Read Chapter 14: The Rival's Name

“This is him,” Odile said, tapping a sepia portrait in the bound history of the Compagnie du Midi. The book lay open on her kitchen table in Cannes, the town outside her windows glittering gold in the late afternoon sun. Camille leaned in, her eyes tracing the stern mustached face, the high collar, the dark eyes that held a cold intelligence. **Auguste Ravel, Ingénieur en Chef, 1911-1955.**

Aunt Odile’s flat smelled of lavender and old paper. She’d driven them straight from the station, her little white Peugeot humming along the corniche while she told Camille stories about Grandpa Albert that didn’t sound like the gentle old man Camille remembered.

“Your grandfather will explain the rest. But first, you need to see the evidence for yourself. The little bird in the archives can’t fly far on its own.” Odile poured two glasses of pastis and sat across from Camille. Her black bob was shot with silver, and year after year of sun had creased her skin into a permanent amusement.

“And this is the man who hated him?” Camille asked, sliding the book toward her.

“Hated. Feared. Worshipped. A dangerous combination.” Odile swirled her glass. “Ravel designed half the mountain routes on the line to Nice. A genius. But your great-grandfather Henri refused to make him Chief of the whole southern division—wouldn’t let a ‘navvy’s son’ hold the highest seat. Ravel never forgave him.”

Camille ran her finger along the margin of the open page. Next to Ravel’s entry, a neat penciled annotation read: *aime la vitesse, méprise la patience—loves speed, despises patience.* A description she’d have given to nobody she knew.

“The Moreau connection,” Camille said, pulling out the worn envelope from her coat. Julian’s fading voice had been in her head ever since the last train. *Moreau.* “In the ledger, my great-grandfather paid 100,000 francs to a ‘mutual assistance fund’ with the name crossed out. I think it was meant for Ravel’s family. I need to find out if Moreau was Ravel’s wife’s name or his mother’s.”

Odile’s glass stopped midway to her lips. Her eyes grew wide. For a moment Camille thought the old woman would spill the amber liquid across the embroidered tablecloth. “Riveraine,” Odile whispered.

“What?”

“Moreau was her maiden name. Ravel’s wife, Marie-Claire Moreau.” Odile set the glass down slowly, a tremor in her hand that hadn’t been there a minute ago. “I met her once, when I was a girl. My father—your grandpapa Albert—took me to Nice for a fete. She was a grandmother by then, but she still had those enormous green eyes. She wore a black veil. My father told me she’d been a widow since before I was born, but that she carried grief like a flag, ‘for show.’ He never explained what that meant, and I never asked again. He wasn’t the sort of man you questioned twice.”

“So she was alive. Recently alive.”

“She was alive as of your father’s childhood. I know she ran a flower shop in old Nice for a while. After that… I heard she went to a convent outside Grasse. The sisters take letters but they burn them.” Odile’s face had gone pale. “Why have you opened this door, Camille? Once you knock, the ghosts don’t stay on their side.”

Camille pulled out the heavy iron watch from her breast pocket. It rested in her palm, warm as a sleeping animal. The second hand ticked—she could feel the vibration under her thumb. Since Julian had passed through the train three nights ago, starting from 2:23, the hand moved forward one minute every morning at dawn, like a meandering, unhurried pulse.

“He’s running out,” Camille said. Her voice came out raw. “Every second costs him something. And the watch counts toward… something. I don’t know. The next full moon? There’s a date on the inner case I didn’t see before—it was engraved too fine, I had to get it under a jewelry lamp. October 12.”

Odile’s eyes went wide, and the glass finally clattered against the tabletop. She grabbed Camille’s wrist and stared at the watch, her fingers digging hard into Camille’s skin. “That’s not a birthday. That’s the day of the full moon.” She leaned back. “And it’s also the day of the derailment’s anniversary of the funeral. Albert—your grandpa—he kept a calendar, so he’d never lose track. October 12, he used to say. ‘The date of empty seats.’ He marked it with a black pen every year.”

Camille looked at the watch. The hands were set not to 2:23 anymore, but to a place only Julian could read. And the date scratched around the inside bezel—it was not a maker’s mark. It was a promise. A last meeting.

“So we have four days,” Camille said, turning the watch over in her fingers. “Four days until the full moon. Julian appears in flashes now—he’s half transparent. If he can’t survive another appearance, then October 12 is when I lose him for good.”

Odile sighed, reached across the table, and closed Camille’s fingers around the watch. “Then we don’t wait for Albert to come to us. We go to him. He keeps a room above the old Casino—where the gaming tables used to be, now converted to storage. It’s a bad neighborhood for old men, but he insists. He says he likes to hear the ocean.”

They packed in silence. Camille shoved the company history into her duffel, tucking the ledger and Julian’s letters into the same waterproof pocket. Odile pulled on a beige cardigan that did nothing to hide the small Beretta holstered at her ankle. When she caught Camille’s eye, she shrugged.

“Old habits. Your family has made enemies across three generations. I keep a few reminders that we still bite back.”

The drive took ten minutes through Cannes’ narrow back streets, past shutters painted pale blue, past markets closing their fish stalls with the smell of brine and lemon. The Casino rose above them—a crumbling Belle Époque palace with fading letters over the door. Odile parked in an alley under a dead flowering tree and cut the engine.

“Up two flights. No elevator. He’ll be in the room at the end of the hall, watching the televised horse races. He used to watch them live. He used to own half the horses.”

Camille knocked.

For a long moment, nothing. Odile pressed her ear to the door. A faint sound within—the rustle of a newspaper, a settling chair. Odile cleared her throat and called through the wood, “Albert. It’s Odile. I’ve brought the girl. The one with the watch.”

A voice emerged, cracked but sharp: “Who sent you?”

Camille’s heart pounded. Her throat tightened. She pressed her forehead to the cool wood and answered, “Julian.”

A long silence. Then the bolt slid back with a heavy metallic click. The door swung open.

Albert Laurent stood before them—a thin, stooped man of eighty-nine, wearing a faded smoking jacket and an expression that had once made grown men cry in boardrooms. His hair was white silk, his eyes as gray as the sea on a winter morning. He looked at Camille, then down at her wrist where she hadn’t yet slipped the watch back under her sleeve. The second hand was still moving.

“So you’re the one who woke him.” Albert’s voice trembled, but his gaze did not waver. “I was wondering when someone would finally ask about Marie-Claire.”