Read Chapter 11: A Brother's Warning

The call came at half past six in the morning, the sharp trill of her phone cutting through the grey light of the hotel room. Emma fumbled for it on the nightstand, squinting at the screen. James. Her brother never called this early. Never.

She answered, her voice thick with sleep. "James? Is Mum—"

"She's fine. She's—well, she's not fine, she's frantic, but she's in one piece." His voice was tight, the way it got when he was trying to sound calm and failing. "Emma, what the hell are you doing over there?"

Emma sat up, pressing the phone closer to her ear. The hotel room was cold, the radiator clanking somewhere in the walls. "What do you mean? I told you, I'm just—"

"Don't. Don't give me the holiday line. Mum got a call yesterday. From the French police. Some gendarme in a village called Sainte-Cécile asking why a British national was digging through their archival records and poking around a sealed church crypt." A pause. "They used the word 'sealed,' Em. As in, you broke in."

Emma closed her eyes. The priest had been kind, surprisingly so, but obviously he'd made a call. Of course he had. She should have known better. She'd spent the last three days chasing ghosts through documents and dark underground passages, and somewhere along the way she'd forgotten that the living kept records too.

"It's not what it sounds like," she said. "The priest gave us permission. He let us take a photograph."

"Permission. Right. Mum's convinced you've lost your mind. She keeps saying something about Grandmother's letters, and how you shouldn't be poking at things that don't concern you." James's voice softened, just a fraction. "I told her you'd gone because of Gran's death. That you needed to get away. But I need to know, honestly, what you're actually doing there. Because Mum's not stupid, and she's scared. And she said something weird."

Emma's chest tightened. She swung her legs out of bed, padding barefoot to the window. Outside, Sainte-Cécile was waking up—shutters opening, a baker carrying trays across the square. It looked so peaceful. So harmless. "What did she say?"

"She said—" James hesitated. "She said if you were looking for answers about Grandmother, you'd be disappointed, because Grandmother never knew the truth about her own family. And then she started crying and hung up."

That didn't sound right. Colette had lied about everything—about France, about her sister Jeanne, about the letters she'd hidden for sixty years. But "never knew the truth"? Emma had read Colette's own handwriting, accusing Marcel of killing Jeanne. Colette had known something. She'd known enough to be terrified into silence.

"James," Emma said slowly, "what do you know about Grandfather?"

A long silence on the line. Then: "What do you mean?"

"Our grandfather. Mum's dad. What was his name?"

"William. William Ashworth. You know that. He died when Mum was twelve, we've got the photos—"

"I know the photos. But what was he? Where did he come from?"

"He was English, obviously. Born in Kent. He met Grandmother in London during the war, they married in '45, moved to Surrey after. Standard story." James paused. "Why? What does that have to do with anything?"

Emma's mind was racing. The letters. The marriage record she'd found in the village archives—Jean-Luc Bernard, dead in 1944, leaving a widow named Marguerite. But Colette's letters to Jean-Luc were love letters, passionate and desperate, written right up until the end of the war. If Colette had married William Ashworth, a British soldier, in 1945, then who was Jean-Luc to her?

And why had Colette never spoken of any of it?

"Emma?" James's voice was sharp again. "Talk to me."

She made a decision. "I'm not on holiday," she said. "I came here because Grandmother left me letters. Love letters. From a Frenchman named Jean-Luc. She never told anyone about him, James. Not Mum, not anyone. And I found records showing she had a sister who died here in 1943, and the police file says it was suspicious. Murder, maybe. And I think—I think Grandmother might have been involved. Or running from something. I don't know yet."

The silence on the other end stretched so long she checked the timer on her phone to make sure the call hadn't dropped.

"James?"

"I'm here." His voice was strained. "I'm here. Emma, you have to stop."

"What?"

"Whatever you're doing. You have to stop. Come home."

"I can't—"

"Listen to me." There was something in his voice she'd never heard before. Something almost desperate. "I told you Mum said something weird. When I asked her about Grandmother's family—about why she never talked about France—she said that our great-grandfather, Grandmother's father, wasn't French either. That he was a British soldier stationed in France during the First World War, and that he brought Colette and Jeanne to England in 1930 to keep them safe."

Emma frowned. "Safe from what?"

"I don't know. She wouldn't say. But she said something else. She said, 'Tell Emma to stop before she finds out what made our grandmother lie about her own name.'"

The words landed like a physical blow. "Her own name?"

"Colette wasn't Colette's real name. Mum doesn't know what it was. She only found out because there were papers in our grandfather's desk after he died—official papers, army papers—and they had a different name for her. Marguerite something. Mum never saw the full document. Our grandfather hid it from her, and she only found it after Gran's funeral, when she was clearing out the house."

Marguerite.

The name Emma had read in the marriage record. Jean-Luc Bernard's widow.

The world tilted. Emma gripped the windowsill, steadying herself. She felt the cold stone under her fingers, solid and real, while everything else in her mind scattered like letters caught in a wind.

"James," she said slowly, "what was the name on the paper?"

"I don't remember exactly. It was French. Marguerite, maybe? Something like that." A pause. "Why? Does that mean something?"

Emma didn't answer. Her mind was assembling pieces at terrible speed—the marriage record, the widow, the letters, the sister. Colette was Marguerite. Marguerite was Jean-Luc's widow. But Jean-Luc had died in 1944, before the last letters were written. Before Colette's marriage to William. Unless—

Unless Jean-Luc hadn't really died.

She thought of the priest's warning: *Be careful what you unearthsome things are buried for a reason.*

"Emma." James's voice was pleading now. "Please. You're scaring me. Whatever you think you're finding, it's been hidden for over seventy years. Everyone who knew the truth is dead. What good can it possibly do to dig it up?"

Emma watched the village square fill with morning light. A woman in a blue dress was hanging laundry on a line. A dog trotted past the fountain. It was so ordinary, so alive, and all of it was standing on top of a grave that someone had worked very hard to keep sealed.

"I need to know why," she said quietly. "I need to know who I am. And I think the answer is in that chateau."

"Please—"

"I'll call you when I have more. I promise. But I can't come home yet." She paused. "Tell Mum I love her. And tell her I'm sorry."

She ended the call before he could argue. Then she stood there for a long moment, the phone still warm in her hand, and thought about what she'd learned. Her grandmother wasn't Colette Laurent. She was Marguerite Bernard. A widow before she'd ever married Emma's grandfather. A woman who'd abandoned her name, her country, and her sister, and had spent sixty years pretending none of it had ever happened.

And Emma's mother had known. Not everything—not the whole truth—but enough to be afraid. Afraid enough to beg Emma to stop digging.

Emma pulled on her boots and grabbed her jacket. Then she left the room, headed for the café, where Theo would be waiting with his scanner and his university access codes and his careful, knowing smile.

He knew more than he was telling her. And she was done being careful.