry about it.

“He may have left you something,” Simone said, no longer shocked by how her daughter functioned, without compassion for anyone else. It was always all about her.

“I doubt it,” Maxine answered her, “and if he did, it won’t be enough. He wasn’t stupid, and he was crazy about her.” She nodded toward Camille’s room. “He was still in love with her mother.”

“She’s only been dead a year, and they were married for a long time.”

“And now Camille owns all this. Alex ought to marry her,” she said as Simone wondered how she could have spawned someone like her. She had ice in her veins, and a calculator for a heart.

“Do you need anything?” Simone asked her, and Maxine shook her head. Simone went back to Camille’s room then, and lay on the bed next to her. She knew that at some point in the night, Camille would wake up, and reality would hit her like a bomb. She wanted to be there for her when that happened. And the coming days would be very hard. This was the least that Simone could do for her. She was sorry to belong to the pack of vultures that had come to prey on Christophe, but at least she could be there for his daughter now.

And as she’d predicted, Camille woke up at six o’clock, and sobbed in Simone’s arms as she held her. And then they went back to her mother’s office to watch CNN again. Debris from the plane had been found by Navy divers, and the black box had been located. It was still speculation but believed from what they knew that a mechanical failure and a fuel leak in one of the engines had most likely caused the explosion. None of the aviation experts thought it was terrorism. And it seemed that it was an act of fate that Christophe had been on the plane when the explosion happened.

Camille was still in her nightgown looking shell-shocked when Sam Marshall arrived at nine o’clock. He sat and cried with her for a long time. There was nothing for them to do, no body to reclaim. There were people they would have to notify, the winery, his attorney. Sam offered to help her with it. Maxine looked stunned to see him at the breakfast table with Camille and her mother when she came downstairs, and immediately offered him breakfast and coffee with a smile, and talked inanely about what a terrible thing the crash was and how shocked they all were, as Sam looked at her in disgust.

“Please. Don’t. I just lost my best friend. And Camille lost her father. I don’t need coffee or breakfast. And I don’t want to make chitchat about it.” She looked as though he’d slapped her, and he wished he had.

Sam left Camille around noon, and promised to come back later, if she wanted him to. He stopped at the Château Joy winery when he left and spoke to the department heads and Cesare. They had all heard about it, and most of them knew Christophe was on that plane. The entire building was in mourning, and he gave them all his cell number in case there was anything he could do to help. There would be a memorial service to plan eventually, but not yet.

By late afternoon, after listening to the recordings of the black box they had retrieved, the airline said again that it was unlikely there was foul play involved in the crash, and it seemed increasingly likely that it was mechanical and the explosion had been due to the leak in the engine that the pilot became aware of in the final moments of the flight. And whatever the reason for the crash, Christophe was dead.

Camille had moved around the house like a zombie all day, with Simone following her like a ghost. Maxine had stayed in her own room most of the time. She had nothing to say to them. The boys arrived from Lake Tahoe at eight o’clock. It had taken them eight hours to drive home instead of four, with heavy snows on the road. The two boys greeted Camille briefly, and told her they were sorry about her father. She nodded, and went upstairs with Simone. She had nothing to say to them. They had only known her father for a few weeks and didn’t care about him. The boys had dinner in the kitchen with their mother and talked for hours, in low voices about what to do next. Maxine was sure that Camille would ask her to leave once she started to recover from the shock and was more coherent. It was exactly what had happened with Charles’s children, although they were older and two of them were lawyers and knew what they were doing. Camille hadn’t figured it out yet, but Maxine knew she would. She was a bright girl and would want Maxine to leave.

The boys wanted to know if their mother wanted them to go back to Paris immediately, but on the contrary, she wanted them with her, for support, especially if things got unpleasant. And all four of them could leave together when they did, including her mother. They were a small army of occupation, and Camille had the winning hand now. As far as Maxine could guess, the war was over, but she wasn’t ready to surrender yet, and she wanted her sons at her side for a show of strength.

Maxine would stay for the reading of the will, just in case he had left her something they could live on for a while. There was no point leaving before that. They were better off here at the château for now, until Camille threw them out. Maxine already hated her for it, and the thought hadn’t even occurred to Camille yet. She was too broken over the loss of her father to even think about Maxine and her sons and what would happen next.

Phillip came to see her that night and they sat in the upstairs study with the door closed and he hugged her as he had when she was a little girl when she got hurt. She already seemed more grown up to him. She was no longer a child, and despite her devastation over losing her father, she was starting to think clearly and worried about the winery, and Phillip vowed to help her in every way he could. He was still the big brother he had always been to her, and he promised that would never change. He left after spending an hour with her and cast a dark look at Maxine and her sons when they walked past them, and told Camille once they were outside, “You need to get rid of that bunch as soon as you can.” He was serious about it, and Camille nodded, at least that would be a relief, though it wouldn’t bring her father back.

Much to everyone’s amazement, Camille dressed and went to the winery the next day. She felt she had to. She owed her father that. She cried every time someone came to offer sympathy. And Cesare was crying every time she saw him. She called Sam to thank him for his visit the day before, and told him she was trying to figure things out, and then she called her father’s lawyer. He said he’d been planning to call her, but wanted to give her time to catch her breath. He made an appointment to come and see her the next morning at the winery, and said he would bring the will with him. He asked her to have her stepmother with her, which told Camille that he had left Maxine something, which was typical of her father, who was so generous, responsible, and kind. And he had loved Maxine, even if only for a short time.

She went home at five o’clock and felt as though she had been pummeled all day. Maxine and the boys were in the living room when she got there, and she told Maxine they had an appointment with the lawyer at ten o’clock the next morning in her office at the winery.

“You didn’t waste any time, did you?” she said in a scathing tone. They’d been drinking since noon and she looked drunk to Camille, who didn’t bother to answer her at first.

“He asked for you to be there,” she said finally. Maxine nodded and drained her glass of wine, and Camille walked up the stairs. She hadn’t eaten all day and didn’t care. She couldn’t eat. She just wanted to lie down on her bed and die, like her parents. It dawned on her then that she was twenty-three years old and an orphan. The same thing had happened to her parents, who had lost their parents when they were young, and now it had happened to her. She couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Camille walked to the winery the next morning, and was waiting in her office when the lawyer arrived, looking serious and respectful. He had worn a dark suit for the meeting, which was fit for the occasion. Camille hadn’t done anything about a memorial service yet, or even the obituary, but she knew she had to. There was so much to think about.

Camille and the lawyer were talking quietly while they waited for Maxine, who arrived ten minutes late and typically had worn a short black dress which showed off her legs. Camille was wearing jeans and an old black sweater and didn’t care how she looked. All she wanted was her father. Without him, nothing made any sense. The brightest light in her life was gone.

Her father’s attorney handed each of them a copy of the will, and informed them that they were the only heirs. He read from a copy of it himself, and said that he would explain it to them, and some of it was just boilerplate that was standard in all wills for tax purposes. He reminded Camille that the taxes on the estate would be due in nine months, but her father had provided for them, and the money would be readily available at the appropriate time. He said her father had been a very responsible man. And they could see by the date that it was a new will he had written a few days before he married Maxine. He had addressed his bequest to her first.

Christophe had said in the will that since he was about to marry Maxine de Pantin, he wanted to make some provision for her, and if their marriage continued, and proved to be solid, he would write a new will at a later date. But since he wasn’t even married to her yet when he wrote it, he was leaving her the sum of a hundred thousand dollars, as a gift to her, in the event of his death. Maxine didn’t look pleased when she heard the amount, but tried not to show it. Considering the fact that he wasn’t married to her at the time, it had seemed reasonable both to Christophe and his lawyer. He also provided that if the marriage had not taken place for some reason at the time he died, the bequest he had specified for Maxine would be null and void. But since they had gotten married, she had just inherited a hundred thousand dollars.

The remainder of his estate and all his property and belongings, the château and its contents, his art, the winery, his investments, and any money he had at the time of his death, he left to his daughter, Camille. In effect, she inherited everything he had, and he had left a considerable estate. He had disposed of it intelligently so as to minimize the inheritance taxes, as best as he could, and Camille had become a very wealthy woman overnight, and the owner of an important winery, and all of his investments. It hadn’t even begun to sink in yet. And Maxine looked at her with open envy.

Christophe and Maxine had signed a prenuptial agreement before they married, so she stood to inherit only what was in the will. They had no community property.

And then the lawyer explained that Christophe had added a provision that he had struggled with, in order to be fair both to his then-future wife and his daughter, and since Camille had no other parent to guide her. Given Camille’s youth, in case of his sudden death before she reached the age of twenty-five, which was seventeen months away at the reading of the will, he said that his wife Maxine could continue to reside at the château with Camille until her twenty-fifth birthday, so Camille wouldn’t be alone until then. At twenty-five, it would be up to Camille if she wished her stepmother to continue to stay with her or not. If Maxine remarried before Camille reached the age of twenty-five, or wished to live with a man, then she would have to leave the château at that time. Likewise, if Camille should marry before she reached the age of twenty-five, Maxine would leave the château, and her presence would no longer be needed. But he had essentially given Maxine a grace period before she had to leave the château, and protected Camille from finding herself totally alone, which had concerned him. But a new man in Maxine’s life, or a marriage for Camille, would terminate the arrangement. He didn’t want a strange man in Maxine’s life forced on Camille in her own home, and Maxine’s presence would have been redundant if Camille married.

He had declared clearly that Camille was the sole owner of the winery and all of his estate and would remain so, but again because of her age, he felt she would need support and guidance at first, and time to adjust to all her responsibilities after his death. So he named Maxine as co-manager of the winery until Camille’s twenty-fifth birthday, to share the challenges and burdens with her, and from the age of twenty-five, Camille would manage it solely, and Maxine would have no further involvement in Château Joy, the winery, and all its holdings. Until then, he urged Maxine to help Camille with the business and to make good decisions while managing the winery with her. He said he had every confidence Maxine would be a great help to her.

He also provided that if Camille had issue, a child or children, or were pregnant at the time of his death, her issue would inherit one-third of the winery only, and Camille would retain two-thirds of the winery, and all of his financial holdings, as declared at the time of his death. If she had no children alive or in utero when he died, she would inherit his entire estate. And if Camille predeceased him, having a child, her child would inherit everything. None of those conditions applied since Camille had no children and was not pregnant so she had inherited it all. He stated as well in the event that Camille predeceased him, or died before her twenty-fifth birthday and had no issue, then in that case, he left half of his estate to his wife Maxine, providing their marriage had taken place, and the other half to be divided equally between his relatives in Bordeaux. And if Camille were to die after she turned twenty-five, her own will would take precedence, and Maxine would get nothing. He specified in effect that his widow Maxine Lammenais only stood to inherit if Camille died before her twenty-fifth birthday, and had no children. After that time, it was his assumption and his hope, that Maxine would have moved on to a new life of her own, and their marriage would have been of short duration. And Camille would have her own will in place by then, and he urged her to do so, given the large amount she had inherited from him.

It was an odd way to divide his estate, but Camille’s age had influenced him, the attorney explained. And he added that her father had thought her capable of running the winery on her own, but that it would be a heavy burden for her immediately after his death, while his estate was being settled, and Maxine helping her to manage the money for a short time might lighten the load on her until she reached the age of twenty-five, and would take it on solely on her own. He had left Camille everything he owned, but he was allowing Maxine to live with her for the next seventeen months, and help her run the winery. And after that, it was all up to Camille, at twenty-five. And he assumed that Maxine didn’t need the hundred thousand he left her, but it was a gesture and small token of his love. They had waived financial disclosure in their prenup at Maxine’s request, and he assumed that her finances were solid.

The attorney further explained that Christophe had tried to address every possibility and considered setting down the entire arrangement in an irrevocable trust, which would have been a tax advantage, but he wanted the flexibility to change it, given Camille’s age, his very new marriage, and the fact that he did not expect to die anytime in the near future, so it was not left in trust, but outright in the will.

The death taxes to the estate would be high, but there were ample funds to cover them. And Camille inheriting everything wasn’t a surprise since she was his only child. The one thing that startled both women was his generosity in allowing Maxine to continue living at the château and have a voice at the winery for the next year and a half. It gave Maxine time to figure out what to do with her life, and decide where she wanted to go, and permitted the two women to form a bond or not. And if not, Maxine would be gone in seventeen months, when Camille turned twenty-five and took over the reins fully herself. In the meantime, she had someone to lean on.

Camille thanked the attorney and he left shortly after offering his sympathy again. She put her copy of the will in her bag so she could read it again carefully later, and Maxine stood watching her in the short black dress and still holding her copy in her hand.

“Well, you came out winners, didn’t you? I’m not surprised,” she said, sounding bitter. She had hoped for better than a mere hundred thousand dollars, maybe more like a million, or half the estate, even if it wouldn’t have been reasonable after three months of marriage, and he’d written the will before they were married. As Maxine saw it, she had gotten screwed again in the lottery of life. She was always a day late and a dollar short, in France due to the inheritance laws, and now because she and Christophe hadn’t been married for long enough before he died, and he hadn’t had time to write another will giving her more of his fortune, but that would have taken years, not weeks or months. Christophe wasn’t foolhardy, even if he loved her. She was too new in his life.

Even she realized that three months was nothing, and if he’d lived another year or two, he would have rewritten his will, and she would have gotten more. “You want me out, don’t you?” Maxine said, turning overtly nasty, with no one else in the room to observe her.

“I don’t know what I want,” Camille said, feeling exhausted, and hoping not to get into a war with her quite this soon. The emotions of the last two days had washed over her like a tidal wave. “But yes, it will be easier if you leave now. I can manage the winery on my own, and Sam Marshall can help if I have any problems,” Camille said honestly.

“Well, you’re stuck with me for the next seventeen months, like it or not,” Maxine said with a wicked look. “And I get to manage the winery with you. I’m surprised he did that.” She knew how much faith Christophe had in his daughter.

“So am I,” Camille said, watching her from across the room. “He trusted you, Maxine, and thought you were interested in his business. I don’t think you are, but he did.” Camille knew her feigned interest was all for show, but Christophe didn’t see it. He had died still believing Maxine was sincere.

“Actually, I’m not. But you own a very successful business. You’re a lucky girl. And let me explain something to you. You want me out, and I don’t want to be here either. If you want to get rid of me, it’s going to cost you. We can make a business arrangement now, if you’re willing, and get this over with quickly. And I don’t mean a deal for a hundred thousand dollars, which won’t do anything for me, I mean millions. I want an appraisal of this whole operation, and I want a nice big chunk of it, if you want me to disappear before your twenty-fifth birthday. And if you don’t do that, darling Camille, I can make your life a living hell for the next seventeen months. And trust me, I’ll do that. I want a decent amount of money, equal to half the winery, and I’ll go away politely. Without that, I’m going to sit here and bleed you dry, and your father isn’t here to protect you. So think about it, the evil stepmother will happily go on her way, all you have to do is pay her to do so. And then we’ll both be happy.” She stared long and hard at Camille, waiting for the words to sink in and they did quickly.

“That’s blackmail, it might even be extortion,” Camille said coldly. She had shown her true colors, the ones Maxine’s own mother had warned Camille about, and that Camille had always sensed were there. Only her father hadn’t believed it. He would have been devastated to hear her now. She was all about money and no longer had to hide it.

“You can’t prove it. There is no record of what I just said to you. But you heard me. Give it some thought. I mean it. You know where to find me. I’ll be in your father’s bedroom. And in your face every moment of every day until you pay me to leave here. I trust I’ve made myself clear,” she said viciously, and with that she turned on her heel, strode to the door of Camille’s office, walked out, and slammed the door behind her. Camille wasn’t sure what to do next, but she wasn’t going to pay her millions in blackmail money to get rid of her. She could put up with Maxine for seventeen months if she had to. And it looked like she did according to her father’s will. Maxine had come out of the woodwork with a vengeance and guns blazing. She was a formidable enemy, and all Camille had to fight with was decency and truth on her side. She didn’t have her father or anyone else to protect her. All she had now was herself. She was going to stand up to Maxine, whatever it took. Seventeen months was not forever. And then Maxine would be gone at last.