Read Chapter 30: The Festival Triumph

The Saturday of the lavender festival dawned clear and hot, the air already shimmering with the scent of blooming fields before the sun had fully crested the hills. Camille stood at the kitchen window of the B&B, tying her apron strings with fingers that smelled of thyme and lemon zest, and watched Julien carry the last crate of lavender honey toward the front courtyard.

He caught her eye through the glass and grinned, mouthing something she couldn't hear. She didn't need to hear it. She knew the shape of his encouragement now.

The kitchen became a machine within the hour. Claire had taken over front-of-house operations with a clipboard and an efficiency that bordered on military, while the two part-time girls from the village wound lavender sprigs through napkin rings at the long communal tables. Camille's station was a whirlwind of copper pots and cream reductions, her signature dish—a lavender-honey duck breast with a Provençal herb crust—coming together in a rhythm she'd almost forgotten she possessed.

"Order's up, Chef," one of the girls called, sliding a ticket onto the pass.

Camille moved. Fire. Pan. Deglaze. The kitchen sang around her, and for the first time in months, she didn't hear the ghost of Étienne's criticism in every sizzle. She heard only the pulse of her own competence.

By early afternoon, the courtyard was full. The festival crowd had spilled from the village square into the B&B's garden, drawn by word of mouth and the unmistakable aroma that drifted over the lavender rows. Camille emerged from the kitchen to check the dessert display, wiping her hands on a towel, and nearly collided with a man in a linen blazer who was photographing her plated tarte au citron with a small digital camera.

"Sorry," she said. "Can I help you?"

He lowered the camera, and she recognized him. The silver hair, the knowing eyes, the byline she'd seen in every food magazine that had ever reviewed her Paris restaurant. Henri Delacroix.

"Mademoiselle Roux," he said, extending a hand. "I'd heard you'd left Paris. I didn't expect to find you in a Provençal garden, feeding tourists."

Camille's throat tightened. "I'm not feeding tourists. I'm feeding people."

"A distinction you've always made well." He tilted his head, studying her with the appraising look of a man who had tasted everything and remembered most of it. "That duck. The lavender honey reduction. Where did you learn to balance that sweetness against the game?"

"My father," she said, before she could stop herself. "He used to cook it for my birthday."

Henri Delacroix wrote something in a small notebook, and Camille's heart hammered against her ribs. She excused herself, returning to the kitchen on legs that felt unfamiliar, and stood over the stove for a long moment with her hands flat on the cool metal.

"Everything all right?" Julien appeared in the doorway, a tray of empty glasses in his hands.

"There's a food critic out there. Henri Delacroix."

His eyebrows rose. "The same one who called your Paris restaurant 'a masterclass in forgotten technique'?"

"You read that?"

"I read everything about you I could find." He set the tray down and stepped closer, voice dropping. "Camille, that's a good sign."

"It's terrifying."

"No. It's proof." He touched her elbow, brief and warm. "You belong in this kitchen. In this life. Whatever's waiting in Grasse, it doesn't change what you just did out there."

She wanted to believe him. For three hours, she let herself believe him, losing herself in the rhythm of service, in the laughter of strangers, in the way the courtyard filled with the golden light of late afternoon and the sound of corks being pulled from bottles of rosé.

By the time the last guest had drifted toward the village square for the evening fireworks, the B&B's kitchen was quiet and ruined in the beautiful way of a day well cooked. Camille leaned against the counter, exhaustion pulling at her bones, and watched Claire cross the courtyard toward her with two glasses of wine in her hands.

"I don't know how you do it," Claire said, handing her a glass. The words were stiff, but not hostile.

"Do what?"

"Feed a hundred people and make it look like meditation." Claire looked down into her wine, and when she looked up, her eyes were softer than Camille had seen them in weeks. "I wanted to hate you, when I saw you again. I'd convinced myself you'd become exactly the kind of woman who'd stolen Julien away the first time. Cold. Ambitious. Wrong for him."

Camille opened her mouth, but Claire held up a hand.

"I was wrong. I watched you today—the way you work, the way you look at him, the way you didn't even notice you were glowing when you came out of that kitchen." She took a breath. "I'm sorry. For the things I said at the beginning. For assuming I knew who you were."

Camille blinked against the sudden heat behind her eyes. "I'm sorry too. For leaving him the way I did. All those years ago. I didn't know how to tell him—" She stopped. "I didn't know how to tell anyone."

Claire nodded slowly, then raised her glass. "To not knowing how to tell anyone."

Camille clinked her glass against Claire's, and for a moment, they stood in the darkening courtyard, two women who had loved the same man in different ways, finding a strange and tentative peace.

Later, after Claire had gone inside and the fireworks had painted the sky in bursts of violet and gold, Camille sat alone at one of the long tables, her phone in her hand. She'd missed three calls from the real estate agent in Grasse. The house was waiting. The cellar was waiting. The key her father had left her sat in her pocket, a constant small weight against her thigh.

Julien came out and sat across from her, sliding a plate of leftover tarte between them.

"You're thinking about her," he said quietly. "Your mother."

Camille looked up, surprised. "How did you know?"

"Because I know you're thinking about something that scares you, and the only thing that scared you today was Henri Delacroix's notebook. That, you can control. This—" He gestured vaguely toward her pocket, toward the phone, toward the whole complicated tangle of her past. "This you can't."

"I should call her." Camille's voice came out small. "I should ask her why she kept my father's letters from me. Why she let me believe he never wrote."

Julien didn't offer advice. He just sat with her while the fireworks finale bloomed overhead, and when she finally reached for a piece of the tarte, he smiled.

"You know," he said, "the reviews are already coming in online. Three guests posted photos of your duck. One called it 'the best meal of their trip to France.' Another said the B&B should be in the guidebooks."

Camille almost smiled. "And Henri Delacroix?"

"He's still here." Julien's eyes held hers. "He asked to speak with the owner about hosting a private dinner next month. I told him I'd have to check with my chef."

"My chef?"

"That's what I said." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I meant you. Whatever you decide about Grasse. Whatever you decide about us. This kitchen is yours, Camille. As long as you want it."

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say that she would stay, that she would let him love her, that she would bury the key and the letters and her father's ghost in the cellar of that Grasse house and never look back.

But the phone buzzed against the table, and the screen lit up with a name she hadn't seen in years.

*Maman.*

Camille stared at it, her heart suddenly loud in her ears, and realized that the festival was over. The real work was just beginning.