Read Chapter 30: The Old Flame

The journalist’s name was Estelle Marchand, and she found Camille through the drone footage that had gone viral—the same footage that had sprung Yann from the holding cell. She’d messaged Camille on a burner app the way a spy might, all caution and urgency, and now they sat across from each other at a café in Quimper, the kind with mismatched chairs and a zinc counter that had seen a century of secrets.

Estelle was younger than Camille expected, maybe twenty-six, with the restless energy of someone who slept with one eye open. She pushed a tape recorder across the table but didn’t turn it on.

“I need you to understand something before we start,” Estelle said. “I’ve been chasing the Keravel story for six months. I’ve got sources inside the company who are too scared to go on record. Your footage—that was the first crack in the dam.”

Camille wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. Her knuckles were still scraped from the yacht. “So you want an interview.”

“An exclusive. The whole story. The plant, the sinkhole, the arrest.” Estelle leaned forward. “You were there. You saw what they buried. And the way you went undercover as a developer—that’s the kind of detail that makes people pay attention. It makes them *care*.”

Care. That was the word Camille had been circling for weeks. She cared about the bay. She cared about Yann. She cared about the fact that her father had spent his savings to keep her Paris apartment afloat while she’d been busy resenting him for leaving.

“If it helps the case,” Camille said slowly, “if it keeps pressure on Keravel, then yes. I’ll do it.”

Estelle’s smile was quick and sharp. “There’s just one thing I need to verify first. Background color. You’re partnered with Yann Kernec on the conservatory project, right?”

“Co-leader,” Camille corrected. “He asked me yesterday.”

“Right.” Estelle glanced at her notebook, then back at Camille. “And how well do you know him? Personally, I mean.”

Camille’s stomach tightened. “Well enough. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”

“Did you know he’s married?”

The words landed like a slap. Camille blinked. “What?”

“His wife—Marie Kernec, née Guillou—lives in Brest. They’ve been married eight years. Separated for two, according to what I could find, but legally still married.” Estelle studied her face with the detached precision of a surgeon. “You didn’t know.”

“We’re not—that’s not—” Camille stopped. Her pulse hammered in her ears, drowning out the café noise. “We’re partners. Business partners. His marriage isn’t any of my business.”

“I’m not asking for a scandal piece,” Estelle said, and her voice was softer now. “But if I’m writing about the two of you rebuilding the marine sanctuary, I need the facts straight. What happens when the article comes out and someone asks him about his wife? He needs to be prepared.”

Camille pushed her chair back. “I need to go.”

“I’ll email you the full draft before I publish,” Estelle called after her. “You have forty-eight hours to review.”

The drive back to the coast was a blur of grey sky and wet asphalt. Camille’s hands shook on the wheel. Married. He was married. He’d knelt in the sand and asked her to lead a project with him, and he hadn’t mentioned a wife.

She found him on the deck of the houseboat, sanding a plank of teak. He looked up with that easy smile she’d grown to trust, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“You’re back early,” he said. “How was the interview?”

Camille stopped at the edge of the gangplank. The tide was low, and the boat sat in a cradle of mud and rock. Seaweed smelled thick in the air.

“When were you going to tell me about Marie?”

Yann’s hand froze on the sandpaper. The smile didn’t so much fall as collapse inward. He set the tool down slowly.

“Who told you?”

“A journalist. One who’s about to write an article about our project.” Camille crossed her arms. “She asked how well I knew you, and I said since we were kids. Apparently that was generous.”

“Camille, listen to me.” He stood up, wiping his hands on his thighs. “Marie and I separated two years ago. We’ve been living separate lives since then. She’s in Brest with her own apartment, her own career. We haven’t shared a home in almost twenty months.”

“Then why didn’t you finalize the divorce?”

Yann ran a hand through his hair, wind-whipped and messy. “Because we got married young, and Marie was the one who asked for the separation. I signed the papers she sent, but she never filed them with the court. It’s been hanging in limbo. I didn’t want to push her—she’s been through a lot, her father died last year, and the legal stuff just kept getting postponed.”

“That’s a lot of excuses,” Camille said quietly.

“It’s not an excuse, it’s the truth.” He took a step toward her. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to scare you off. We were just getting somewhere. You were finally connecting with your father, with this place, with me. I thought if you knew I was still technically married, you’d bolt. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

His words hung in the salt air. Camille thought about all the mornings she’d woken on his boat. All the times she’d let herself imagine a future with him.

“It’s not that you’re married,” she said. “It’s that you didn’t trust me with the truth.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“You were trying to protect yourself.” She turned and walked back up the gangplank. “Don’t follow me.”

She drove to her father’s cottage at Anse du Corbeau without thinking. The key turned in the lock easier than she expected, and the door swung open to a musty smell of dust and old wood. She’d only seen the cottage once, briefly, the day her father gave her the key. Now she dropped her bag by the door and sank onto the narrow bed in the corner, staring at the cracked ceiling.

Her mother had died here. Thomas had almost let it happen. He was supposed to tell her the full story today, and instead she’d chased a different truth and found a lie.

Her phone buzzed. Yann. She let it ring out. A second buzz. Estelle, probably. She turned the phone face down.

She looked around the cottage—her cottage now, she supposed. A hearth, a window overlooking the cove, a crooked shelf with a stack of old books. Thirty-four years old, and she had no job, no apartment in Paris worth returning to, no clear future. Just a houseboat she’d planned to sell and a project she now shared with a man who couldn’t be honest.

Her father’s voice came to her from the other day, gravelly with years of words unsaid. *You fix what you can fix, Camille. And you let go of what you can’t.*

She pressed her palm to the window glass, cold against her skin. The tide was coming in, rolling over the rocks with a sound like breath. Somewhere out there, Yann was on his boat with his secrets and his unfinished paperwork. She could leave. Go back to Paris, let the city swallow her up again. Or she could stay and make him tell her everything, drag the truth into the light the way she’d dragged Keravel’s crimes into the open.

In her pocket, her phone buzzed again. This time she flipped it over.

Not Yann. Not Estelle.

*Le Bozec.*

The message read: *You need to know about the harbor master. He wasn’t just complicit. He’s the reason Marie never filed the divorce papers.*

Camille read it three times. The harbor master. The man who’d resigned after Perrot’s arrest. The man who had supposedly been part of Keravel’s web.

What did he have to do with Yann’s marriage?

She typed back one word: *Why.*

The reply came quick, almost eager: *Because she’s his daughter. And he’s been paid to keep the marriage intact. Meet me at the chapel in Sainte-Marine. Midnight.*

Camille looked at the cottage walls, the low ceiling, the dark water beyond the glass. She had a choice—walk away or dig deeper. The burned-out woman who’d come to Brittany to sell a houseboat would have walked.

But that woman was gone.

She typed a single word: *There.*

And then she sat in the dark cottage, waiting for midnight.