I elbowed Elliott. “Nobody, huh?”

“Maybe something I said earlier got lost in translation,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened.”

Bastien hurried up the aisle. “Father Timothée agreed to chaperone us into the archives. We can poke around all we want, we just cannot take any of the items with us.”

“Can we film?” Elliott asked.

Bastien pulled the release out of his pocket and waved it around proudly. “I got his Thomas Jefferson right here.”

“Thomas Jefferson? Do you mean his John Hancock?” Elliott said.

Bastien shrugged. “Who’s John Hancock?”

Elliott added the release to his clipboard. “You know what, it really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s signed.”

We followed Father Timothée past the altar, down a long hallway, to a set of stairs leading up to a newly constructed addition to the church. Its modernity was in stark contrast to the ancient walls that otherwise surrounded us.

“This space has been a passion project of Père François for a long time,” Father Timothée explained. “He wanted a place where the history of the region would be well preserved. It’s taken most of his lifetime to collect enough money to build l’annexe, but here we are,” he said, pushing open the heavy door.

We squeezed behind him into the archive room. A mahogany table sat in the middle of the room like an island surrounded by a sea of filing cabinets. Elliott turned on the camera’s overhead light, which practically lit up the whole space.

Father Timothée jumped up and down, waving his arms in the air. “Non, non! The light can harm the artifacts.”

Elliott turned it off and set down the camera. “I don’t have the right equipment with me to shoot without proper lighting.”

I interjected, “If you have a C100 you should be fine. Just switch out the 24-105 for the 18-135 lens.”

“I guess that could work,” he said, his voice tinged with disbelief at my knowledge of camera equipment.

But you didn’t grow up on film sets and not pick up a few things. More than a few things. I used to spend every spare second I could with the EVERLYday crew, far more interested in what was happening behind the cameras than what was taking place in front of them. “It’ll work. Trust me.”

“This whole outing’s been a bit of a bust. I’m hot and hungry and tired. What do you say we just wrap?”

“Wrap?” Bastien asked. “What do you mean wrap?”

“Call it a day. Go home,” Elliott answered impassively.

Bastien’s brows drew together. “Why would we do that? We can still learn about Château Mirabelle without the camera, n’est-ce pas?”

Elliott picked his bag up off the floor and turned to me. “I’m gonna start making my way down to the van. I have a bunch of calls to make back at the inn.”

“You know what, I think I’ll stay here with Bastien,” I said. “I have my phone and can shoot some footage if we come across anything interesting.”

Elliott scoffed. “It’s not really the same thing. I wouldn’t even bother.”

“Between all my social media accounts I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it.” I took out my phone and quickly showed Elliott a clip I took from when we first drove into Maubec captured with a dramatic time-lapse and overlaid with Édith Piaf singing “La Vie en Rose.” The combination of stunning visuals and the iconic song created a compelling story, and Elliott’s skepticism seemed to waver just a bit as he watched the enchanting scene unfold.

“Suit yourself, but I don’t expect we’ll be able to use much—if any of it,” he said before turning on his heel to leave.

After he was gone, Bastien and I dove into the research, pulling out every last artifact related to Château Mirabelle from the cabinets and spreading them out across the table. One photograph in particular caught my attention: a handsome young man in a dark suit and a striking woman in a lace wedding gown standing arm in arm in the middle of the château’s massive vineyard. I turned it over, and scribbled across the back were the words Luc and Imène Adélaïse, 1931.

I took out my phone and hit record. “Is this them? The last owners of Château Mirabelle? Luc and Imène Adélaïse?”

Bastien took the picture from my hand. “Oui, this must be their wedding day.”

“It’s strange, other than the clothes, and the fact it’s in black and white, this picture could have been taken yesterday.”

“Being young and in love is ageless, I suppose,” Bastien said. A profound sense of recognition washed over me, as if Bastien had somehow tapped into an age-old truth, shining a spotlight on a truth many spent too much time forgetting.

I leaned in closer to the photo. “They really look like they were . . . in love, I mean?”

“Hard to know, but by all accounts, I believe so.”

I turned off the recording. “Makes what happened to them all the more tragic.” I picked up another photograph from the table, Luc and Imène standing arm in arm with two other couples in the château’s grand foyer. On the back of the picture, I saw the letters DP in clear, distinct capital letters.

“DP? Do you know what that stands for?” I asked him.

Bastien took the picture from my hand. “I am not sure. A mystery, non?” He handed the photo back to me.

“Wait? Is that the same foyer we were standing in yesterday? And this room,” I said, flipping to another picture, “with the lion clock on the mantel underneath the painting there? What room is that? It’s so beautiful.”

He glanced down. “I believe it is the grand salon. Trust me, it will be beautiful again if we have anything to do with it, ma belle. You see the staircase. We can take reclaimed wood from the region and re-create it in all its original splendor. Maybe even better than before.” Bastien collected the photos from the table, carefully placing them back in their plastic storage bags. “Renovation not only restores the house, but the story of the home and the people who lived there. Trust me, you will see, we’ll bring them all back to life. Are you hungry?”

“What?” I was so caught up in his beautiful words I lost my train of thought.

“Hungry? Are you hungry?” he repeated.

My stomach had been rumbling the better part of the last hour. “Maybe a little.”

“There’s an ice-cream shop down the hill that makes the most incredible lavender ice cream. I promise, you’ve never had anything quite like it.”

I thought back to the conversation with my father by the barn the last time I was home. He’d mentioned a small ice-cream shop by a beautiful Provençal church, where he ate the most delicious lavender ice cream before getting down on one knee and asking for my mother’s hand in marriage. Even though the idea of lavender ice cream still sounded kind of unappetizing, somehow, the way Bastien suggested the treat—with his sexy accent and unabashed enthusiasm—made it sound so much more tempting.

“So what do you say, Plum,” Bastien repeated. “Want to give lavender ice cream a chance?”

“Yeah, you know what? I think I do.”

Chapter Sixteen

We arrived at the ice-cream shop only to discover that the store was closed for the next two weeks while the owners were away on holiday in Nice. Hungry and disappointed, we hopped on Bastien’s Vespa and took off for the town of Bonnieux, a walled village on a hilltop in the Luberon mountains. Bastien recently completed a château renovation there and wanted to show me the finished project.

We rode through beautiful countryside dotted with orchards of golden mirabelles and cool wooded hills of oak and pine. And towering above all, the giant of Provence, Mont Ventoux, appeared on the horizon with its white peak beckoning in the distance. We zoomed down the winding dirt road where, against the earthy browns and greens, popped the violets of lavender, crimson of poppy fields, and bright yellows of towering sunflowers. The stretch seemed to extend on for miles and miles until finally, we were met by a large wrought iron gate surrounding the enormous property.

Bastien hopped off the bike and unstrapped his helmet. “Bienvenue au Château du Val d’Été,” he said. “The owners turned the house into a hotel, so we’ll need to check in at the gate.”

I followed him to the front of the estate where we were met by a brawny security guard who had at least a good five inches on Bastien. He may have even had a couple on Elliott. At first, the guard and Bastien swapped what sounded like formal pleasantries, but then the exchange ratcheted up a few notches into a full-blown argument complete with flying spittle and hand gestures.