Discretion (The Dumonts, #1)(53)

Then he walks off, back over the drawbridge and into the castle.

For the first time all evening, the air loses its heat, and the breeze turns cold.

And I realize I still have my mask on.

I take it off, glad for what little anonymity I had, and then head toward the group of bewildered and displaced guests, finding someone to come with me on the drive back to Bordeaux.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

OLIVIER

Grief.

I’m no stranger to grief.

When my mother died in the car accident, grief settled down into my life and became a constant companion. It was a friend of sorts, the type of friend you knew only meant well, even though they flattened everything around you. There was no escaping from grief; it was natural, it was something that had to be felt. My mother was a kind, wonderful, caring person, and she deserved the grief that we all felt because that’s how much her loss hurt us.

The grief never left, it just got easier to manage. My sister, my brother, my father—we all depended on each other to get through it. We were the crutches that allowed each other to keep going. Without our family, none of us could put one foot in front of the other.

But now . . . now my father is dead.

He’s gone.

It’s just me and Seraphine now, and Renaud, whom I have to call in a few hours and tell the horrible news to. It’s just us, and without our father, how can we go on? We’re his children, now orphans. We’re alone, marooned, helpless, breaking apart from the inside out.

I can’t even think. I wish I couldn’t feel, but I can, all too well.

The confusion.

The anger.

One minute my father was fine.

The next he had collapsed on the floor.

He was pronounced dead when he arrived at the hospital, and even now as Seraphine and I talk to the doctors, I don’t understand how any of it can be real.

A heart attack, they say.

It happens, they say.

But it doesn’t happen to someone like my father. Not in his good health and his good shape. It doesn’t happen to someone who literally just had a clean bill of health at his checkup. It doesn’t happen to us . . . it can’t happen again like this.

“It’s late,” Seraphine says in a dull voice, her hand on my shoulder. “You should go to the castle. Get some sleep.”

I stare at her red-rimmed eyes, only now realizing the depth of my exhaustion. “I’m going to Bordeaux,” I tell her. Because that’s where Sadie is. I’ve been in contact with her. I haven’t forgotten her. I need her more than ever, and she feels so weightless and translucent, like maybe she never existed, and she was just a dream, or perhaps I lost her, too, when I lost everything else.

Seraphine nods. She doesn’t ask. Perhaps she thinks I need to be alone. Perhaps she doesn’t blame me for not wanting to go back to the castle.

“Are you going to be okay?” I ask her.

She nods, but in her eyes I see it all. She’s not going to be okay, and neither am I. My father was my idol. I think he was her best friend. This loss is going to weigh on us more than either of us could have imagined.

I get to my feet, not wanting to leave her. “Come to Bordeaux with me. I’ll get you a room.”

She shakes her head, wiping away a tear that had fallen a long time ago. “No, I want to stay here.”

I look around. There’s no one else here. Gautier was here for a second when the ambulance brought our father in. Neither Pascal nor Blaise showed up. Some friends of my father did try to hang around, but they were shown the door.

It’s a cold feeling to know that we are the end of the line. That we are all that’s left on this side of the legacy.

“There’s nothing left for us here,” I tell her. “He’s gone.”

She shakes her head, and I know she’s going into shock, that she can’t quite understand what has happened, that he’s not going to get up and walk back to us.

“Are you going to have an autopsy?” she asks.

“No,” I tell her. “I brought it up to the doctor, but he said there’s no need. He had a heart attack.”

She gives me a sharp look. “You don’t seriously believe that.”

I sigh, running my hand down my face, wishing I could sink into the floor and never get up again. “I have to. Look, it doesn’t make sense, but I’m going to have to trust the doctors on this one. We can’t keep this going, delaying the inevitable. We need to be able to mourn him, and an autopsy is only going to delay it. Besides, what are you hoping to find?”

“I’m not hoping to find anything,” she says softly.

“Want me to call Cyril?” I ask.

She stiffens at the mention of her ex-husband. “Don’t you dare. You know he’d only pay lip service.”

I nod. Cyril was a charmer (hence, how he was able to woo someone as fiery as Seraphine), but his charm wasn’t enough when Seraphine realized he married her for her money.

“Just go to Bordeaux,” she says with a tired wave. “I’ll be fine.”

“Did you want me to call Renaud?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’ll do it. I need to talk to him.”

I’m grateful for that. I would have done it, but Renaud isn’t an emotional man. He’s closed up in many ways, and I think his sister would be better at breaking the news.