Read Chapter 24: Aftermath of the Return

The afternoon light slanted through the dining room windows of the B&B, catching dust motes in slow rotation. Camille stood at the threshold with her suitcase still in her hand, watching Julien’s father, Alain, hunched over a cup of coffee at the long farmhouse table. He looked smaller than she remembered from twenty years ago—thinner, grayer, his shoulders curved like a man perpetually bracing for a blow.

Julien stood by the sideboard, arms crossed, staring at his father as if the man were a ghost he hadn’t decided whether to embrace or exorcise.

“I’ll put your bag in the office,” Camille said quietly.

Julien didn’t turn. “Merci.”

She climbed the stairs slowly, her ribs still aching from the hospital, and set her suitcase down in the small room off the kitchen that Julien had converted into a makeshift office two weeks ago. From the window she could see the garden, the lavender rows bending in the breeze, the fountain in the courtyard where she and Julien had kissed the night before everything went wrong in Paris.

She heard their voices below, muffled but distinct.

“You let me believe you were dead.” Julien’s voice cracked on the word *dead*.

“I know.” Alain’s voice was gravel and exhaustion. “I know, son. There’s no excuse I can give you that will make it right. But I want you to know the truth. All of it.”

“I don’t know if I want it.”

A long silence. Then the scrape of a chair, and footsteps crossing the floor. Camille pressed her palm against the window frame, her heart aching for Julien in a way that felt physical—a dull pressure beneath her sternum that had nothing to do with her injuries.

She waited until the footsteps stopped, then descended the stairs. Alain was standing now, facing Julien, his hand hovering in the air between them like he wanted to reach out but didn’t know how. Camille paused on the bottom step, not wanting to intrude.

“I’m going to the village,” she said. “I thought you might want some time.”

Julien turned, and she saw it in his eyes—gratitude, but also something else. Something she couldn’t name. He nodded once. “I’ll come find you later.”

She left through the front door, the hinges groaning behind her, and walked down the gravel path toward the road. She didn’t know where she was going. She just knew she couldn’t stay there, couldn’t watch Julien’s face crumple and reform in real time while she stood by powerless.

Claire’s car was parked in front of the village bakery when Camille reached the square. Claire spotted her through the window and waved, her face opening into a smile that softened when she saw Camille’s expression. A moment later she emerged, a paper bag of croissants in her hand.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Claire said.

“Not a ghost. A resurrection.” Camille sat down on the low stone wall outside the bakery. Her body still felt fragile, her ribs a lingering reminder of the van that had sent her to the hospital. “Julien’s father is back. At the B&B.”

Claire blinked. Then she sat down beside Camille, the paper bag crinkling between them. “Alain Fournier. He’s been gone—”

“Twenty years. Yes.” Camille pressed her fingers to her temple. “Julien thinks he’s been hiding all that time. He said there was a crime, a fire, insurance. He didn’t tell me much. Julien asked me to leave before his father could finish explaining.”

Claire was silent for a long moment. Then she tore off a piece of croissant and handed it to Camille. “How is Julien taking it?”

“I don’t know. He was frozen. Like he didn’t know whether to hug his father or throw him out.” Camille took the croissant but didn’t eat it. “And I was standing there like an extra in someone else’s play. I don’t belong in this.”

Claire’s hand landed on Camille’s arm, warm and steady. “You belong in his life, Camille. This is his family. That’s different.”

“Is it? He told me no more secrets. Then his father shows up with twenty years of them, and suddenly I’m on the outside looking in. I asked questions—the same questions I thought we were supposed to ask now. No secrets, remember? And he shut me down like I was a stranger.”

“He’s scared,” Claire said. “He’s scared you’ll see something in him he doesn’t want you to see. That you’ll judge his family the way he judges himself.”

Camille turned the croissant over in her hands. “And what if I do? What if I look at his father and see a man who lied for decades, and I can’t forgive it? I’m still processing what my own mother did—editing my letters, hiding Julien’s. And now I’m supposed to stand by while his family asks for the same kind of absolution?”

Claire didn’t answer right away. She watched a pigeon peck at a crumb near her feet. “You don’t have to forgive anyone today. But you do have to decide what you want. Is Julien worth the messy middle?”

Camille stared at the bakery’s striped awning. The image of Julien in the hospital room surfaced unbidden—his hand wrapped around hers, his voice rough with confession. *My voice never stopped loving you.* She had believed him then. She still did.

“I don’t know what I want right now,” she said finally. “I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to lose him again.”

Claire squeezed her arm. “Then hold on. But don’t smother him. Give him room to fall apart and put himself back together. He’ll come to you when he’s ready.”

The croissant sat uneaten in Camille’s lap. She looked toward the B&B, visible over the rooftops, its warm stone facade glowing in the afternoon light. She could picture Julien inside, seated across from his father, learning the shape of the lie that had shaped his life.

“I think I need some distance,” Camille said. “Not forever. Just until I can breathe again.”

Claire nodded. “Then let’s go to my place. I’ll make tea. You can tell me about Étienne’s face when the judge ruled in your favor.”

Camille’s mouth twitched despite herself. The image of Étienne’s attorney palming his forehead was almost enough to steady her. “He looked like he’d swallowed a wasp.”

Claire laughed, a bright sound that drew glances from two elderly women walking past. “Good. I hate that man. Tell me everything.”

They walked together to Claire’s cottage, a small stone house with climbing roses overtaking the fence. Inside, Claire put water on to boil and Camille slumped into an armchair, finally exhaling for what felt like the first time since she’d walked into the B&B.

She told Claire about the courtroom, about Étienne’s confession—his father’s gambling debts, the pressure that had driven him to forge her signature, the way he’d looked at her with something that might have been regret. She told her about her mother’s admission that she’d never believed Camille’s father was truly dead.

“Two fathers,” Claire said, setting down two steaming mugs. “Yours maybe not dead. His definitely not dead. Provence is having a resurrection season.”

Camille laughed, a thin sound. “I don’t know which is worse. The hope of mine, or the confusion of his.”

She stayed at Claire’s until the light turned amber and the bakery shuttered for the afternoon. When she walked back toward the B&B, she took the long way, past the church and the fountain, giving herself time to think.

The front door was ajar when she arrived. She heard voices inside—Julien and Alain, their tones no longer tense but low and intimate, like men learning each other again. She stood on the porch, her hand on the door frame, and peered through the gap.

Alain was crying. Not dramatically—just silent tears tracking down his weathered face as he spoke. Julien sat across from him, elbows on his knees, and for the first time since his father’s arrival, his posture had loosened. He was listening. Really listening.

Camille watched them for a long moment. She saw something pass between them—a wordless understanding that had nothing to do with her. This was their reckoning. Their reunion. Their story.

She stepped back from the door and let herself in through the kitchen entrance instead. She moved quietly, filling a glass of water at the tap, and then retreated down the hallway toward the office. From the doorway, she could hear Julien’s voice again, softer now, saying something she couldn’t quite make out.

She set the glass on the desk and pulled out her notebook. The lavender festival was ten days away. The B&B’s reservation book lay open, full of names. Claire’s insurance threat still hung over everything like a storm cloud. And some Swiss lawyer was still waiting to tell her what her father had left behind.

But she couldn’t think about any of that right now.

She wrote in the notebook: *I am the tenant. He is the landlord. But this house is not mine to mend.*

She closed the notebook, slid it into her bag, and went upstairs to the guest room she had claimed as her own. Through the thin walls, she heard them—Julien’s low voice, Alain’s answering murmur. She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling as the conversation below blurred into a hum, and the hum faded into silence.

Later, Julien knocked on her door.

“Camille?”

She sat up. “Yes.”

The door opened a crack. His face was tired, but his eyes were clear. “I’m sorry I asked you to leave earlier.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that. You needed to do that alone.”

He nodded slowly. “He’s sleeping. On the couch downstairs. He looks so old, Camille. I don’t know how to reconcile the man I remember with the one who just fell asleep in my living room.”

She crossed to him and took his hands. “You don’t have to reconcile it tonight. You just have to be here.”

He squeezed her fingers, then let go. “Will you stay?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He searched her face for a long moment, and something in his shoulders released. “Thank you.”

She watched him retreat down the hall, his footsteps heavy on the old boards. Then she closed her door and pressed her back against the wood, her heart full of tenderness that felt complicated and sharp—love, yes, but also patience, and the clear-eyed knowledge that his first allegiance right now was to a man who had abandoned him.

That wasn’t a betrayal. That was simply where he needed to be.

And for now, she could support him from a distance. The lavender would bloom in the fields regardless. The festival would come. And underneath it all, the scent of reunion would spread through their small town like the flowers themselves—patient, stubborn, and determined to take root.