Read Chapter 25: The Journey to Italy

The platform was already moving when Antoine found their seats in second class, two facing seats by the window. Camille dropped her bag on the floor and pressed her forehead to the cool glass, watching the Lyon suburbs blur into countryside. Vineyards rolled past, then hills, then the grey-green shimmer of the Rhône giving way to the foothills of the Alps.

Antoine sat across from her. He had a small leather satchel on his lap, his fingers drumming against it in a pattern she recognized as nervous energy. He hadn't said much since picking her up at her hotel at dawn.

"Your father doesn't know we're coming," she said. It wasn't a question.

He shook his head. "If he knew, he'd disappear. He's been running from people his whole life. That's what he does."

"But he's ill."

"According to Étienne's last contact, yes. Cirrhosis. The doctors gave him six months, maybe a year." Antoine's jaw tightened. "That's why I told you we had to go now. Before the meeting at eight. I need to see him first, need to know what he's willing to say to Étienne's face."

Camille turned from the window. "You think he'll help you against your uncle?"

"I think he owes me." Antoine's voice was flat. "And I think whatever he's been hiding about that night could make Étienne very uncomfortable."

The train entered a tunnel. The lights flickered, and Camille saw her reflection in the dark glass beside his. Two ghosts suspended in the dark. She reached across and put her hand on his knee. He covered it with his own.

"You didn't sleep," she said.

"Neither did you."

"I was writing."

He raised an eyebrow. "The review?"

"Not yet. Working on it. Notes, mostly." She hesitated. "The new menu—the one with your father's recipes—it's good. Better than good. I need to capture what it actually *is* without turning it into a story about me and you."

"And can you?"

"I've been asking myself that all night." She pulled her hand back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I think the best reviews happen when the critic gets out of the way. But that's the hardest thing I've ever learned to do."

The train emerged from the tunnel into a valley of olive groves. The light changed, warmer, more golden. Antoine watched the landscape with a strange familiarity in his eyes.

"When was the last time you saw him?" she asked.

"Seven years. I walked into his kitchen at La Régalade and told him I was leaving Lyon to open my own place. He didn't say a word. He just turned his back and kept sautéing. I knew then that I'd crossed a line he'd never forgive."

"But he burned your restaurant."

"Not mine, Camille. His." Antoine looked at her. "I told you that. He thought if he destroyed my first place, I'd have to come back and work for him. His twisted way of bringing me home." He laughed, a short harsh sound. "He almost did. I had to borrow from Étienne to rebuild because my father made sure the insurance flagged arson. Nobody would touch me. He'd made sure that every road marched back to his kitchen."

"And instead, you built Le Coq Rouge."

"Smaller than La Régalade. Outside his reach." Antoine's voice softened. "But I never stopped cooking his food. Every technique I have, he taught me. Even angry, I couldn't escape that."

They fell silent as the train slowed into the first Italian station. A woman with a basket of figs boarded. The conductor's voice echoed in Italian and French, repetitions and translations, and Camille watched the world become more foreign, more distant from Lyon.

It was afternoon when they reached the village. Piedmont, a place of stone houses stacked on a hillside, shutters painted faded green and red, the smell of woodsmoke and something savory curling through the narrow streets. Antoine led her past the square, past the church, to a small building at the end of a dead-end lane. A black iron gate. A courtyard of weeds. A single window with the shutters half closed.

"He's in there," Antoine said.

"How do you know?"

"Étienne told me the address. He thought I should see this." Antoine unlocked the gate with a key he produced from his pocket. "I got a copy made. Two weeks ago. I've been holding onto it, trying to decide if I wanted to use it."

Camille followed him across the courtyard. The stones were cracked. A dead tomato plant drooped in a ceramic pot by the door. Antoine knocked. No answer. He knocked again.

He called out in French, low and firm: "Papa. C'est Antoine."

Silence. Then a scraping sound from inside, the slow shuffle of feet. The door opened a thin crack, and an eye peered out—yellowed, rheumy, suspicious. It took a moment for recognition to register.

"Antoine." The voice was thin, reedy. The door opened wider.

Palisse looked older than his years. His face was grey, sagging, his hands trembling with the fine tremor of advanced liver failure. He wore a stained shirt over a thin frame, his trousers held up by a rope belt. He looked like a version of a man who had once dominated kitchens with a roar.

He saw Camille and recoiled slightly. "Who is this?"

"Camille Laurent. She's a food critic." Antoine stepped between them. "She's also with me. She knows everything."

Palisse's gaze flickered between them. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Then you know what I did."

"We know," Antoine said. "We're not here for revenge."

"Then why?" The old man's voice cracked. "Why did you come?"

Antoine didn't answer. He stepped past his father into the small, dim kitchen. Camille followed. The room smelled of sweat and boiled vegetables. A pot sat on a small gas stove, half-eaten. Unwashed dishes stacked in the sink. A single bed pushed against one wall, rumpled sheets.

Palisse shuffled back to a chair by the table and sank into it. "They told me you were doing well," he said to Antoine. "The restaurant. Le Coq Rouge."

"I named it after your mother's place," Antoine said softly. "The one she ran before you married her."

Palisse looked away. "I know."

"Everything I serve there is yours. Your recipes. Your techniques." Antoine sat across from him. "I built a monument to you, old man. And you burned my restaurant down."

Palisse's shoulders shook. "I was a fool."

"Yes."

"I was angry. I couldn't bear that you'd left—that you'd built something without me. I wanted to break you. I wanted you to come crawling back." He laughed, bitter and wet. "Instead, you built a better one. You proved you didn't need me. And you proved that I was nothing but a bitter old man."

Camille stood by the window, watching the exchange. She felt like an intruder, but she also couldn't look away. This was the source. The story that Antoine had carried his whole life, the father who had tried to destroy him.

Palisse lifted his head and looked directly at her. "You're the critic who wrote that piece on the three-star chefs two years ago. The one who said tradition doesn't excuse mediocrity."

Camille blinked. "You read my column?"

"Every week. Through Émilie—she's the one who sends me the copies." He looked at Antoine. "Your mother's cousin. She sends me news when Étienne doesn't. She told me you kept cooking my recipes. She told me you never stopped." A tear tracked down his cheek. "I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. But I didn't know how."

Antoine's voice was rough. "You could have picked up the phone."

"I couldn't. I couldn't bear to hear you say you hated me." Palisse reached across the table, grasping at Antoine's hand. Antoine let him take it. "I'm so sorry, son. I'm so sorry."

Antoine sat very still for a moment. Then his hand tightened on his father's. "I know."

The old man wept quietly. Antoine pulled a chair closer and sat beside him, gripping his shoulder. They stayed that way for a long moment, the silence in the little stone kitchen filled by the sound of Palisse's ragged breathing.

After a while, Palisse pulled away, wiped his eyes with this sleeve, and stood unsteadily. He shuffled across the room and opened a drawer in the dresser by his bed. He took out a leather-bound notebook—stained, greasy, bulging with loose pages—and held it out to Antoine.

"My final recipes," he said. "Every one I never showed you. The ones I made when I was alone here, when I was too sick to cook. I've been writing them down. For you."

Antoine took the notebook. It was heavy in his hands. He opened it; the pages were covered in cursive French, notes in the margins, diagrams of plating. Some pages were stained with wine, others with what might have been blood.

"I don't want you to forgive me," Palisse said. "I want you to have something that's truly mine. Not the weight of my mistakes. Just the food."

Antoine closed the notebook and held it against his chest. "This matters," he said. "More than you know."

Camille watched them. The scene was intimate, raw—not hers to frame. She stepped quietly toward the door, giving them the space they needed. But Antoine caught her arm before she could leave.

"Don't go," he said. "I want you here. I want us to be here together."

Palisse looked at her with new eyes. "You love him," he said. It wasn't a question.

Camille hesitated. Then she said, "I do."

Palisse nodded slowly, a small, sad smile forming on his lips. "Then you'll know what to do with him." He gestured to the notebook in Antoine's hands. "He cooks better when he's loved."