Read Chapter 33: The House Decision

The morning light came through the tall windows of the salon, catching dust motes in slow spirals over the furniture. Camille stood at the hearth, running her fingers along the carved stone mantel where their mother had once kept a row of porcelain dogs. The house was quiet now. The police had gone, the reporters had drifted away, and only the three of them remained among the relics of a life that had been both smaller and larger than they had ever understood.

Inès came in from the kitchen with a pot of coffee, setting it on the low table with a clatter that felt too loud in the stillness. She was wearing one of their mother's old cardigans, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and Camille noticed the way her sister's hands lingered on the fabric as if it might still hold warmth.

"We need to talk about the house," Inès said, settling onto the sofa. "The lawyer called again this morning. There are offers. Real ones this time. People who think they can flip it into a bed-and-breakfast or tear it down for the land."

Camille turned from the hearth. "Tear it down?"

"The village reckons it's cursed." Inès poured the coffee with deliberate care. "Or haunted. Or both. The gossip has gone from 'the mother was a thief' to 'the whole family was in on it' to 'the daughters buried something in the garden.' I heard old Madame Leclerc telling the baker that she saw our mother's ghost in the rose beds last week."

"Madame Leclerc can barely see her own front door," Élodie said, appearing in the doorway with a box of their mother's letters in her arms. She set it on the table and sat down heavily. "But she's not wrong about the house feeling haunted. It is haunted. It's haunted by the version of our family we thought we had."

Camille crossed the room and sat across from her sisters. The coffee sat between them, steam curling upward. Outside, the garden was overgrown, the roses their mother had loved now tangled with weeds.

"So what do we do?" Camille asked. "We can't keep paying the taxes forever. And I can't keep commuting from Paris to check on the pipes."

Inès leaned forward. "What if we don't sell at all?"

The question hung in the air. Camille watched her sister's face, the familiar stubborn set of her jaw. Inès had always been the one who held on to things—old photographs, broken jewelry, grudges. It was both her greatest strength and her most persistent flaw.

"We talked about a museum," Inès continued. "Before everything got complicated. Before we knew the whole story. I think it's time we actually did it."

"A museum to what?" Élodie asked. "To lies? To the art ring? To the fact that our mother was involved in something she shouldn't have been, and our father ran away to protect her?"

Camille flinched at the bluntness of it, but Élodie's voice wasn't angry. It was tired. The kind of tired that came from carrying a weight you didn't know you were holding.

"To the truth," Inès said quietly. "To the complicated truth. That's what the house has always held. Not the version our mother told us as children, and not the version the village has invented since. The real story. The one we've spent these weeks uncovering."

Camille picked up her coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into her hands. From where she sat, she could see through the window to the orchard where she had played as a girl, where their father had taught her to climb trees, where the letters had been hidden in the locked box for years before Camille found them. The house held all of it—the joy and the grief, the secrets and the love that had survived despite them.

"A museum," she repeated, testing the word. "We'd need to restore the place. Properly. Not just paint the shutters and call it done."

"We can do that." Inès's voice quickened. "I've already looked into it. The heritage commission has grants for properties with historical significance. And this house has more than significance—it has a story that touches the whole region. The art ring. The fake masterpieces that went through Normandy. The family caught in the middle of it."

Élodie was quiet, her eyes fixed on the box of letters. When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than Camille had heard it in weeks.

"Papa's journal is still in police custody. The photographs we took aren't enough to tell the whole story. If we're going to do this properly—if we're going to tell the truth—we need access to everything."

"Robert said he'd testify," Camille said. "The police will need his testimony to build the case against the dealer's network. And the trial will be public. The documents will become evidence. We can request copies for the museum records."

"Or we could write the story ourselves," Inès said. "The newspaper piece we planned. We could expand it. Make it a proper account, verified with what we know, published alongside the museum opening. We control the narrative that way. We tell the truth as we experienced it."

Camille set down her cup and looked at her sisters. For so long, they had been strangers to each other, separated by their mother's secrets and their own carefully constructed walls. Now, in the wreckage of everything they had believed, they were finding their way back to each other. The house was the anchor. It had always been the anchor.

"I'll sell my apartment in Paris," Camille said.

Inès's eyebrows shot up. "Your practice—"

"I'll commute. Plenty of lawyers work from the country now. And the family firm has handled acquisitions before—I can make it work." She looked around the salon, at the faded wallpaper and the scuffed floors, and felt something loosen in her chest. "This is where we need to be. Not just for the museum. For us."

Élodie had been silent throughout, her hands folded in her lap. Now she looked up, and Camille saw something in her eyes that she couldn't quite name. It took her a moment to place it: guilt.

"I have to tell you something," Élodie said. "I was going to wait until the house was settled. But you're making plans, and I can't let you plan around me."

Camille felt her stomach tighten. "What is it?"

"The gallery in New York—the one that offered me the exhibit curator position before all of this." Élodie paused, pressing her lips together. "They called again yesterday. They're still holding the position. They want me to start in the autumn."

Inès's face went still. "You're leaving."

"I was going to say no." Élodie's voice cracked. "After everything that's happened, I thought I couldn't go. I thought it would be like running away, the way Papa did. But the more I think about it—" She stopped, her breath catching.

"What?" Camille asked gently.

"The house has been a prison for Mama," Élodie said. "She stayed here, surrounded by what she and Papa had built, and she never left. She never moved forward. She only looked back." She met Camille's eyes. "I don't want that for myself. I want to carry the truth of what happened here with me. I want to honor it. But I can't stay in Normandy forever. I thought I could. But I'm not built to be still."

The words settled over the room. Camille felt a flash of old anger prickling at her—her instinct to hold on, to keep everyone close, to control the shape of the family. But then she breathed, and the anger loosened. She looked at her sister, who was watching her with fear and hope in equal measure.

"When would you leave?" Camille asked.

"After the house is settled." Élodie's voice steadied. "I'll stay through the restoration. I want to be here for the opening of the museum. I want to see it happen. But then—" She trailed off.

"Then you go," Inès said.

The flatness in Inès's voice made Camille wince. Inès had always been the one who struggled most with change. She had stayed in Le Havre, close to home, while the other two had scattered across the country and the world. Now the house was going to be something new, and the sisters would scatter again before it was even finished.

"New York isn't the end of the world," Camille said carefully. "We'll have the museum. We'll have a reason to come back. And you'll always have a reason to return."

Élodie's eyes glistened. "You're not angry?"

Camille reached across the table and took her sister's hand. "I'm not angry. I'm proud of you. You're making a choice for yourself—not out of fear, but out of hope. That's not running away. That's running toward."

Inès was quiet for a long moment. Then she let out a slow exhale. "We're going to need someone with museum experience anyway. Maybe you can consult from New York. Video calls, that sort of thing."

Élodie laughed, a watery sound that broke the tension. "I can do that. I can absolutely do that."

Camille stood and walked to the window, looking out at the tangled garden. The roses were still there, hidden beneath the weeds. They would need pruning. The whole property needed work—the roof had a leak in the east wing, the wiring was from the 1950s, and the kitchen would need updating if they wanted to host visitors. But the bones were good. The house had stood for nearly two centuries. It could stand for a while longer.

"Let's make a plan," she said, turning back to her sisters. "We have until autumn before Élodie leaves. That gives us the summer. We'll start with the ground floor—the salon, the study, the kitchen. We'll turn Mama's studio into the main exhibition space. Papa's letters, the photographs, the documents Robert gave us."

"The journal," Élodie added. "We'll request the photographs from the police. We'll display the final entry."

"Yes." Camille nodded. "We'll display it all. The truth of who they were—not just the secrets, but the love that held through them."

Inès stood and joined her at the window. "It's going to be a lot of work."

"It was always going to be a lot of work," Camille said. "We were never going to be able to just sell the house and walk away. This place is part of us. It always has been."

Élodie came to stand on her other side. The three of them looked out at the garden together, the morning light falling across the tangled roses and the old stone walls and the path that led down to the village.

"We should start making a list," Élodie said.

"Paint first," Inès said. "Then the floors. Then we tackle the exhibition."

"Contractors," Camille added. "We'll need someone to fix the roof before the autumn rains."

"And we'll need to tell the village what we're doing," Élodie said. "Put a notice in the paper. Ask for stories. Their memories of Mama and Papa—the good ones, the complicated ones. We build the museum together."

Camille felt her eyes prickle with tears she didn't let fall. She thought of her mother, standing in this same spot, looking out at the same garden. She thought of her father, writing his final entry in the journal, telling a truth he had never been able to say aloud. And she thought of herself, the eldest daughter who had built her life on control and certainty, learning to let go of both.

"Together," she repeated.

The word felt like the beginning of something.

"That's not so bad, is it?" Élodie asked.

"No." Inès smiled faintly. "Not bad at all."

They stood there a moment longer, the three of them side by side, watching the sun rise higher over the orchard. Inside the house, the coffee was growing cold, and the box of letters sat unopened on the table. There was work to do—so much work. The roof, the floors, the story they had to tell. But for the first time in weeks, the weight of it felt bearable.

Because they were together, and the house was still standing, and the truth was finally theirs to keep.