“C’est le même . . . necessary,” I replied. “Holy merde! Did I just say that in French? Like correctly?”
Pascal clapped his hands enthusiastically, “Oui, mon chou! You did! ‘C’est le même,’ means ‘it is the same.’ Félicitations! By this time next week, you will be teaching me French, non?” he joked.
I lifted my glass of wine off the table. “Well, this whole experience has been necessary for me too. I know my life may have looked perfect from the outside—everybody assumes it is, that I am, that my family is—but we are far from it, especially me. Your hospitality . . . your inn . . . your town . . . that is what’s special. I know people believe Maubec lost some of its vitality when Château Mirabelle was destroyed, but it’s still here, in every single person I’ve been lucky enough to meet, well maybe except for Monsieur Grenouille . . . he and I still have a ways to go. Anyway, I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to come here and meet all of you.”
I glanced around the table to meet each of their gazes, my paltry attempt at expressing an iota of the gratitude that was filling me up to the brim. Pascal—his hazel eyes filled with patience and kindness, his cheeks rosy and flecked with a distinct and oh-so-French beauty mark right under his left eye, and his dark hair messy on his head as he animated his stories with wild hand gestures. Agnès, so maternal and so commanding; I was incredibly impressed by how much of the inn and property she ran compared to Pascal, whose arthritis wouldn’t allow it. This was her show, and she was not afraid or ashamed to wear the proverbial pants in order to get things done. I loved that about her. And Odette, who loved her parents so much she was willing to put her own dreams on pause to try to help them hold on to theirs. Together they reminded me that families, though sometimes messy and often complicated, make up the very best parts of who we are, keeping us forever rooted to home no matter how far we may stray.
Finally, I took in Elliott with his brooding physique and floppy boy-band hairstyle. Like a more rugged Beckham in his ’90s glory days, Elliott was remarkably more handsome than I remembered him being this morning when I had been surprisingly taken with his empathy and interest in our research at Camp des Milles. I couldn’t keep myself from staring at him across the table as I remembered how closely we stood lighting candles at Saint Orens, how he guided my trembling hand with his own to make sure the match touched each wick. We’d shared something unspoken in that moment, and I knew that despite our past, something had irrevocably shifted between us.
I sucked in a breath, bolstering up the courage to say this next bit in only French to show my deep gratitude and appreciation for all they had given to me. “Je veux avoir un préservatif pour mon cœur toujours!”
Odette started to choke and practically spit her wine back into her glass. “Um, Plum, what is it exactly that you were just trying to say?”
“That I want to preserve . . . you know, capture . . . hold on to . . . this moment in my heart, always.” I thought back to the gaffe with Pascal a few weeks ago when I said to him that I was très excitée about starting French lessons with no idea of the phrase’s sexual connotation. “Why? Oh God, what did I actually just say?”
The table erupted into giggles—except for Elliott, who seemed just as lost as I was.
Odette did her best to stifle her laughter. “Préservatif . . . it does not mean . . . it loosely translates to . . . a word in English that is more like—”
“Condom,” Agnès finished, causing the table to burst into uncontrollable fits again, including Elliott, who finally understood the meaning.
Odette, still rife with giggles, managed, “What you said was, ‘I want to always have a condom for my heart!’”
“Well, that’s one way to express your gratitude,” Elliott teased, his smile so genuine and heartwarming as it reached all the way to his eyes.
My face flushed with heat, and I pressed my palm, cold from holding my wine, to my feverish cheek.
Pascal, still chuckling, said, “My dear, now you really do look like a mirabelle!”
And the table again erupted into giggles, and at the sheer silliness of my error, I too couldn’t keep the tears from leaking out of my eyes through my uncontrollable fit of laughter.
Pascal, wiping the corners of his eyes with a napkin, stood up from the table and extended his arm out to me. “Come, it seems there is no better time for us to get back to our lessons. It appears we still have much work to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The next morning, at least a dozen flatbed trucks and Vespas lined the driveway leading to the front gates of Château Mirabelle. Since Gervais couldn’t squeeze the van through, he had to stop halfway up the road to let me and Elliott out so we could walk the rest of the way. Construction crews I’d never seen before were making trips back and forth to the trucks, carrying scaffolding and other equipment into the house.
“Oh, good, Plum, you’re here,” Kate said, catching her breath as she jogged up to meet us outside the front gates.
I looked around. “What’s happening? Who are all these people?”
“No surprise, between Bastien’s perfectionism and the mold and foundation issues, we’re massively behind schedule on the château. The network decided it was time to bring in reinforcements.”
No wonder Bastien had become unhinged. Reinforcements meant he was no longer in absolute control of every aspect of the project.
“We’ve assembled construction crews from all across France, and they’ve assured us we will have a finished project ready for the big reveal,” she added.
“Hey, have you heard from Bastien since yesterday?” I asked her.
“Not a word. You?”
Since he stormed off the project, I’d left him a bunch of messages and shot off a handful of texts. No answer. I assumed he was laying low and cooling off, but the truth was, even after these last few weeks, I didn’t really know him well enough to be sure. “No, I haven’t heard a peep.”
Kate’s eyes softened. “I’m sure he’s just blowing off some steam.” Her eyebrows furrowed with concern. “You two are okay, right? You and Bastien?”
Even though Elliott was scribbling away on his clipboard pretending not to listen, his forehead puckered at the mention of Bastien’s name.
I examined Kate’s face at her question, but she wasn’t giving one iota or even a morsel of a hint that there was anything more between them. “Yeah, sure. We’re good,” I answered quickly, but honestly, I didn’t know. My mind replayed the day before: Elliott’s revelation about Kate’s mystery trip to Avignon, the stone crashing through the Sheetrock, the unrecognizable look on Bastien’s face—a face I thought I’d grown to know pretty well. But the realization now hit me that it might be the face of a man I really didn’t know at all. And maybe all this time, I’d just been spellbound by this town and the romance of it all.
Kate sneezed through a cloud of dust kicked up by a passing flatbed truck full of lumber, startling me back to the conversation. She coughed, waving a hand in front of her face, and said, “I’m glad to hear it. The social media team will be especially glad to hear it.”
I covered my nose and mouth with the collar of my T-shirt as the dust settled. “Social media team?”
Kate grabbed for her cell phone but continued talking as she scrolled. “We have to start getting the word out about the show. I mean, of course, you know how that goes. Okay,” she said, sliding her phone back into her pocket and clapping her hands together, “since we can’t have you go into the house today with all the crew activity, we had a mobile recording studio brought in from Paris. We thought it would be the perfect opportunity for you to start recording the show’s voiceovers. You’ve done those before, right?”
I thought back to the confessional moments and voiceover work I’d done over the years. Love Lagoon’s Grotto Gab. Celebrity Spy’s Squawk Box. “Lots of times,” I answered.
Kate’s face lit up. “Wonderful.” She craned her neck to look into the distance. “If you follow Elliott, the trailer is riiiigght past video village on the edge of the vineyard. They’ll have your sides waiting for you.”
I made a quick stop at craft services, where I filled up a mug with steaming hot tea to take into the session. If past experience was any indication, I was in for a long morning of repeating the same word or phrase until the sound engineer felt I projected just the right amount of emotion. I knocked on the trailer door and entered the soundproof mobile recording studio complete with a small but fully equipped control room.
“Entrez,” a male voice called out through a mic.
I stepped fully into the trailer. A man and a woman were sitting behind a soundboard and glass partition. The woman leaned in to her microphone. “Plum, nice to meet you, I’m Jess,” she said in an American accent. “This is Cédric. You’ll find your sides and headphones on the music stand. Let me know if you need any water. We have a small fridge on this side of the glass.”
I held up my mug of tea. “Thanks, I’m all set.” Jess pointed to my microphone, and I slipped on the headphones and repeated, “Thanks, I’m all set.” I picked up the first page of the script with the word intro bolded on top and scanned it quickly.
Jess tapped the glass and spoke into her microphone. “Whenever you’re ready, Plum. Let’s use this take as a sound check.”
