Read Chapter 6: Mentor's Shadow

The school had not changed. That was the strangest part. The wrought-iron gates still wore the same faded green paint, peeling at the hinges like the skin of an old onion. The courtyard beyond them was empty, the linden trees casting long afternoon shadows across the cobblestones where Camille had once stood, apron tied, knife roll heavy on her shoulder, terrified and thrilled in equal measure.

She had not planned to come here. She had told herself she was walking to clear her head after the conversation with Antoine—the conversation that had left her with more questions than answers and a strange, hollow ache beneath her ribs. But her feet had carried her across the Pont Lafayette, up the rue des Remparts d'Ainay, and here she was. Standing outside the Institut Paul Bocuse like a ghost returning to a body it had abandoned.

The gate was unlocked. She pushed it open.

The building that housed the culinary program was a nineteenth-century manor with tall windows and stone walls the color of aged honey. Camille walked the perimeter slowly, her heels clicking against the cobblestones, her reflection passing dimly across the glass. She remembered the kitchen—the long stainless-steel counters, the gas burners that roared like lions, the walk-in cooler where she and Antoine had once hidden during a particularly brutal critique, laughing so hard they could barely breathe.

She stopped at the back door. It was propped open with a brick, the same brick, she would have sworn, that had been there a decade ago. Through the gap she could see the edge of the teaching kitchen. A young student in a white jacket was at the pass, plating something with trembling hands. An instructor stood over her, arms crossed, saying nothing.

Camille felt a sharp pang of recognition. She had been that student once. And Palisse had been the instructor who said nothing, letting the silence do the teaching.

Chef Alain Palisse. The man who had shaped her hands, her palate, her entire philosophy of food. The man who had looked at her after her first failed soufflé and said, *"The soufflé does not forgive. Neither do I. Try again."* The man who had disappeared.

She pulled out her phone and dialed Marc. He answered on the second ring.

"Camille. You're still in Lyon."

"I'm at the school."

A pause. "Why?"

"I don't know. I needed to see it." She leaned against the wall, the stone cool through her thin jacket. "Marc, you said Antoine told you Palisse disappeared. Four years ago. What else do you know?"

"I know what Antoine knows, which is almost nothing. Palisse closed the school for a week—said he was going to visit family in Brittany. He never came back. His apartment was found empty. No note, no sign of struggle. The police looked for a month and found nothing."

"And his family?"

"He didn't have any. No wife, no children. The school was his life. And you. And Antoine." Marc's voice softened. "You were his favorites, Camille. Everyone knew it. He didn't have a family of his own, so he made one out of you two."

Camille felt the words land somewhere deep and tender. She pressed her palm flat against the stone, grounding herself. "Did Antoine ever talk about a falling out? Something between him and Palisse before he disappeared?"

"Not to me." Marc hesitated. "Why? What are you thinking?"

"I don't know. That's the problem." She pushed off the wall and began walking toward the front of the building, the phone pressed to her ear. "Antoine lied to me tonight. He said the bistro was new. It's not. It's been open for months—maybe longer. He's hiding something, Marc. And I can't figure out if it's about the restaurant, or about Palisse, or about me."

"Maybe it's all three."

The words hung in the air. Camille slowed to a stop at the corner of the building, where the late-afternoon sun cast the garden in amber light.

"There's something else," she said. "He remembered the morning after the pastry exam differently than you do. He said he blacked out. You said he was horrified by what he saw on his table."

"He was." Marc's voice was firm. "I'll never forget his face. He looked like someone had taken everything he loved and set it on fire."

"But you don't know what was on the table."

"The presentation was ruined. That's all I saw from where I stood. Something had been destroyed—I assume his final piece. He stood there for a solid minute, not moving, then walked out without saying a word."

Camille turned the information over in her mind like a stone she couldn't identify. The pastry exam. Their final semester. The exam that had ended with Antoine disappearing for three days and returning with a fury she had never seen before. The exam that had driven a wedge between them that she had never fully understood.

And where had Palisse been during all of it?

"Camille." Marc's voice brought her back. "Be careful. Whatever's going on with Antoine—with the restaurant, with the money, with his past—you're not just a critic anymore. You're someone he loved. And that complicates everything."

"I know." She looked up at the school building, at the windows of the second-floor office where Palisse had kept his books and his photographs and his single, ancient copper pot. "I know it does."

She ended the call and slipped the phone into her pocket. Then she walked to the front door of the school and pulled it open.

The interior smelled the same—butter and gas and the faint metallic tang of steel that had been scrubbed a thousand times. The reception desk was empty. A hallway stretched before her, photographs of graduating classes lining the walls. She walked slowly, reading the faces. There was her own class, eleven years ago. She found herself in the back row, her hair shorter, her smile tight and uncertain. Antoine stood beside her, his arm almost touching hers. And in the center, tall and broad-shouldered, with his arms crossed and his chin lifted, stood Alain Palisse.

She touched the glass. The photograph was dusty. The frame was slightly crooked.

"Can I help you?"

Camille turned. A woman in her fifties stood in the doorway of the administrative office, a stack of papers in her arms. She was thin, gray-haired, with the sharp eyes of someone who had once worked in a kitchen and now worked in an office and missed neither.

"I'm sorry," Camille said. "I used to study here. I was just—"

"Camille Laurent." The woman's face broke into a smile. "I remember you. I'm Madame Vergne. I worked the front desk when you were a student. You were always the first to arrive and the last to leave."

Camille smiled despite herself. "You have a good memory."

"For troublemakers and stars. You were both." Madame Vergne set the papers down on a nearby table. "I heard you became a critic in Paris. Your reviews are harsh."

"I prefer 'rigorous.'"

Madame Vergne laughed. "That's what I remember about you. You always had a word for it." She tilted her head. "What brings you back after all this time?"

Camille hesitated. She could lie—could say she was in town for work—but the words wouldn't come. Something about this building stripped her of pretense.

"I was hoping to ask about Chef Palisse."

The smile on Madame Vergne's face faded slowly, like a light turned down. "Ah." She folded her arms. "Yes. We get questions sometimes. Former students who don't know."

"I only found out tonight. I didn't—" Camille's voice caught. "I didn't know he was gone."

Madame Vergne studied her for a long moment. Then she said, quietly, "He spoke of you often. Kept your picture on his desk until the end. And Antoine's too. Side by side, like children."

Camille felt her throat tighten. "Did you see anything strange before he left? Before he disappeared?"

Madame Vergne's eyes flickered toward the office, then back. "He was different in his final months. Distracted. He would stare out the window for long stretches and not hear me when I spoke to him. I thought he was sick. I asked him once. He said, 'We all carry what we cannot put down.'"

"He said that?"

"Yes. And then, a week later, he was gone." Madame Vergne shook her head. "The police asked me the same questions. I told them what I know. Which is nothing."

Camille nodded slowly. "Do you know if Antoine visited him? Before he disappeared?"

Madame Vergne's expression shifted—something careful, guarded. "Antoine Roux came by the school regularly. He and the chef had their disagreements, but they were close. Very close. Right up until the end."

"The end being when he disappeared?"

"The end being about a month before." Madame Vergne picked up her papers. "They had a falling-out. I don't know what it was about, but I heard voices. Chef Palisse's voice, raised—I'd never heard him raise his voice in all the years I worked here. And Antoine left looking like he'd been struck."

Camille felt the ground shift beneath her. "When was this?"

"About a month before Chef Palisse disappeared. Perhaps six weeks." Madame Vergne looked at Camille with something close to pity. "I always wondered if Antoine blamed himself. He hasn't been back here since."

The words hit Camille like a physical blow. She had assumed Antoine's distance from the school was simple—a painful past he wanted to forget. But this was different. This was guilt. Or something close to it.

"Thank you," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Thank you for telling me."

Madame Vergne nodded and turned toward the office, then paused. "Camille. Whatever you're looking for—I hope you find it. But be careful what you do with what you find."

Camille walked out of the school into the fading light. Her mind churned. Antoine had lied about the bistro. He had hidden a falling-out with Palisse. And Palisse had disappeared, leaving nothing but questions.

She pulled out her phone and called the hotel. "I need to extend my stay," she said when the front desk answered. "Indefinitely."

She hung up and looked back at the school. Through the window, she could see Madame Vergne disappear into the office, closing the door behind her.

Antoine had told her the copper pot was a memorial to Palisse. But if he had fought with Palisse before he disappeared—if he had said or done something that drove their mentor away—then the pot wasn't a memorial at all.

It was a confession.