Discretion (The Dumonts, #1)(54)

I hug Seraphine goodbye and head out to my driver, who has been waiting for me all night.

The drive to Bordeaux feels long in the dark, such a contrast to the bright lights of the hospital. My driver doesn’t talk except to offer a few words of condolence, leaving me alone in my thoughts. But the longer I’m in the car, the more I feel anonymous and removed. Like whatever happened at the ball, at the hospital, it happened to someone else.

I should revel in the numbness. I should wrap it around me like a shroud and put another mask on, one that says that the show must go on. But I don’t want to. It feels like an affront to my father.

I keep seeing the image of him in my head as he fell to the floor, and I make myself drown in it because I don’t want to forget, I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.

There was such horror in his eyes. He stared right at me as he clutched his chest. Afraid and in disbelief and in pain, and yet there was something else. Something I can’t quite describe, perhaps because it’s something you only feel when you’re about to die. But whatever it is, it will haunt me. It’s like he felt betrayed, and I guess he was, by his own body.

By the time the car pulls up to the hotel across from the opera house in Bordeaux, I feel like I’m on autopilot, reliving his death again and again.

I make my mind switch to Sadie.

Sadie, who I left at the ball because I could only think of my father at the time.

Sadie, who is independent and intrepid enough to find her way here.

Sadie, who I told to check in, and I would come find her.

My phone died on the ride over, so I go to the front desk for the extra key and make my way to the room. The grandest rooms weren’t available on such short notice, but it doesn’t matter. No one is trying to impress anyone anymore.

I knock on the door, and when I don’t hear an answer, I swipe my key and step inside, the door closing behind me. For some reason I fear the worst, as if death has come for her, too, but then I see her lying on the bed in her white dress, her eyes slowly opening as she takes me in.

“Olivier?” she whispers as she pushes herself up on her elbows.

Her hair is falling across her face, and in her dress she looks like an angel.

I thought I could make it across the room, but I can’t.

The sight of her brings me to my knees.

It makes all the loss and grief swell up like a balloon before it bursts, and then it’s pulling me down, and I’m drowning.

“Olivier,” she cries out softly, and then she’s at my side, arms around me as the tears fall. The shock has worn off, or maybe it’s come on stronger, but I can’t keep it together anymore. I can’t even stand.

I cry into her arms and tell her I’m sorry for leaving her like I did at the party, and I’m sorry she had to see everything, and I’m sorry I’ve been hiding her, because it turns out I need her most of all.

She’s everything to me, and without her, I don’t think I could get to my feet again.

She just holds me and tells me she’s here for me and tells me that she’s not leaving and tells me that I’m hers. She doesn’t try to make me feel better, doesn’t try to stop my tears, doesn’t try to get me to my feet.

She just lets me feel it all, feel everything, and keeps holding me together in her arms, holding me in such a way that I know I can keep cracking, but I’ll never truly fall apart.



I don’t know how I survived the next few days. All I do know is I couldn’t have done it without Sadie by my side, supporting me in every way she knows how. Even just looking at her face gives me a wave of strength, knowing she’s there for me.

Unfortunately, she can’t be with me every step of the way. There is so much paperwork and so many phone calls and affairs to sort out that have me pulled in every direction. I’m not the oldest or next of kin—that would be Renaud—but even though he’s now in Paris with us, he’s in over his head. Renaud has been living in California and running the wineries for the last eight years, and I don’t think he’s stepped foot in Europe more than a couple of times since then. He has no idea what’s happening or what to do, but neither do any of us.

It’s now the morning of the funeral. Sadie and I arrived separately. I know she’s out there in the crowd of mourners who showed up early, and, like usual, I’ll have to pretend to not know her, especially on a day like today. I don’t want anything taking away from my father.

I’m in the funeral home waiting for Seraphine and Renaud to arrive. The priest should be here soon too. I hate the smell in here. I hate the weight to the air. I hate knowing the sorrow and grief that has lived in this place, some of it so sharp it can never leave, like cigarette smoke that lingers long after the flame is out.

I’m sitting on a chair in one of the Dumont label’s finest suits, and I can’t help but stare at the buttons on the cuffs—black obsidian—my heart crying because I remember my father talking about these very buttons once. About how he wanted something understated and classy, that the gray swirls in the obsidian would give the wearer a sense of elegance every time he looked at them.

But I don’t feel elegance, I just feel loss. The loss of such a thoughtful, smart man. A good man, one of the few good men left.

“Olivier.” Gautier’s voice comes from the doorway behind me, and it’s like someone pulling shades across the sun, the grief inside me turning into something insidious.