Invitation to Provence(25)



“Why do you have to make everything a challenge?” he said, back to his cold voice again.

“A challenge, Felix? We are talking business. Your business.”

“The family business,” he retorted, and the familiar frown creased his brow.

Rafaella sighed. “This is really about Alain, isn’t it?” she said, reaching across the table for his hand. “No, don’t move away from me, Felix. It’s right for a mother to hold her son’s hand when he’s troubled. You and Alain are so different—it’s not surprising you don’t get along. But no matter what, you will be the one in charge of the Marten winery. It will be yours to run, Felix.”

He raised bitter eyes to hers. “But not alone, maman. Never alone. Alain will always be there. He’ll be half owner after you’re gone and he’ll make my life hell. He’ll wreck everything you and great-grandfather and grandfather worked for, and he’ll do it just for the hell of it and to get even with me.”

Rafaella sighed. She hated the discord between the brothers, but she couldn’t simply give Felix the winery and leave Alain out—that was the law of the land.

“You are both my sons,” she said. “We are a family, and you will have equal shares. Besides, you are men now, not schoolboys. It’ll be up to you to work things out.”

Felix pushed back his plate and stood up. He took his wineglass and drained it, just to show her that the wine was good after all, Rafaella thought with a small sigh at how competitive he was, even with her.

“Of course, you always take Alain’s side,” he said as he strode angrily from the room. “You always have.”

The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the windows. She heard the car start up, then in a swish of wet gravel, Felix was gone.

Rafaella heaved a bigger sigh this time. So much for their new relationship, she thought, getting up from the table and leaving her food untouched. She went to stand by the window, looking out at the tossing trees and the rose petals drifting in the wind along the terrace. A lawn chair caught in a gust rolled across the grass, and gray clouds scudded in a lowering sky. She wondered where Felix had gone. To the winery, she supposed. He worked there most nights. And Alain was hardly ever home—he was either in Paris, where he was supposed to be studying, or at the villa in Cap d’Antibes with some girl or other. Or several. She never knew with Alain, but just thinking about him made her smile. Alain brought a kind of joie de vivre with him that always made her laugh. Poor Felix, she thought sadly, will you never learn that it’s yourself you are battling, not your brother?

She did not hear Felix come home that night, though she sat up late, reading in bed, waiting for him. And he was not at breakfast the next morning. She supposed he was in his room and didn’t want to disturb him, so it came as a shock when he arrived home an hour later, wet and disheveled and limping badly.

“What is it? What happened?” She ran to him, fearing a car accident, but he waved her away. “It’s nothing,” he muttered as he limped up the stairs to his room. Worried, Rafaella ran after him, but he shut the door in her face and she heard the key turn in the lock.

Haigh ran up the stairs and stood next to her. “Better leave him alone, Madame,” he said. “Whatever it is, he’ll get over it.”

But Felix did not get over it nor did Rafaella because later that day the gendarmes arrived to question him about a young woman they claimed he knew. She had been found dead at the bottom of the Saint-Sylvestre gorge, a place popular with tourists, where the walking path circled the highest point and where they always took their pictures. The dead woman was pregnant, but Felix denied he’d been with her. There were no witnesses and no evidence against him. Alain knew the girl, too, but he was in Antibes so there was no need to question him.

Rafaella knew something was wrong, though, and when the police had finally gone, she questioned Felix about what had happened. He accused her of believing he’d got the girl pregnant then killed her. He said she should give his charming brother a closer look, ask him a few questions. When she attempted to put her arms around him, he flung her away. “Believe whatever you want, maman,” he snarled. “You always will.”

And then he’d packed his bag and left, never to return.



RAFAELLA MOPPED HER TEARS on the hem of her skirt, thinking she was like a child herself, never with a handkerchief when she needed it. Ah, Felix, she thought, you were a hard, prickly little boy who grew into a difficult young man. You had a surface that was hard for love to penetrate. I only hope you eventually found some happiness in your life.

She walked across to the bed and ran her hand over the suit Haigh had laid out in readiness for Felix’s burial. “My poor, poor little Felix,” she said softly, then left the room, closing the door gently behind her.





18





JAKE CAME “HOME” for Felix’s funeral, but he also came to tell Rafaella the wonderful news that she had a granddaughter.

He stopped the rental car in the shade of the plane trees in the village square and got out to take a look. Nothing had changed, not even, he’d bet, the old boys and the dogs. Even the air had that same winey aroma. Life went on serenely in Marten-de-Provence, light-years away from his own busy and sometimes brutal existence.

He drove on, following the lichen-covered wall until he came to the great iron gates, and then his past life unfurled before his eyes in a sudden onslaught of memories. Jake thought of himself as a hard man who now gave his love to no place and no one, but this place was his soft underbelly. The year he’d spent here had been so perfect he had never been back, afraid to disturb those memories.

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