Chapter Twelve

After Maxine left her office, Camille tried to calm down and organize her thoughts for the memorial service she had to plan for her father. She called Sam and asked his advice. She didn’t want to turn the memorial service into a circus, with half the Valley there just because he was an important man. Her father had lived his life discreetly and in private, and she wanted the final rites honoring him to be meaningful and respectful, attended by people who loved him, and whom he loved.

She had already exchanged emails with his family in Bordeaux, and due to illness, age, and family problems there, none of them were able to come. She had just inherited her father’s remaining share in their winery as well, which was an extremely profitable one. Christophe hadn’t participated actively in their business in many years, and was only one of many heirs and he had always given them his proxy when called upon to vote, but he still owned a sizable share of the family winery in Bordeaux. He trusted them to run it as they thought best, and Camille intended to do the same. Her problems were more immediate now and closer to home. She had to run the winery the way her father would have wanted, and as she had learned from him and her mother. And she had to deal with Maxine at close range, and whatever problems she intended to cause her, unless Camille paid her to leave. She wasn’t going to squander her father’s money to do that. She’d just have to put up with her for the next year and a half.

Sam was torn about the memorial service. On the one hand, he thought she should keep it small, as Christophe would have preferred since he was a discreet person, and on the other he thought Camille needed to pay homage to the important figure he had been in the Napa Valley and the wine industry for many years. She was going to have a headstone made to place next to her mother’s. Since there was no body, it would be less painful in some ways than it had been following her mother’s casket up the hill to the cemetery where they had buried her.

She didn’t tell Sam about the reading of the will at first, not wanting to air their dirty laundry in public, or disclose her father’s poor judgment about Maxine, out of respect for him. But as they debated how best to honor her father, Sam made a comment about Maxine.

“I assume she’ll be leaving, after the memorial or before,” he said with relief for her, and Camille didn’t answer for a minute.

“Not exactly. My father made provision for her to stay at the château and manage the winery with me until I turn twenty-five,” Camille said, still shocked at the news herself. “She’s not going anywhere for now.” She didn’t tell him Maxine had already tried to blackmail her and wanted to be paid off to leave, and in a very large amount.

“Don’t worry about it, she won’t stay long. She wants a rich husband, not a winery. She won’t want to run it, and she doesn’t know how. She’ll be gone in no time,” he said confidently, underestimating Maxine for the first time.

“That may not stop her, but I hope you’re right.” They went back to discussing the memorial, and decided that a service by invitation only at their facilities at the winery made the most sense. And she didn’t want anyone at the house afterward. They could serve a buffet at the winery that could be set up after the service. He knew Camille had the staff to handle it there, and she knew how to do it. She wanted it to be a dignified affair attended by the people he cared about, and those he had done business with for so many years. They had already had a flood of calls asking when the funeral was, and if there would be one or a memorial service at a later time.

“Let me know if I can do anything to help you,” Sam said kindly, “and don’t let that woman get to you. She won’t stick around. One of the things I loved about your father was his faith in people, and his innocence. It didn’t serve him well in this case, but she’ll be gone soon.” He believed that Camille would be successful running the winery. She had already been taught by a master, and she had a good instinct for business like her mother. She was unusually mature for her age, even though she looked like a teenager at times. Camille was a smart woman, although not as wily as the stepmother her father had saddled her with three months before. He deeply regretted Christophe marrying her, and had tried to warn him to not.

Camille made headway with the arrangements that afternoon. She set the day for the service, called the pastor of one of the local churches whom she knew her father liked, and walked back to the château, thinking about her father with tears in her eyes. She still couldn’t believe he had died. She had hugged and kissed him only days before.

She found Maxine and her sons at the kitchen table, drinking wine and talking, and they stopped immediately when Camille walked into the room. She paid no attention to them, and remembered verbatim her conversation with Maxine that morning and her threats. All she did was tell her the date of the memorial service, and leave via the back door to visit Simone.

Their conversation continued the moment Camille left and they heard the door close behind her. Maxine and her sons had been discussing the terms of the will for several hours, and how to make it work to their advantage.

“It’s very simple,” Maxine spelled it out for them again. “We have seventeen months to make some serious money here, and I don’t intend to lose this time. We have until the little witch turns twenty-five. Before that day, you can either marry her or get her pregnant, in which case, you will have a hold on her forever, and your child or children will inherit all of Camille’s estate one day. And if you marry her, you can divorce her if you want and get a fabulous settlement. So you have a job to do here, if you want a major share of what she just inherited,” she said pointedly to her oldest son. “She’s not as naive as her father, but you’re a handsome boy, and she’s lonely. She has no one now, almost no friends, no boyfriend, no parents. The field is open. Make her want you, you know how to do it. Marry her, get her pregnant, convince her you love her, it won’t be hard to do. There is real money in it for you if you do it. You’ll be set forever after you divorce her. You’ll never have to work again. And I expect you to pay me a portion of it. I’ll split it with you,” she said coldly as Alexandre looked pensive. “It’s not hard work to seduce a girl her age. God knows you do it often enough for a free vacation. We’re talking about a life of luxury forever if you do this right. And if you get her pregnant, she’ll marry you immediately. She won’t want to disgrace her father’s name.” Maxine had it all figured out. Alexandre grinned evilly as she said it, the prospect of seducing Camille was not unpleasant and had appealed to him since he first saw her and now there was serious money in it, and a golden future.

“What’s in it for me?” Gabriel complained, looking petulant. “Why does he get everything? You always favor him. Why can’t I marry her?” he said, looking from his mother to his older brother.

“You’re the same age she is,” Maxine said matter-of-factly. “She’s more likely to want a man two or three years older,” and she didn’t tell him he would screw it up, as he always did. His brother was smarter, and hungrier. Gabriel was a bumbler and more interested in drugs and drinking than women. Alexandre wanted money, which would serve them well, and he was less likely to fail than his younger brother. “We’ll cut you in on whatever we get,” his mother assured him.

“You didn’t after Charles died,” Gabriel reminded her.

“There wasn’t enough for me from those cheap bastards, let alone for the two of you. But I brought you here, didn’t I?” Gabriel nodded and poured himself another glass of wine, as they listened to their mother’s plan.

“So our goal is for Alexandre to marry her and get her pregnant, whatever order it happens, we don’t care. The alternate plan is that she pays us the value of half the winery to get rid of us immediately. I’m not sure she’ll do that. She may think she can outlast us. We will need to make her life miserable to convince her, and I mean miserable in every possible way, physically, mentally, and financially. I’ll start on that immediately. And, Alex, you know what you have to do. Your part in this is easy, you get the fun job. And then you can divorce her, and live on her money forever.”

“What if he stays married to her?” Gabriel asked, and they ignored his question as ridiculous. Why would he stay married if he didn’t have to and could get a fortune out of her? They were all three like-minded and cut of the same cloth, motivated by greed.

“You know, you’re going about this all wrong,” Alexandre said to his mother, squinting as he thought about it. “Why have her pay you off to leave? Her father gave you free rein here for the next seventeen months. That winery is a gold mine. Stay and get everything out of it you can. You’ll have access to the accounts, I assume. I think there’s money to be made there. Take advantage of what you can, and then see what she’s willing to pay you to leave. But get what you’re able to out of it first, don’t just pack and run.” Maxine thought about it for a minute and wondered if he was right. Christophe had named her as co-manager for the next year and a half. That was a lot of time to make some serious money if she was smart about it. Alexandre could help and he was clever enough not to get caught.

“I’ll think about it,” she conceded. And then Maxine laughed as she poured herself another glass of Christophe’s wine. “It’s a shame we can’t just kill her, but that’s too much even for us. If she dies without children before she’s twenty-five, half of everything her father left her comes to me. That’s a bit over the top, even for me. So, my darling Alexandre, it’s up to you to seduce her and marry her, and in the meantime we’ll get as much money out of her and the winery as we can. We have time. Let’s concentrate on romance, not murder, although I have to admit, I’d love to strangle her for what she just inherited. She doesn’t deserve it. She’s a lucky girl to have had a father like that. Now we just have to get her to share it with us.” Maxine laughed again and both boys smiled. “And if she does agree to pay me half the value of the winery, then we will graciously leave. For any less, we’ll stay and Alexandre can use his charms on her.”

“I should go back to France for my exams,” Gabriel complained.

“You’ll flunk them anyway. We have more important things to do here,” his brother said.

Maxine looked pleased. Camille was bright and brave, but she was no match for them and easy prey. And Alexandre was grinning. The fun was about to start for him.

When Camille walked into the cottage, Simone was quietly reading, with a cigarette in her hand.

“How did it go today?” Simone asked her, concerned, she knew that she and Maxine had met with the lawyer. “Any bad surprises?” She knew from her long years that you never knew what would turn up in a will, hidden mistresses, illegitimate children, long lost relatives the deceased had forgotten to write out years before. But Christophe didn’t seem like a man of secrets to her, too trusting and sentimental perhaps, and she doubted that he had hidden lives.

“Some,” Camille said as she collapsed in the battered leather chair next to her, and Choupette jumped onto her lap, wagging her tail. They had become fast friends since Simone had arrived. “My father said that Maxine can stay here at the château for seventeen months, until I turn twenty-five, and he wants her to manage the winery with me, to ‘lend me her support and help me make good decisions.’ She offered to have me buy her out and she’d leave now. She wants a lot of money to do that. Millions. She said she wants half the value of the winery. I’m not going to give it to her. I don’t see why I should, to get rid of her a year and a half early.” Simone looked pensive as Camille said it. She had heard it all before, when Maxine’s last husband died.

“That’s what she did with her stepchildren in France. She threatened to sue them and try to overturn the will, but she was married to Charles for ten years. I don’t think she’d have much power here after three months. You are your father’s heir, but she may be a considerable nuisance in order to induce you to pay.” She knew her daughter well. “Did he leave her anything?” Although she didn’t see why Christophe should after only a few months, but he was a generous man.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Camille confided to her. “It’s not much, compared to what the winery is worth. She knows that. He wrote her into the will right before they were married, and he didn’t think she needed money, so it was just a token gift.”

“He was wrong,” Simone said, and stubbed her cigarette out. There were ashes down the front of her dress. She hadn’t combed her hair since she got up that morning, and she hadn’t bothered to take off her gardening boots. Camille had come to love the way she looked, and even the familiar smell of smoke around her.

“Maxine always created the impression with my father that she had a great deal of money behind her, and had done all right in the settlement with her stepchildren, although she thought she deserved more.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. I told you. She could hardly pay rent. I was three months behind when I left. And the boys are no better. I heard something the other day from Gabriel that Alexandre is deep in debt. I’m not surprised. Make no mistake, she’ll go after you for everything she can, if she has a leg to stand on legally, and if not, she’ll try to bully it out of you. That’s more her style. You’ll have to be strong,” Simone said firmly and went to check a pot on the stove. When she lifted the lid a wonderful aroma filled the room. It was coq au vin made with Christophe’s wine. “It’s a sin to cook with wine like that, but it makes the cooking very good,” she said and smiled at Camille who was too tired to even want to eat. But Simone ladled two portions into big bowls and told Camille to sit down at the table. “You’ll need your strength to deal with Maxine,” she reminded her and Camille knew it was all too true. Maxine would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. No one knew that better than her own mother, and now Camille.

“The other thing my father put in the will,” Camille explained to Simone as they ate, “is that if I die before my twenty-fifth birthday, with no children, half of everything my father left goes to her. If I have a child or children, it all goes to them. But if I die without children in the next seventeen months, half the estate is hers, the rest goes to his family in France. After I turn twenty-five, if I die, Maxine gets nothing and is out of the picture. Until then, she can live here, run the winery with me, drive me crazy, I can pay her blackmail to leave, or she can inherit half of everything if I die.” Camille said it all matter-of-factly, having thought about it all day, and Simone frowned as she listened. She didn’t like any of the possibilities for her young friend, and at the very worst, Christophe could have signed his daughter’s death warrant without realizing it. But Simone believed that even Maxine wasn’t bold or evil enough to kill her. She was a blackmailer and a crook, but not a murderess. She was greedy, but she wasn’t crazy. Knowing that reassured Simone as Camille snuck Choupette a little piece of bread.

“And if she marries, can she still stay?” Simone asked curious.

“No,” Camille answered. “If she marries, or wants to live with a man, she has to leave immediately.”

“Your father was smart to put that in,” Simone approved. “She’ll start looking for a husband soon.” She knew her daughter well. But she still didn’t like the idea that if Camille died without children in the next seventeen months, Maxine would inherit half of everything. It was a powerful temptation for someone like her, and her sons. The thought of that worried Simone all through dinner and late into the night, long after Camille had gone back to the château to sleep. She didn’t think Maxine would kill her, but you could never know how far greed would push someone desperate for money. And Maxine’s long-term future had vanished with the plane. She had seventeen months of comfort ahead of her, and nothing after that, unless she could badger or blackmail Camille out of enough money to be secure.

Simone sat up almost all night, stroking Choupette, and thinking about her daughter, wondering what she was capable of, and how far she would dare to go to achieve her goals.

The next morning, Camille was surprised to hear from one of her father’s assistants that Maxine was in an office down the hall, and Camille noticed that one of their big ledgers was missing from the table behind her desk where they were kept.

She went down the hall to see what Maxine was up to and why she was there. She found her sitting at a desk with Cesare and Alexandre on either side of her as Cesare explained the system of the ledger to them.

“What are you doing here?” Camille asked Maxine in a firm tone, and she glanced at Cesare with disdain. He had become a traitor so soon. Her father hadn’t even been dead for a week.

“I came to work, as your father intended, to co-manage the winery with you,” Maxine said innocently. She was wearing a navy skirt, a white silk blouse, and high heels, and looked official sitting behind the desk. “Cesare is explaining to me how the ledger system works.”

“It’s all on computer. The ledgers were just to indulge my father, to memorialize the way it used to be done in France. You don’t need to spend time on them,” Camille said evenly, as she approached them. “And what is Alex doing here?”

“I just hired him to work with me. He worked at a bank and has a very good head for figures.”

“I’m sure he does,” Camille said coldly. She knew she couldn’t show weakness for a moment. Maxine was doing what she had promised, turning Camille’s life into a living hell. “You can’t hire anyone, except personally out of your own pocket. You’re here to ‘support’ me and help me make good decisions, not to run the winery. I can do that myself.” It was an awesome job, but she had been trained for it since birth. “And you can’t hire him. He’s an illegal alien. He doesn’t have a visa to work in the States. And I told you, we don’t hire illegals here.”

“I’m getting him a student visa,” Maxine said smugly. “He’s going to sign up for oenology classes at Sonoma State.” Camille looked startled by that. It had been Cesare’s suggestion to them a few minutes before, which seemed the best way to bring Alexandre into the business. He could be hired as an intern for the next year and a half, possibly even for credit for his class. Maxine had loved the idea. It was open warfare between Cesare and Camille now that Christophe was gone. His loyalty had been to her father, never to Camille or Joy, who gave him a hard time over the expense accounts he padded and small amounts of money he stole. And his new champion was Maxine, who had plans on a much grander scale.

Camille made no further comment and asked Cesare to come to her office immediately. But they had won the first round. Getting him a student visa and signing him up for classes was a brilliant idea. Cesare sauntered into Camille’s office half an hour later and sat down across from her desk. He’d been in no hurry to get there, and his attitude was one of defiance as he gazed at her with contempt.

“It didn’t take you long to betray my father, did it?” she said bluntly with fury in her eyes. “What are you doing with those people? If you help them screw me over, or cheat me, it will hurt the winery you love. Think of that.”

“I loved your father. She’s his wife, and he’s gone,” he said stubbornly.

“They’ll be gone soon too. If you double-cross me in some way, it won’t go well with us. I own the winery, she doesn’t.”

“That’s not true,” he said, shouting at Camille. “He left half of it to her,” he said staunchly, and he had obviously cast his lot with the wrong team, but wouldn’t admit it, and Maxine had apparently lied to him about being half owner of the winery now.

“Is that what she told you?” Camille said, looking shocked. “She has a temporary position here until I turn twenty-five in a year and a half, and then she’s gone. Do you want her to destroy everything my father built? And her son has no role here at all. You’re making a big mistake, Cesare.” But Maxine had promised him a huge amount of money if he helped her take control. And she had handed him a check for $25,000 from her personal account that morning, from the money she would inherit from Christophe. It was worth it to her, if Cesare would become her secret agent, and her mole. And he had believed everything she said. She was very convincing, when she chose to be, just as she had convinced Christophe, who was a lot smarter than Cesare.

“I don’t believe you,” he said to Camille as he walked to the door. “You and your mother have accused me falsely for years. Your father never believed you. His new wife is a smart woman, she knows what she’s doing.”

“She knows nothing about the business.” Camille was horrified by what he’d said, and that Maxine and Alex had successfully seduced him. He was in bed with them now.

“Neither do you,” he said viciously, walked out, and went back down the hall to Maxine’s office. He went to lunch with her and Alexandre that day at Don Giovanni’s, while Camille ate a yogurt and a banana at her desk. She had no time to eat. She had work to do, while Maxine and her minions plotted against her. Camille had no patience with their machinations, she had a winery to run. And at least now she knew that Cesare had to be watched even more carefully with Maxine around. He had gone over to the dark side openly against her. She knew her father would have been crushed.

The memorial service Camille organized was exactly as her father would have wanted it to be. People he had cared about, old friends, winemakers he respected, employees and associates, and even some long-term clients he had worked with and loved. There were so many people who admired him that almost everyone had accepted, and six hundred came to honor him, two hundred more than she had wanted, but so many had called and begged to come.

She put together a beautiful brochure for the service, with photographs of what he and her mother had accomplished at the winery since the beginning, the château they had built. There were photographs of her parents in it, and Camille with them as a child, and many of her father as a young boy and man in France at his family’s vineyards and château. There was a list of his awards since he had established Château Joy, and a beautiful photograph of him on the cover, looking very dashing on his tractor during the harvest, which were the moments he most enjoyed. There were no photographs of Maxine, Camille considered that she had been in his life for too short a time, and there were several of him with Joy. They were together again now, and had loved each other deeply. Maxine had been an aberration, a terrible mistake. She was livid when she saw the brochure with no photos of her, which was a narcissistic injury for her, to be ignored and excluded was a greater blow to her than his death. Her name had been mentioned in the obituary Camille had written for the newspapers, but nowhere else.

The pastor Camille had chosen made a moving speech about what an honorable person he was, a man of strong morals and outstanding integrity, greatly loved and admired by his peers, and above all a family man, and a wonderful father.

They played the classical music he had preferred. Sam Marshall made a moving speech about him, and broke down several times. He sat next to Camille in the front row of seats during the service, as did Maxine and her sons. Phillip was farther back with Francesca, his fiancée. And Simone had worn her black velvet dress with the lace collar and was sitting in the back row, which even her daughter didn’t notice. Raquel had come too, with her children, and Camille cried when she saw her.

Afterward people gathered around the buffet set up at the winery for a long time, telling stories about him, and sharing memories, many of which included Joy. Maxine was a stranger in their midst, flanked by her two sons, and many of the people there didn’t know who she was or even that he’d remarried. She had worn a dignified black Chanel suit, but looked overdressed in a black hat with a veil. She played the grieving widow to the hilt and no one seemed to know or care. She was irrelevant now that he was gone.

Camille moved through the crowd looking dazed. She stopped and spoke to Phillip and Francesca for a minute, and later she had no memory of who she’d talked to. Simone had stayed discreetly in a corner, watching her, in case Camille needed her, and she walked back up the hill to the château with her when it was over. Neither of them wanted to ride back in a car. And instead of going home, Camille walked around the château on the narrow path through the trees, and went home with Simone. She felt like the only relative Camille had now. Camille dropped into one of the two big leather chairs, and sat stroking Choupette when she jumped on her lap.

“You put together a beautiful service for your father,” Simone said gently, and handed her a cup of chamomile tea to soothe her. Camille took a sip and closed her eyes. The whole thing was so unthinkable. Only days ago, he had been alive and she had kissed him the morning he left, and was grateful she had done so, and now he was gone. And she was stuck with Maxine and her sons. The prospect of living through the next seventeen months with them seemed like a nightmare of epic proportions.

The following day, Camille saw Cesare drive down from the château in one of the winery trucks, as she walked home after work. She waved but didn’t smile at him. She wasn’t happy with him, and his sudden allegiance to Maxine and Alexandre. She wondered what he’d been doing up at the house, but then forgot about it when she went to visit Simone, and stayed for dinner. Each night was a surprise eating with her, as she prepared all her favorite dishes from France. Camille always said to her it was like eating at the best country-style French restaurant every night.

The next day, as she walked home, Camille saw Cesare driving down again. She wondered if he’d been visiting Maxine at the château for another reason. Sometimes he oversaw repairs on the property, but she didn’t know of any at the moment, and none at the château.

It was a full two weeks later before she discovered Maxine’s latest project, when Camille saw a truckload of old furniture driven past the château in a truck. They kept a lot of simple used furniture in the main barn at the winery. They had summer quarters for their migrant workers, and used it at times to furnish a bunkhouse or cabins. It was useful to have. But they had no use for it up at the château. She asked Cesare about it the next day and he was vague, but he looked guilty when he responded to her, and then finally had to confess when Camille grilled him about it. She was his boss after all.

“She’s fixing up the little barn behind the château. I think she wants it as a studio or something, for one of the boys,” he said and then left her office. What he had said made no sense. Her sons were sharing the best guest bedroom in the château, and seemed happy there. The little barn served as a storage space and hadn’t been used for horses in years.

She asked Maxine about it that night. “What are you doing with the little barn? Are you using it for storage? You should have asked me if you are.” She didn’t want her filling it with junk.

“I thought it would make a nice guest house,” Maxine said pouring herself a glass of wine. Camille had noticed that she drank a lot of it these days, and had Cesare bring their best vintages to her by the case. She and the boys went through it pretty fast, and she always had a glass in her hand when Camille saw her at night. But she was coherent.

“You can’t use it as a guest house with the stalls,” Camille explained to her. “And I don’t want the migrant workers up here. We have quarters for them on the valley floor.” Camille suspected she was bored at the office and probably had nothing to do there. So she was decorating now. But that was an odd place to do it. Camille couldn’t imagine spending a night there, and the simple shower stall, toilet, and washbasin were rudimentary.

“It’s too drafty for anyone to live in, except in summer, and you can’t air-condition it with all the open spaces in the walls. We use it as a shed, but it’s pretty rickety. We should probably tear it down,” Camille said sensibly.

“I really think it’s a sweet little house,” Maxine insisted and Camille didn’t want to argue with her. If she wanted to decorate a shed, at least she wasn’t doing something worse.

But just to be sure, Camille walked out to look at it the next day, before she visited Simone. It was a little farther in the clearing beyond the vegetable garden and the chicken coop, and Camille was surprised to see it had been freshly painted, and the broken windows she remembered and kept forgetting to have fixed had been replaced. They hadn’t used it in years, so it was one of those things they all forgot about. They hadn’t kept horses in it in a long time, not since Camille was a child and had a pony there because it was close to the house.

She walked to the front door and found it open, as she cautiously stepped inside, not sure what she would find, if the place was solid, or a bat would fly at her from the place being deserted for so long. But instead she found the walls freshly painted white, and their battered old furniture for the workers haphazardly arranged around the room. The floors were bare and there were no curtains at the windows. The small bathroom was clean but ancient and basic, and there was a sink area with a small counter and a microwave in lieu of a kitchen. It gave Camille the feeling that someone was going to camp there. But she couldn’t imagine who. It was almost like the kind of refuge, or fort, or treehouse that teenagers would put together to escape their parents. A kind of clubhouse for lost boys. And there were still little tufts of hay on the floor, which made her sneeze. It would have been suitable for their migrant workers but it was too far from the vineyards, and her father didn’t like them close to the château. It was very close to Simone’s cottage and one of her chickens walked by as Camille closed the door. She asked Simone about it when she went to the cottage after her inspection of the little barn.

“Have you seen people up here working on it?” she asked, and Simone nodded in response.

“They’ve been in and out for a couple of weeks, with furniture and stuff. They painted it last week. I thought you knew.” But Camille shook her head.

“It must be some project of Maxine’s,” Camille said, and Simone agreed.

“She was there telling them where to put the furniture. Is it nice? I tried to look in the windows, but I’m not tall enough.” Simone grinned.

“The door is open, if you want to go in. It’s just a lot of old furniture we keep in the barn for the migrant workers. It would take real work to fix it up, but we don’t use it. It would make a nice art studio. It’s very bright. You could paint in there,” she suggested, since Simone painted on her small canvases in her kitchen, but she didn’t need an entire barn, even a small one.

“I’ll take a look at it when I go out to the chicken coop,” she said, and they forgot about it. It was a mystery they didn’t need to solve, until the following weekend when Maxine told Camille she had a surprise for her. She was uncharacteristically pleasant and offered to drive her, and Camille cautiously agreed. She got into Maxine’s car, and within a minute, they stopped in front of the small barn; it had access from the road too.

“I saw it the other day,” Camille said, as they got out. “You had it painted. What are you going to do with it?” she asked as Maxine stepped through the door and Camille followed. A worn couch and a desk had been added in the past two days, and battered bed tables with mismatched lamps on them next to the bed.

“I thought you might like having some space to yourself,” Maxine said grandly with a false smile. “You must be so tired of sharing the château with us,” she said mock-sympathetically as Camille looked at her with a puzzled expression.

“What does that mean?” It made no sense to Camille at all.

“The poor boys are so cramped in their room. They’re driving each other crazy and argue all the time. They’re too old to share a room and Gabriel is dying for your room, just until he leaves. They really need the floor to themselves, you don’t want to share it with two men.” And Maxine had turned their other guest room into her office when she moved in, and had no intention of giving that up. “I thought it would be fun for you to be out here for a while. We’ll put space heaters in for you, of course. You’ll be warm as toast.” She looked delighted as she grinned and Camille stared.

“You can’t be serious. Why doesn’t Gabriel sleep out here?” He came home so drunk at night, they could have parked him anywhere.

“He’s allergic to everything that grows. He’d be in the hospital with asthma after an hour. There’s too much shrubbery out here. He’d get sick immediately.”

“So will I. Maxine, my father said that you could stay at the château with me, which was generous of him. He could have had you leave immediately if he died. But he didn’t say you could push me out, give my room to your sons, and move me to a horse barn behind the château.”

“Just for a little while,” Maxine said soothingly. “They won’t be here forever.” Neither would she fortunately, Camille thought. But seventeen months in the drafty horse barn was a long time, with space heaters or not. “My mother sleeps in a cottage right next door. Why can’t you make do with this one?” She made it sound so sensible when in fact it was an outrage.

“Because the three of you are living in my house. I own it. And this is not what my father intended,” Camille said with a look of determination as Maxine’s eyes turned to steel.

“Your father isn’t here now, is he? And I am. My sons are big men. You don’t need a room the size of yours, they do. The least you could do is be hospitable to your stepbrothers, they’re your guests.”

“They’re not my stepbrothers anymore. And you’re not my stepmother. My father is gone.”

“Yes, he is. Precisely. That’s my point. He’s gone, and I’m here. And for now, you will be sleeping out here. Since you seem to be so fond of my mother, you can spend more time with her. Now go and pack your things, and clear out your room. I want you sleeping here by tomorrow.” Camille could see that she meant it. She was literally throwing Camille out of her own home. And as the realization hit her, tears sprang to her eyes, and she felt young and vulnerable again, and completely at the mercy of this evil, conniving woman, who wanted to do everything she could to break her down. And once again, Cesare had known about it, and played into her hand. He had colluded with her to throw Camille out of her home.

“Maxine, be reasonable,” Camille tried to get her to give up the ridiculous idea of moving her into a horse barn. She couldn’t be serious about it, and yet Camille could see that she was. And Maxine had power and age on her side, and her willingness to go to extremes to achieve her goals.

“I am reasonable,” she said with a vicious look. “And if you would be sensible and make a deal with me, I would be more than happy to leave, with my sons. And until you are, you can sleep out here. I hope you enjoy it. The fresh air will do you good.” And with that, before Camille could say another word, she got in her car and drove off. Camille stared after her, and then stumbled to Simone’s cottage, blinded by tears. She felt like a child again. She found Simone with the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, winking one eye to avoid the smoke, painting a vase of wildflowers. Simone saw that she was crying, and stopped what she was doing to comfort her.

“She’s putting me out of the house!” Camille said with a combination of despair and outrage. She felt helpless and devastated. “Until I pay her what she wants to get out of here, she’s making me sleep in the horse barn.” Simone looked shocked. There seemed to be no limit to what her daughter was willing to do, or capable of. Camille looked embarrassed admitting it to her. She had no recourse and no ally against Maxine.

“That is ludicrous! You own the whole place, for Heaven’s sake,” Simone said, frustrated. But legalities and ownership meant nothing to Maxine, as she had proved before.

“I told her that myself, but apparently she won’t let me sleep there. She claims the boys are too ‘squashed’ in the guest room, which isn’t true, and Gabriel wants my room. She’s using the other guest room as an office, which she won’t give up either. So she’s giving Gabriel my room, to make him ‘comfortable.’ She says he needs more space.”

“I doubt that. He’s so drunk by the time he goes to bed, he would sleep in a phone booth with a moose.” Camille laughed at what she said, but the situation wasn’t funny. She was effectively being put out of her own home by the monster her father had foolishly married, and Camille had no idea how to stop her. She had the feeling that if she refused to move out of the château, Maxine would have her physically removed to the barn, and in another way, Camille wondered if she was safer out of the house, and away from the drunken boys. That was something to consider too. “She just wants you out of the house to punish you,” Simone said with a look of fury. “It’s another way to torture you. And she’s so good at it!” Simone said, wanting to defend Camille and protect her from Maxine, but not sure how.

“I feel like I’m in a nightmare or some terrible fairytale. I feel like Cinderella being forced out of my own home by the wicked stepmother, so the ugly stepbrothers can have my room. All that’s missing are the pumpkin and the mice,” Camille said glumly as Simone smiled at her.

“Don’t forget the handsome prince and the fairy godmother,” she said, joking with her to lighten the moment, since Camille had brought it up. “And we’ll need a pair of glass slippers.”

“We need to get rid of the wicked stepmother,” Camille countered. “What happened to her anyway, at the end of the story?”

“I’m not sure. I think she vanished. Someone threw her in the river or something and she melted.”

“I think that’s the witch in The Wizard of Oz, the one with the ruby slippers and the green face.”

“Perhaps I’ll have to put a spell on her for the green face,” Simone said and hugged her. “I suppose you could refuse to move into the barn,” Simone added with a sigh.

“And then what will she do? Lock me out of the house at night? I don’t want to buy her off, Simone. She doesn’t deserve it. My father worked so hard for what he had. I don’t want to squander it paying a fortune to get rid of her. And she wants half the value of the business. I can’t do that.” Camille was firm in her resolve.

“No, she doesn’t deserve it,” Simone agreed. “It’s exactly what happened with Charles’s family in France. She drove them crazy till they paid her, not what she wanted, but something. But seventeen months until you turn twenty-five is a long time to have her torment you.”

“I’m stronger than that,” Camille said with determination. “I owe it to my father not to give in to her. He wouldn’t want me to. We’ll win in the end. But I hate to give that bastard my room now. I think she’ll put me out physically if I don’t.”

“The only reason for you to move is that you may be safer away from my rotten grandsons. I’ll help you move into the barn tomorrow, if you’re really going to do it,” Simone said sadly, upset for her. But she didn’t see how Camille could force the issue to stay in the house either. The boys were bigger and stronger than she was, if Maxine had them remove her physically. And there was no one to stop them, surely not Simone.

“I’ll move for now. But we have to figure out a way to turn this around,” Camille said as she stroked Choupette, and Simone watched her, hating her own daughter for the kind of cruelty she was capable of.

Feeling angry and helpless, Camille packed her bags in her room that night, locked her closets with the things she didn’t want them going through, took her favorite books and photographs, mostly of her parents, and the next morning she moved into the little horse barn with Simone helping her. Camille was determined to make the best of it. They drove into St. Helena to buy some flowers, and she found a rug at the antique store, and by the afternoon, Camille was settled in her new lodging, living in a horse barn on her own property, while her stepmother and stepbrothers were ensconced in her château. No one would have believed it, as Simone opened the door with one of the chickens following her, and Choupette bounded into the room. The place actually looked pretty with the things Camille had brought with her, but it was crazy nonetheless. And Maxine had won again. For now. The good guys were not doing well at the moment. But Maxine’s days in power were numbered. It was Camille’s only consolation as she looked around the horse barn that was now her home. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what her father would have said. He wouldn’t have believed it.