Chapter Sixteen

Phillip called it his Freedom Summer, after breaking his engagement with Francesca, and was embarrassed to realize he hadn’t really been in love with her. He just wanted to be, and had convinced himself that it was time to get married since many of his friends were, at his age. And she seemed like the right kind of woman to marry, but not for him. And the relief he felt after ending it with her was far greater than any emotion he had experienced while they were together, except on the night he met her.

He had dinner with his father when he got back from Sun Valley, and they talked about it, while Phillip tried to figure out what to do next. He had been on a straight career path since college and business school, but he never seemed to be able to get his love life on the right track.

“What are you looking for?” his father asked him, and Phillip didn’t know what to answer.

“I don’t know, a woman I’m crazy about, who sweeps me off my feet, glamour, excitement.” Francesca certainly hadn’t been that, and the women he went out with weren’t either. In his heart of hearts, he wanted a story like his parents’, who had been madly in love with each other until the day she died. And in a way, his father’s relationship with Elizabeth had substance too. Neither of them wanted to get married, for their own reasons, but they brought depth and perspective to each other’s lives, and even though they lived in different cities and didn’t see each other often, they talked for a long time every day. They understood and cared about each other. They were both honest and there was no artifice to what they felt. Phillip didn’t want a woman who pretended to be something she wasn’t, or wanted him because of who his father was, or was after him for the wrong reasons. It had to be real, and no relationship he’d had so far felt that way to him. His feelings hadn’t been real either, but at least they had been distracting and fun. But he couldn’t talk about anything serious with any of them. His father assumed he would find what he wanted eventually, and he had plenty of time to figure out what was important to him. Phillip was still young.

He asked his father several times in the course of the summer if he had heard anything from the detective agency he’d called in France with inquiries about Maxine and her sons. But Sam said they hadn’t contacted him. They obviously hadn’t turned up information on her, or he was sure they would have gotten in touch with him, but their response had been very slow.

Phillip checked on Camille several times, and she insisted that she was all right. He called and texted and dropped by the office once. She said it was hot in the little horse barn and there was no air-conditioning. But she had gotten used to it and didn’t seem to mind. In some ways, her life was simpler than it had ever been. She was focusing on her work, and trying to increase their outreach at the winery. Maxine showed up at the office from time to time, but she was more interested in her social life at the moment. She was invited everywhere, and did a fair amount of entertaining too. Alex and Gabriel were talking about going back to Europe. Gabriel wanted to meet up with friends in Italy, and Alex had been invited to go on a boat in Greece. They were tired of the Napa Valley, and hadn’t met people they liked. Alex was dating a girl from a wealthy family with an important art collection, but she was young and he told his mother he didn’t care about her. And there was no hope of their getting closer to Camille, Alex had blown that prospect to bits and she wasn’t willing to pay Maxine a penny to leave.

It was a week before the Harvest Ball Sam gave every year, and Maxine said she wanted them to go with her.

“Why? You don’t need us.” She was dating two widowers from San Francisco and a divorced man from Dallas who was in Napa for the summer. But none of them were substantial enough for her. She still had her eye on Sam as the big prize. He was the ultimate challenge since he had rejected her. No man had ever done that to her before. She didn’t take it lightly, and she had to win him. She had to make him want her. She had only seen him once at a dinner party that summer, and he hadn’t spoken to her, but she hadn’t given up, and she was working on her costume for the masked ball. It was going to be even more fabulous than the one she’d worn with Christophe the year before.

Camille had told Simone about the ball, and she asked if Camille was going, but she said she didn’t want to. The only time she’d been was with her father when her mother was sick and she said it would make her too sad to go without him now.

“Nonsense,” Simone said, blowing smoke rings in her direction as she thought about it. They were sitting in her cottage and had eaten a salad from the garden. It was too hot to cook. “At your age, you don’t have time to be sad. You have to go and meet a handsome prince.” Camille laughed at what she said. Simone always said that she believed in fairytales. And two days later, she was waiting for Camille with a look of excitement, when she got home from work.

“What have you been up to?” Camille asked her. “You look very naughty today.” Her hair was wild and she was wearing a bright green summer dress, the color of her eyes.

“I stole something for you,” she said, giggling like a young girl.

“What did you steal?” Camille looked mildly shocked, but she was sure it was nothing important, since Simone was an honest woman. And what could she possibly steal?

“I know where Maxine keeps her ball gowns. She told me they’re in boxes in the attic. I know the boxes because I packed them myself and shipped them from Paris when she left. She went out this morning to a luncheon, so I went up and looked around, and opened some of the cartons. I found one that’s perfect for you!” She went to get it from the bedroom, and it was the palest pink with layers of chiffon over a hoop skirt. “She hasn’t worn it in years. She wore it when she was a model, and younger than you are now.” Simone’s eyes were ablaze with excitement as she held up the exquisite dress.

“Maxine will kill me if she finds out you took it. And where would I ever wear that?” It was the most beautiful dress Camille had ever seen.

“To the Harvest Ball of course, to meet your handsome prince. I found a mask that must have been your mother’s, and a powdered wig. You’ll look like a young Marie Antoinette.”

“I don’t want to go to the ball,” Camille insisted, although she was touched by Simone’s efforts on her behalf.

“Maxine won’t even remember the dress,” Simon promised. “And all you have to do is come home before she does, so she doesn’t see you in it. Camille, you have to go. You told me it’s the most important event of the year in the Valley. You need to have some fun. You can’t work all the time. That’s just not right at your age.”

“I have no one to go with, and I don’t have shoes anyway.” She used every excuse she could think of to get out of it, and Simone went to forage in a trunk in her bedroom where she kept sentimental things and mementoes of the past. She had poetry books and love letters from her husband, and a pair of kid gloves she had worn as a young girl. She pulled out a package wrapped in tissue as Camille watched her, and she carefully revealed a pair of sparkling shoes.

“I wore these to the only ball I ever went to,” she said as she held the shoes reverently, remembering a magical night seventy years before, the night her husband had proposed to her. “These shoes deserve to go to a ball again,” Simone said seriously as Choupette sniffed them and walked away.

“They look very small,” Camille said dubiously, “I don’t think they’ll fit.”

“Try them,” Simone said, holding them out to her. Camille took off her ballerina flats and slipped the sparkling shoes on. They fit perfectly, as though they had been made for her. “See, you’re meant to wear them and to go to the ball.” She had brought everything back from the attic with her, and insisted Camille put it all on. Camille did it to make her happy, but she still didn’t intend to go to the ball. How would she get there? Who would she go with? She would feel foolish being all alone.

“Your friend Phillip will take care of you.” Simone thought he sounded like a very sweet boy, and he seemed to want to protect Camille like an older brother, from all she said. He was a beloved childhood friend. “Just tell him that you’re going, and he’ll look for you.” It was a thought. But then what? She didn’t need to go. But Simone had gone to so much trouble for her, even digging through Maxine’s old ball gowns, that she hated to disappoint her. It seemed to mean so much to Simone that she go. “The time to do things like this is when you’re young. You’ll regret it later if you don’t. When you’re my age, you need something to dream about. You can’t dream about going to work every day. There has to be some magic in your life.” What she said made sense, but Camille still wasn’t sure as they put the dress and shoes away in Simone’s closet where no one would see them. She had hidden a wig and mask there too.

“I’ll think about it,” Camille said cautiously.

“Call Phillip. Maybe he’ll send a car for you.”

“That’s too much trouble,” but everything Simone said made sense. Or would have, if Camille wanted to go. She went back to her own cabin then, and lay on her bed thinking about when she had gone with her father and how handsome he had been. She wished she could go with him again. She closed her eyes and remembered dancing with him. He had been her handsome prince, and she knew there would never be anyone else like him. For a moment, she felt as though he would want her to go to the ball. Maybe Simone was right, and she needed a little magic in her life. It was a thought.

Simone was walking in the garden the next day, after collecting the eggs from her chickens, and she heard voices on the other side of one of the hedges that surrounded them. She recognized Maxine and Alex immediately, and Maxine was complaining about what a nuisance Camille was.

“I’m so tired of her and the winery. She runs it like a shrine to her father.” And they both agreed that with Cesare gone, it was impossible to get the small but useful amounts of cash he had provided them. She said the money they had given him had been wasted and the bequest from Christophe was running out. She had spent most of it on parties for the past six months. Entertaining was expensive, and no worthwhile eligible men had turned up, not on the scale she wanted.

“What about Sam Marshall?” Alex asked her.

“I’ll see him at the ball in three days,” Maxine answered. “We have to do something about Camille, though. We have to scare her into paying me off.” Maxine made it sound like an ordinary occurrence. “She’s tougher than I thought.”

“What about getting rid of her forever?” Alex suggested with an evil tone in his voice. “Don’t forget that you inherit half of everything if she dies before she turns twenty-five. Have you forgotten? That would be a nice windfall for all of us.”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. But don’t be ridiculous. You can’t beat her over the head with a chair, for heaven’s sake, or shoot her. That’s rather obvious. Can’t you think of something subtler to frighten her? I’m so fed up with her. She’s such an annoying girl. It would have been useful if she’d married you, but you bungled that.”

“I didn’t ‘bungle’ it. She wasn’t interested.”

“Most women aren’t if you get drunk and try to rape them.” He had admitted it to his mother and blamed it on the wine.

“It was an error of judgment,” he said, as they turned back toward the château, and Simone stood rooted to the spot after listening to them. She couldn’t believe they would dare try to kill Camille, but she believed that neither of them were above it. Maxine had everything to gain if Camille died in the next nine months. And her opportunity was now while she lived at the château herself. After that, Camille would be harder to get to. Simone didn’t trust either of them. What if they poisoned her or did something subtler? Simone went back to her house and smoked a cigarette while staring at Choupette. After she put it out, unable to contain herself a moment longer, she marched up to the château, let herself in the front door, and went to look for her daughter. She found her alone in the kitchen, reading French newspapers on her iPad, and she looked startled when she saw her mother in her high-top Converse and another flowered housedress. Maxine normally went to great lengths to avoid her mother and considered her an embarrassment.

“What do you want?” Maxine said inhospitably.

“I have only one thing to tell you,” Simone said. “If anything happens to that girl, no matter how innocent it appears, I will go to the police and report what I heard you say just now, in the garden.”

Maxine looked mildly uncomfortable and tried to brush her off. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She narrowed her eyes at her mother then. “But if you ever report me to the police for anything, or your grandsons, I will have you declared incompetent and shut you away in an old age home forever. You’re a senile old woman and no one will believe you.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’m saner than you are. You’ve done enough to torture her. She lost her parents and has had to put up with you, and you have her living in a horse barn. I promise you, Maxine, if you hurt her, I will see to it that you go to prison.”

“And I will see you dead,” Maxine said viciously. “Now get out of my house.”

“It’s not your house, it’s her house. And you don’t frighten me. I’m eighty-seven years old. I made my peace with dying a long time ago. If you kill me, it doesn’t matter. If you kill her, you’ll go to prison, where all three of you belong. You’re a terrible person and I’m ashamed that I gave birth to you,” and with that, Simone walked out of the château and back to her cottage. She was shaking, and had a cup of chamomile to soothe her nerves. She wondered what Maxine would do now. If they would dare to try and get rid of Camille, or frighten Camille into paying them, or if she would think twice. But Simone meant what she had said, every word of it. And more than ever, she wanted Camille to go to the ball. She needed a better life than this, living in a barn, banished from her rightful home.

When Camille came to see her that afternoon, Simone was still shaken and upset and Camille asked her if anything had happened. She said only that the heat had given her a headache.

“But I wanted to tell you something. It sounds like the rantings of a foolish old woman. Be careful of Maxine and Alex, and even Gabriel. Never trust them.”

“Did they say something to you?” Camille looked puzzled. Simone was so vehement, which was so unlike her. She was a gentle person.

“They don’t have to say anything. They’re terrible people, all three of them. I just want you to be careful, that’s all. And I made a decision today. You’re going to the ball, whether you like it or not. Call Phillip and tell him that you’re coming. I’m your grandmother now, and you have to do what I say. You’re going,” she said firmly, and Camille smiled at her.

“I kind of decided that myself today. I want to wear the shoes and the dress.” She and Simone exchanged a smile then. The decision had been made. Camille was going to the ball.