Read Chapter 17: The Market Visit

The cold bit through Camille’s wool coat as she stepped out of the van. Rungis was a city of its own at 5 a.m., vast and humming under sodium lights, forklifts threading between towers of crates, the air thick with the smell of wet earth and diesel and something faintly sweet. She pulled her scarf tighter and watched Étienne emerge from the driver’s side, rubbing his hands together, his breath curling in a white plume.

“You look like you’ve never seen a vegetable before,” he said, catching her expression.

“I’ve seen plenty. Just not this many,” she said. “And not at this hour.”

He grinned — actually grinned — and gestured for her to follow. “Then let me show you where food is born.”

They walked through the narrow lanes between stalls, past pyramids of tomatoes still on the vine, crates of artichokes the size of her fist, mountains of citrus that blazed orange and yellow under the harsh lights. Vendors shouted prices in a rhythm that felt almost musical. Étienne moved through it like a man returning to a language he’d grown up speaking. He greeted half the people by name, exchanged quick jokes, stopped to squeeze a peach and nod approvingly.

Camille hung back, watching. This was not the Etienne who argued with her across the pass, his arms crossed and jaw set. This was someone else entirely, someone who belonged to a world of dirt and early mornings and honest work.

“Here,” he said, pulling her toward a stall at the end of a narrow aisle. A man with a thick beard and a stained apron was unloading crates of knobby roots. “Camille, meet Marc. Marc, this is the financier who’s trying to save my restaurant.”

Marc laughed, a deep rumbling sound. “So you’re the one who’s been giving this fool a hard time. About time someone did.” He wiped his hand on his apron and offered it to her. She shook it. His grip was callused, warm.

“I’m not trying to give him a hard time,” she said. “I’m trying to keep him from going under.”

Marc’s eyes flicked to Étienne, then back to her. “Same thing, in his book.” He gestured at the crates. “You want the good stuff, I’ve got it. But you came on a good day. I’ve got something special.”

He pulled open a burlap sack and lifted out a celeriac the size of a small bowling ball, its gnarly surface caked with dirt. He held it up like a trophy.

“Forgotten vegetable,” he said. “Valérie thought I was crazy for growing these. Says nobody wants the ugly ones. But you know what? They taste better. They’ve got more character.”

Étienne made a face. “Celeriac. Remoulade. My grandmother’s recipe. Every bistro in Paris does it, and every one does it wrong.”

“Which is why you should do it right,” Marc said, dropping the celeriac into Étienne’s hands. “Take it. First one’s free. The next hundred will cost you, but this one, I’m giving you because I believe in second chances.”

Étienne turned the root over in his hands, frowning at it. Camille watched the conflict play across his face — the pride, the skepticism, the small crack of curiosity underneath.

“We’re not putting remoulade on the menu,” he said, but his voice had lost its edge.

“I didn’t say remoulade,” Camille said. “He said you should do it right. So what would you do with it, if you weren’t thinking like your grandmother?”

He looked at her, and something shifted in his expression. She’d seen that look before in negotiation rooms, in the moment when someone stopped defending their position and started considering the possibility of another one.

“I’d roast it,” he said slowly. “With honey and thyme. Serve it as a puree under something crisp. Maybe apple. Something that cuts through the earthiness.”

“See?” Marc grinned, slapping Étienne on the shoulder. “You’re not so old you can’t learn new tricks, old friend.”

They bought three more celeriac, along with a crate of early apples, young carrots with their greens still attached, and a bundle of herbs that Étienne sniffed with genuine pleasure. Marc threw in a jar of honey from his bees and refused to take payment for it. Camille tried to hand him the bills, but he waved her off.

“You do good by this one, you hear?” he said to her. “He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s our pain in the ass. And this place of his, it matters. To more people than you might think.”

Camille stood still at that, the bills dangling from her fingers. She thought of the threats. The crossed-out fork on the napkin. The photograph. Marc had no idea what he was asking her to do.

“I’m trying,” she said.

Étienne caught her eye and held her gaze for a moment, long enough that she felt the weight in it.

They moved on, deeper into the market, Étienne pointing out things she’d never noticed — the way to tell if a fish is fresh by the clarity of its eyes, how to judge a cheese by the give of its rind, why the best strawberries never make it to the supermarkets because they’re too fragile to travel. Up close, he grew animated, almost giddy, and his passion had a way of becoming irresistible.

At a poultry stall, he spent ten minutes talking to the butcher about the difference between breeds, then turned to her and said, half-embarrassed: “I used to come here with my father. He’d wake me up at 3 in the morning, and I’d complain the whole way, and then once we got here I’d forget I was tired. He knew everybody. He said a chef’s best skill isn’t cooking — it’s knowing where to find the best ingredients for the best price, and who to trust.”

Camille thought of her own father. The restaurant in Lyon that had bled money for years, then collapsed under the weight of debts and bad decisions. He’d never taken her to a market. He’d just complained about the cost of everything, then gone to work, then come home and stared at the ceiling.

“I never got that,” she said. “The trust part. My father trusted nobody, and nobody trusted him.”

Étienne was quiet for a moment. “Then you really are starting from scratch,” he said. “That’s harder than rebuilding a kitchen.”

She nodded. It was.

By the time they loaded the van, the sky was beginning to pale, the floodlights washing out against the first hint of morning. Camille checked her phone. A message. She glanced at it, and her stomach tightened.

*You still think you’re opening a new chapter. Every story ends the same way.*

She put the phone away without responding. Étienne was loading crates with his back to her, oblivious.

“Camille? You coming?” He reached for the next crate, then noticed her expression. “What is it?”

She hesitated. Her promise to him — no more lies. But this wasn’t a lie. It was an omission. He’d never demanded she share every message, every moment of fear.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just sleep deprivation.”

He studied her for a beat too long, then nodded, turning back to the van. She followed him, feeling the cold phone weigh heavy in her pocket. Marc’s blessing, the morning’s warmth, the easy rhythm of working beside Étienne — it all felt real, and that was exactly what made it dangerous. The threats would not stop because she was having a good morning.

She climbed into the passenger seat as Étienne turned the engine over and the van hummed to life. The market threw its last shadows across the dashboard.

“The celeriac thing,” she said. “You actually meant it? Or were you just humoring Marc?”

Étienne pulled out of the parking space and glanced at her. The first light of morning caught his face, softening the hard angles she’d gotten used to.

“I meant it,” he said. “Maybe that’s a problem. You’re getting to me, Laurent. That’s dangerous.”

She almost smiled. Almost. But her hand drifted to her pocket, where the phone still burned with the latest threat, and she let the moment pass.