Invitation to Provence(27)

“To our meeting again after all these years,” Rafaella said, lifting her glass.

“Champagne like this is a small miracle,” Jake said, tasting it.

“I can’t think of anyone I would rather share it with.” She rearranged her wide-brimmed straw hat so it shaded her eyes properly from the sun and also softened the lines on her face, because after all, she was still vain about her looks. “So, Jake, first tell me about you. Is there someone new in your life? Are you married again? Children?”

Franny came instantly into Jake’s mind, blond, innocent, smiling at him with those blue-jeweled eyes. It was the only time he had not thought of Amanda first, and he was shocked by the power of his feeling for Franny. Still, he shrugged. “No one special,” he said, “and certainly no children. And anyhow, you know I’m still in love with you, Rafaella.” And she laughed with him, enjoying the joke.

“You’ll find her, one day,” she promised.

Looking around him, Jake heaved a sigh of pure pleasure. “To a boy who never had a real home life,” he said, “you Martens were my ideal family. You had everything, and for a while you let me be a part of it. It was the happiest year of my life and I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Ah, yes, we Martens with our chateau in Provence and our famed vineyards, our apartment in Paris and the villa on the C?te d’Azur. But we were also a family with a history of too much pride, and you know that old saying, Jake? ‘Pride goes before a fall’?” She heaved a deep sigh. “Sometimes I wish I’d never heard of the word pride. In fact, that’s why I finally buried my own and decided to ask my sons to this family reunion. Not that there’s much ‘family’ left, especially now with Felix gone. Poor, poor Felix, I think he broke his own heart as well as mine.” Her voice trembled but she was determined not to cry in front of Jake.

Then Jake said, “There’s good news too, Rafaella.” She glanced at him, brows raised. “You have a granddaughter,” he said, smiling.

She looked at him, stunned. “It can’t be true!” she said, but looking into Jake’s smiling face she knew that it was. The despair over Felix that was like a stone in her chest lifted a little and she smiled.

It was that same joyous smile Jake remembered from the old days. It lit up her face and suddenly she was ageless, beautiful again. “A granddaughter!” she exclaimed. “But where is she? Whose child is she? Tell me all about her.” She was already making plans. “She must come here to live of course, so I can spoil her and teach her how to run the winery.” Still smiling, she looked expectantly at Jake.

“She is Chinese and her name is Shao Lan,” Jake said. “It means Little Blue—and she was named that because she has your blue eyes. There’s no mistaking she’s a Marten. She’s ten years old and she lives with her ailing grandmother, in very poor circumstances, in Shanghai. The only thing we don’t know about her is which of your sons is the father. Felix was helping out minimally, but he certainly wasn’t keeping her in luxury, and definitely not the way you’d expect a man to look after his daughter. And Alain, of course, did nothing.”

Rafaella nodded. She understood her sons. “Felix was always a snob,” she said. “He’d rather miss out on the joy of bringing up his own child because he was too ashamed to admit he had a relationship with some poor Chinese woman. Ah, Felix, just look what you missed.” She smiled at Jake again. “But now I reap the benefit. I have a granddaughter to welcome home to the chateau.”

Haigh was back again, hovering behind the wisteria arbor. He’d heard Jake tell Rafaella about the new granddaughter and he heaved a big sigh of relief, thanking god for giving his friend a break because, with Felix’s death and Alain missing, it had looked like Rafaella’s family reunion was going to be a disaster.

He cleared his throat as he approached, letting them know he was there. “More champagne, Madame, Sir?” He took the Krug from the ice bucket and wrapped it in the white linen cloth, then he refilled the tall glasses and presented them to his employer and her guest.

“Pour yourself a glass, too,” Rafaella said, smiling. “This is a celebration, Haigh. We have a new granddaughter!” Then Rafaella said she would send her an invitation welcoming her to the chateau right away.

After that she looked Jake in the eye and said, “So now, Jake, tell me the bad news.”

Puzzled, he said, “But how did you know there’s bad news, too?”

She smiled. “I know you too well, Jake Bronson. In some ways you’re exactly like your father. So now, tell me, what is it?”

“I don’t believe Felix committed suicide,” he said. “I think he was killed.”

Rafaella gasped. “Are you telling me that Felix was murdered?”

“That’s the way it looks right now. Only time and good detective work will prove me right or wrong.”

“But what about Alain?” she said, subconsciously linking the thought of murder to her other son, something Jake spotted immediately, though he said nothing.

“Felix lied to me about Alain. Of course he’d kept track of him all these years. My contacts followed Alain’s trail of self-destruction through Vietnam and Cambodia, but he’s disappeared from the face of the earth. We may never find him, never know what really happened.”