Read Chapter 20: The Missing Person's Trail

The text came in as Camille was racking the juice into a second demijohn, the cellar's cool air sharp with the smell of fermenting grapes. She wiped her hands on her apron and read Lucas's message twice before the words sank in.

*Found a trace of her. Small village called Montalcino, Italy. A woman matching your mother's description lived there under the name Claire Martin until two years ago. Left a forwarding address to a local post office box. I'm sending you the details. Go.*

Camille stared at the screen. Her mother had been alive. Not dead, as her father had always implied, but alive and hiding in a Tuscan hill town, living under a borrowed name. Two years ago she'd left—or moved again, or died, or disappeared once more. The possibilities churned in Camille's chest like the yeast working in the wine beside her.

She called Lucas, but it went to voicemail. Of course. He was still in Paris, digging through archives, probably in some basement with no signal. She texted him back: *I'm going.* Then she pulled off her apron and climbed the cellar stairs.

Jean-Marc was in the château's main office, sorting through a stack of harvest records he didn't understand and never would. He looked up when she entered, his soft face already pinched with worry.

"I need to leave," Camille said. "Two days, maybe three. Something came up."

"Leave? Camille, the wine is fermenting. Bernard is circling the property with his lawyers. We're in the middle of—"

"I know what we're in the middle of." She set her phone on the desk and pulled up the text. "Lucas found a lead on my mother. In Italy. I have to go."

Jean-Marc's mouth opened and closed. He wanted to argue; she could see the words forming behind his eyes. But he also knew what her mother meant to her. Everyone in the château knew the story—the brilliant winemaker who had vanished when Camille was nine, leaving behind a daughter who'd spent two decades wondering if she'd been abandoned or protected.

"How long?" he asked finally.

"Three days max. You monitor the cellar temperature daily. The demijohns need to be checked twice a day, and don't touch the valves unless you see—"

"I know how to check a demijohn, Camille." A flicker of wounded pride crossed his face. "I've been making wine here longer than you've been alive. I may not have your pedigree, but I'm not incompetent."

She softened. "I know. I'm sorry. I just—this matters."

"Everything matters right now." He nodded toward the window, where the October light was fading over the hidden plot's distant treeline. "Bernard is waiting for a moment of weakness. You walking away gives him one."

"Bernard is waiting for a chance to destroy those vines. He already had it and failed. The grapes are harvested, Jean-Marc. The wine is in the cellar. There's nothing left for him to burn except the empty trellises." She grabbed her coat from the hook by the door. "Watch the cellar. Don't let anyone in without me. Not Bernard, not the police, not the priest."

"The priest?"

"Especially the priest."

The drive to the airport took ninety minutes. Camille booked the first available flight to Florence on her phone while waiting at a red light, then a train from Florence to the small station outside Montalcino. She didn't tell anyone else about Lucas's message. The fewer people who knew, the safer. Her uncles had spies everywhere—the Libourne post office, apparently, had been crawling with them.

The flight was smooth and fast, the train ride a blur of rolling green hills and vineyard rows that reminded her painfully of home. When she finally stepped onto the platform in Montalcino, the air was cooler and smelled of woodsmoke and drying leaves. She pulled up the address Lucas had sent and asked a local shopkeeper for directions.

The post office was a small stone building on a narrow side street, its interior dim and cluttered with packages and notices. A woman with gray-streaked hair looked up from behind the counter when Camille entered.

"I'm looking for a box registered under the name Claire Martin," Camille said in her careful Italian.

The woman's eyes flickered. "You are family?"

"Her daughter."

A long pause. Then the woman reached beneath the counter and produced a thick cream envelope, sealed with wax the color of old blood. She set it on the counter between them and slid it forward without a word.

Camille's hands trembled as she picked it up. Her mother's name was not on the outside, but her own was, written in a handwriting she remembered from birthday cards and hurried notes tucked into lunch boxes: *Camille.*

"Thank you," she managed.

The woman nodded slowly. "She said you would come. She said it would take you thirty years, but you would come."

Camille's throat closed. She clutched the envelope and walked out of the post office, back into the cool Italian afternoon. She found a bench overlooking the valley—rows of Brunello vines rolling toward the horizon, a landscape both foreign and familiar—and sat down.

The envelope was heavy. She turned it over in her hands, feeling the weight of decades inside, then broke the seal with her thumb.

Inside was a letter, handwritten on thin, yellowed paper that felt like it had been folded and unfolded many times. The first line stopped her heart.

*My dearest Camille,*

*If you are reading this, you have found the truth about the 1982 vintage. Or you are close to it. Either way, it is time you knew why I left.*

Camille read the first paragraph twice, then a third, the words blurring as the truth settled over her like a heavy vine laid across her shoulders.

Her mother had not abandoned her.

Her mother had protected her.