The Winemaker's Wife(99)
By the time David came home from school, Inès was drunk, but still she had tried to tell him. “This is who you are,” she had slurred, holding up the empty bottle, and he had stared at her, his expression somewhere in that soft place between concern and disdain. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m trying to tell you something important. Your father made this wine.”
His eyes narrowed. “My father was a hero in the French Resistance in Paris.” It was the story she’d told him a thousand times, exaggerating Michel’s heroics and moving him to Paris, for she couldn’t bear to tell David stories of Champagne. Of course it would have been easier to tell him about Edouard Thierry and pretend that Edith’s real husband was his father, but she’d already told enough lies. “Now, all of a sudden, he’s a winemaker, Mom?”
“But he was,” Inès insisted, her words tangling together. “He always was, mon ange! He is your father, and your real mother was a woman named—”
“You’re drunk, Mom.”
She tried to stand and found she could not, so she sank back into the couch cushions. Her head hurt. “I’m just trying to tell you the truth.”
“Just stop it,” he snapped. Even in her drunken state, she could see the fury in his expression. “If you’re not my mother, I don’t have anyone, do I? So don’t down a bottle of wine and try to change the whole story of who I am. If you have something to say to me, say it when you’re sober.”
“But—” Inès began, but David was already stomping away toward his room.
She hadn’t had the nerve to try again, though she now realized how much easier it was to live with herself when she had a bit of alcohol in her system.
She told herself she’d tell him when he turned eighteen, for that’s when he would officially come of age to inherit the champagne house according to the complex documents Samuel had drawn up after wresting control of the business from the attorney named Godard. He’d had a talented friend forge and backdate some documents establishing that Inès Chauveau had legally passed ownership of Champagne Chauveau to Edith Thierry before her tragic death. I should feel guilty for committing a bit of fraud, Samuel once told Inès with a shrug, but for a long time, the legal system wasn’t on my side or yours, was it? There should be no shame in reclaiming what is ours.
Samuel had set up a trust to run the champagne house until Inès could bring herself to tell David the truth. But his eighteenth birthday came and went without her mustering the courage. Maybe she would tell him when he was twenty-one. Or thirty. Or thirty-five. Time and again, she tried and failed to bring herself to utter the words, and with each passing year, it became more difficult.
Samuel called her quarterly to check in, to see if there had been a change, to see if Inès was ready to bring David back to Ville-Dommange. But each time, she explained that she could not, and he told her he understood and would continue to run the champagne house’s business operations for her, would continue to ensure the house employed one of Champagne’s best winemakers, would continue to confirm that they were buying only the best grapes from the best vignerons. And, as he had done since 1946, Samuel would continue to put half of the profits in an account for David, and he would continue to send Inès the rest to make sure she and her son had everything they needed in the meantime.
It felt to Inès that she still had all the time in the world to come clean. But then, on February 13, 1980, a month and a half before David would have turned thirty-seven, his wife, Jeanne, called Inès in the middle of the night and told her the news: there had been a terrible car accident. David had not survived.
Inès knew she had lost her last chance at redemption, her final opportunity to try to make things right. She moved back to Paris soon after, for New York now held only the painful memories of raising a child whom she had somehow managed to outlive, just as she had outlived nearly everyone else who mattered in her life.
She would always regret failing to tell him, but one day, when the time was right, she would tell his daughter, Olivia. The Maison Chauveau belonged to her now, after all, and all Inès had to do was find the courage to speak the truth one last time. But how could she, after a lifetime of lies?
thirty-three
JUNE 2019
LIV
When it became clear that Grandma Edith wasn’t going to reemerge from her room, Liv tried calling Julien, but when he didn’t pick up, she finally took a shower, switched her phone to silent, and went to bed. It had been a long, confusing day, and she was exhausted.
She woke before dawn and smiled when she saw that she’d missed a call from Julien. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk with you last night,” he said in the message he’d left, his voice deep, his tone soft. “I didn’t check my phone until after I’d gotten Mathilde to sleep. I’m probably calling too late now, actually. I’m sorry. But I just wanted you to know that I had a lovely time today, and, um, I very much look forward to seeing you again. Call me in the morning, Liv.”
She dressed in a fog as she thought about whether to suggest to Julien that they meet for dinner that night. Was that too forward? Maybe that wasn’t the way dating was done here. For that matter, maybe that wasn’t the way dating was done anywhere this decade. She was woefully out of practice.