Read Chapter 21: The Lawyer's Lead

The envelope sat on the breakfast table with Camille’s name typed in crisp black letters, no return address, postmarked Paris. She’d been back from the hospital for three days, her shoulder still stiff beneath the bandage, the bruise on her ribs a dull purple bloom she checked each morning like a grim calendar.

Julien had made coffee. The smell of it curled through the open kitchen doors, mixing with the thyme and rosemary that grew wild along the terrace. He was outside, methodically repairing a broken shutter, his back to her, the familiar set of his shoulders a comfort she was still learning to trust.

She tore the envelope open with her thumb.

Inside, a single sheet of paper and a bank statement. The letter was brief—a formal request from her lawyer in Paris, Maître Delon. *Enclosed, the document you requested. It confirms our suspicion: the withdrawal of €38,000 from your joint account in March of last year was executed using a signature that does not match your known exemplars. We have reason to believe the signature was forged.*

The bank statement was dated eleven months ago. The signature at the bottom was a shaky, unconvincing imitation of her name—the *C* too sharp, the *e* trailing off like it had been written in haste. It wasn’t even good. A forgery by someone who had never bothered to watch her sign her own name.

Étienne.

Her ex-husband. The man who had spent years telling her she was too emotional, too impulsive, too much. The man who had drained their account while she cooked twelve-hour shifts at his restaurant, building his reputation with her sauces and her discipline, and then told her she hadn’t contributed enough to deserve the business in the divorce.

Her fingers tightened on the paper. The coffee turned cold in her cup.

Julien came in through the back door, wiping his hands on a rag. He stopped when he saw her face.

“What is it?”

She held up the statement. “He forged my signature. Étienne. Forged it to take the money.”

Julien crossed the room, reading over her shoulder. She felt the warmth of him at her back, the careful distance he kept, as if he were still learning the boundaries of this new, fragile thing between them.

“I need to go to Paris,” she said.

“Now?”

“There’s a hearing. Maître Delon wants me to press charges. It’s the only way to get the full amount back.” She looked down at the paper, the forgery glaring at her like an insult. “And I want to look him in the eye when I do it.”

Julien was quiet for a long moment. When she glanced up, his jaw was tight.

“When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

He nodded slowly, folding the rag in his hands. The shutter outside hung half-repaired, the festival less than two weeks away, the lawyer’s file about her father still sitting unopened on the desk in the office, and now this. She watched him process it all, saw the burden settle on his shoulders like a coat he was used to wearing.

“Julien.” She stepped closer, close enough to see the flecks of green in his eyes. “I’m coming back. I’m not leaving. Not like before.”

His throat worked. “I know.”

“Do you?”

He reached out, his fingers brushing the edge of the bandage at her shoulder. The gesture was featherlight, careful. “You almost died three days ago. I’m not going to pretend I’m fine with you getting on a train to face the man who—” He stopped, shook his head.

“Who bankrupted me while pretending to love me?”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“What were you going to say?”

He met her eyes. “The man who had you for ten years and didn’t deserve a single minute of it.”

Her breath caught. The words landed somewhere deep, in that hollow space she’d been trying to fill with Provençal sunlight and lavender and the comforting weight of his presence. She reached up, her hand finding his jaw, the stubble rough beneath her palm.

“I’ll be back in three days,” she said. “Maybe four.”

“The festival is in eleven.”

“I’ll be back before then. I told you—no more secrets. No more running. I meant it.”

He exhaled, something loosening in his posture. And then, before she could think, he leaned down and kissed her.

It was not the desperate kiss of the hospital hallway, not the fevered confession of a man who thought he might lose her. This was something else—softer, surer. A promise. His hand came up to cup the back of her head, careful not to jostle her injury, and she melted into him, tasting coffee and thyme and the salt of unspoken fears.

When they broke apart, his forehead rested against hers.

“Three days,” he said.

“Four, worst case.”

“Three. I’m holding you to it.”

She laughed, a small, surprised sound. “You always did.”

He smiled then, that slow, crooked smile she remembered from high school, the one that had made her heart stumble at seventeen. It still did.

---

The next morning, Julien drove her to the Avignon TGV station. The car was silent, filled with the weight of unsaid things. He carried her bag to the platform, stood with his hands in his pockets as the train pulled in.

“I’ll call you when I arrive,” she said.

“You better.”

“And I’ll check in on the festival prep. Make sure Maurice isn’t planning any surprise accordion solos at the opening ceremony.”

Julien’s lips twitched. “I’ll handle Maurice. You handle your ex-husband.”

“That’s a trade I’ll take.” She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, the movement sending a twinge through her healing ribs. He noticed—of course he noticed—and his hand reached out, steadying her elbow.

“Camille.”

She turned. He looked at her for a long moment, then pulled a small object from his pocket. A lavender sachet, the same kind they’d been folding for the festival gift baskets, the tight purple buds fragrant even through the muslin.

“For the journey,” he said. “In case you forget what you’re coming back to.”

She took it, pressing it to her nose. The scent flooded her: summer fields, childhood, the boy who had once written her a letter every week for a year and received silence in return. She tucked it into the pocket of her coat, over her heart.

“I’ll be back before you’ve finished the shutters,” she said.

“The shutters are already finished.”

“Then I’ll be back before you re-finish them.”

The train whistle blew. She stepped forward, pressed one last kiss to his cheek, and boarded.

---

Paris hit her like a wall of noise and gray. She had forgotten how loud the city was, how fast everyone moved, how the air tasted of diesel and ambition and strangers. Her lawyer’s office was in the Eighth, all glass and chrome and the kind of sterile efficiency that made her miss Julien’s hand-built shutters and creaking floorboards.

Maître Delon was a woman in her fifties with steel-gray hair and sharp eyes. She wasted no time.

“The bank has confirmed the forgery. They’re willing to testify. With your statement and the document evidence, we have a strong case.” She slid a folder across the desk. “The hearing is set for Thursday. You’ll need to provide a statement about the extent of the financial damage, including the funds he transferred to his personal accounts after the separation.”

Camille nodded, flipping through the pages. Numbers swam before her eyes—the scale of his theft larger than she had realized. He hadn’t just taken the joint account. There were transfers, investments liquidated, a small business loan taken out in her name. Decades of her work, siphoned away while she slept beside him.

“He’ll try to drag this out,” Delon continued. “But the evidence is solid. If you press charges, he’ll be facing restitution and potentially criminal charges.”

Criminal charges.

For a moment, Camille hesitated. Étienne was a bastard, but he was also a man who had once held her when she cried, who had told her he believed in her dreams before he had slowly, systematically, ground them into dust. Pressing charges meant a public airing of the worst years of her life. It meant seeing him again.

Then she thought of Julien’s hand on the back of her head, his forehead against hers. She thought of the letters her mother had intercepted, a decade of love stolen by lies. She thought of the lavender sachet in her pocket, the scent of a future she was only beginning to believe in.

“I’ll press charges,” she said.

Delon nodded, satisfaction flickering in her eyes. “I’ll prepare the paperwork.”

---

The phone rang at five in the evening. Camille was in her hotel room, surrounded by spreadsheets and legal documents, the lavender sachet on the nightstand where she could see it.

“Did you make it?” Julien’s voice came through the speaker, low and warm.

“I made it. The lawyer thinks we have a strong case.”

“Good.” A pause. “The electrician came by. The festival lights will be ready by Tuesday.”

“And Maurice?”

“Maurice has agreed to limit his accordion performance to two songs, neither of which is a polka.”

“Progress.”

Jonah laughed, a low sound that rumbled through the phone. Then his voice shifted, softening. “Camille. I didn’t want to say this on the platform, because I knew you’d cry and you hate crying in public.”

“I don’t hate crying in public.”

“You do. You’ve always done. That time at the school dance when you fell off the bleachers, you waited until you got to the bathroom before you let yourself cry.”

She had forgotten that. He hadn’t.

“What do you want to say?” she asked, her voice small.

He was quiet for a moment. “I want to tell you that I’m glad you came back. To Provence, I mean. Even before all of this—the letters, the hospital, everything—I was glad. Every morning I woke up and you were there, in my kitchen, making coffee, and I couldn’t believe it.”

“Julien.”

“Three days, remember. You come back to me, and I’ll finish what I started in the hospital, and we’ll figure out the rest. But I need you to come back.”

She pressed the phone closer to her ear. “I will.”

“Good. Because I already fixed the shutters, and I don’t know what else to do with my hands.”

She laughed, and it felt like the first clean breath she’d taken since leaving Avignon.

---

Thursday morning, the courtroom was cold and fluorescent. Camille sat in the gallery, her lawyer beside her, her folder of evidence on the table. Across the room, Étienne sat with his own attorney, looking older than she remembered, his expensive suit hanging loose on his frame.

He didn’t look at her.

When the judge called the case, Delon rose and began. Camille listened to her voice, the clinical recitation of dates and amounts and forged signatures. She watched Étienne’s face as the evidence mounted, watched the color drain from his cheeks.

It should have felt triumphant. Instead, it felt like closing a door on a room she had been trapped in for years.

When the recess was called, she stepped into the hallway for air. The corridor was empty, the institutional green walls closing in.

“Camille.”

She turned. Étienne stood at the end of the hallway, hands in his pockets, his expression drawn.

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” he said. “Press charges. You were always too soft.”

“You should have counted on the wrong thing.” Her voice was steady. “You forged my name. You took everything I built with you. You didn’t just break my heart—you tried to break my future.”

He stepped closer, and for a moment she smelled his cologne—the same expensive scent he’d worn when they married. It no longer made her stomach turn. It wasn’t even familiar.

“I’ll destroy the evidence,” he said quietly. “I’ll settle out of court. Give you half of what I took. Just drop the charges.”

“Half?”

“It’s more than you’d get in court.”

Camille looked at him—really looked at him—and saw a small, frightened man trying to negotiate his way out of consequences. She thought of the lavender sachet in her hotel room, of a hand steadying her elbow on a train platform, of a voice that had never stopped loving her.

“No,” she said. “You’ll give me everything. Or nothing. That’s the only deal I’m willing to make.”

She left him standing in the corridor, and the door closed behind her.