Read Chapter 3: The First Vine Walk

The morning came up gray over the valley, the kind of low sky that pressed against the hills and made the vines look darker than they were. Camille stood at the edge of the first parcel, her boots sinking slightly into the clay-and-gravel soil. The rows stretched away from her in long, disciplined lines, though the discipline was failing. Leaves curled at the edges, yellowing too early. The clusters hung thin, berries pinched and uneven.

She heard Jean-Marc before she saw him—the steady crunch of his steps on the packed earth, the wheeze of his breath. He emerged from between two rows, a pruning knife in his hand that he didn't seem to be using for anything. His face was a map of forty years in this vineyard, deep lines around eyes that hadn't lost their sharpness.

"Mademoiselle Camille," he said. Not a question. He'd known she was coming.

"Jean-Marc." She touched the nearest leaf, running her thumb along its edge. "The mildew hit hard."

"It hit everything that could be hit." He stopped beside her, looking out at the rows with the particular weariness of a man who had watched a season die before his eyes. "We sprayed. Three times in June. But the rain—" He shrugged, a gesture that said *what can you do against God and the Gironde*. "And then the heat came late and fast. The berries didn't have time."

"How much did we lose?"

"Seventy percent. Maybe more on the eastern slope."

Camille did the math in her head and felt it land like a stone in her stomach. A harvest like that wouldn't pay for the harvest itself—the pickers, the sorting tables, the fuel. She'd known it was bad from the numbers her father had left scattered in his office, but knowing and standing in it were different things.

"Show me the rest," she said.

They walked. Jean-Marc led her along the rows, pointing out the damage with the knife's blade—here a parcel of Cabernet Sauvignon that had simply given up, its leaves brown and crisp; there a block of Merlot where the botrytis had taken hold in the damp and spread like a rumor. Camille listened, asked questions, bent to examine the soil. It was dry now, cracked at the surface, but she could feel the clay beneath—heavy, waterlogged from the spring, slow to release.

"The drainage ditches," she said, stopping at the edge of a parcel where water had clearly pooled for days. "They're clogged."

Jean-Marc followed her gaze. "Your father—" He stopped, corrected himself. "Jean-Pierre, he meant to have them cleared before the spring rains. But then the negotiations with the bank took all his time, and—"

"And then he died." Camille said it flat. She'd learned to say it flat.

"Yes." Jean-Marc was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry, mademoiselle. He was a good man. A good wine man."

"He was." She didn't know what else to say. The grief was there, but she'd packed it away in a box she wasn't ready to open. Right now, the vineyard needed her hands, not her tears.

They continued through a parcel of old vines, some of them nearly a century old, their trunks twisted and gnarled like arthritic fingers. Camille stopped to look at one, running her hand along the bark. These were the ancestors, the ones that had survived phylloxera's great die-off, that had given the estate its character through generations. If they lost these—

"I have something to show you," Jean-Marc said.

He led her down the hill toward the small stone shed at the edge of the property, the one used for storing extra equipment. But instead of going in, he stopped at a bench by the shed's wall—a flat slab of limestone that had been there so long the rain had worn it smooth. He pulled out his phone, an old thing with a cracked screen, and held it out to her.

"This was in Jean-Pierre's jacket. The one he was wearing when—" He swallowed. "When the ambulance came. I found it in his pocket when they asked me to bring his clothes from the hospital."

Camille took the phone. It was her father's, she recognized it—the dented corner where he'd dropped it on the cellar steps, the worn case with the faded image of the château on the back. She pressed the button. The screen lit up, showing his lock screen photo: the vineyard at sunset, taken from the ridge where the best view was.

"He never set a passcode," Jean-Marc said. "He said he trusted everyone. And he had nothing to hide."

*Everyone has something to hide,* Camille thought, but she didn't say it. She swiped up and went to messages.

There were the usual things—texts from Bernard about accountant meetings, from a distributor in London, from her own number, messages she'd sent over the years that she'd never known he'd kept. She scrolled past them, her thumb hesitating over a thread from someone named P. Vasseur. Three months ago. She opened it.

*Jean-Pierre, I have been patient, which is my failing. The 500,000 euros is due in full on November 15. My lawyers are instructed. I will not extend again. — P.V.*

Camille read it twice. The date was September 2, two weeks before her father died. November 15. That gave her—she counted the months on her fingers—six weeks. Six weeks to find half a million euros she didn't have.

"What is it?" Jean-Marc asked, watching her face.

She held up the phone. "Who is P. Vasseur?"

Jean-Marc's jaw tightened. "Philippe. He's a négociant—buys and sells wine in bulk. Your father did business with him for years. Good business, mostly. But then—" He shook his head. "Your father took a loan against the harvest two years ago. A bad harvest, but he thought he could cover it with the next year's. And then that harvest was bad too. And this one—" He spread his hands, indicating the dead and dying vines around them.

"The estate is collateral."

"The estate is the collateral, yes."

Camille pocketed the phone without thinking, then stopped. It wasn't hers. It was evidence, maybe. She didn't know for what. She left it in her pocket anyway.

"Why didn't he tell me?" she said, more to herself than to Jean-Marc.

"He was ashamed, I think." The old man looked away, toward the ridge where the sun was trying to break through the cloud cover. "He was so proud of this place. His family's place. He didn't want you to know he'd been failing."

Camille turned the phone over in her hands. November 15. Six weeks. A debt that was more than the estate could possibly be worth in its current state. Her uncles' plan to sell suddenly made a terrible kind of sense. They weren't just greedy—they were desperate. Or at least they knew something she hadn't, until now.

"There is something else," Jean-Marc said. He hesitated, clearly weighing his words. "A man came to the vineyard yesterday."

"A man."

"He said he was a consultant. Grape-growing consultant. He had papers, a letter from your father, said he'd been hired to assess the vines before harvest." Jean-Marc shook his head. "But Jean-Pierre never told me about any consultant. We worked together forty years. He told me everything."

"Do you know his name?"

"Lucas something. Fontaine. Tall, dark hair, city hands." Jean-Marc said it with the dismissiveness of a man who judged people by their palms. "He's staying at the inn in the village. He wants to walk the property tomorrow. Meet the owner, he said."

Camille looked at the vineyard, at the rows of struggling vines stretching toward the cloudy sky. Her father's phone felt heavy in her pocket. 500,000 euros. A consultant she'd never heard of, claiming a letter from a dead man. Her uncles on the other side of a forged will. And somewhere in a padlocked cellar, a secret her mother had wanted her to find.

"Jean-Marc," she said, "when you worked with my father, did he mention anything about my mother's family? Anything about something hidden in the cellars?"

Jean-Marc's face changed. It was quick, barely a flicker, but she saw it—a closing, a retreat behind forty years of loyalty. "Your father and I worked the vines, mademoiselle. We didn't talk about that."

*That.* What was *that*?

She let it go. For now. "I need to see the cellar," she said.

He glanced at her, then at the château sitting on its rise, its lines elegant even in decrepitude. "Your uncle took the key."

"He took a key," Camille said. "The cellar was built in 1789. I doubt every key has survived to the present day. But that door wasn't original."

Jean-Marc let out a low, dry laugh. It was the first time she'd heard him laugh, and it told her something about what he'd thought of her before that moment. "No," he said. "The old lock was rusted out. Your father replaced it himself. The new one, though—that was all Laurent."

"Then my father's lock is somewhere."

"Probably in his office. Drawer in the desk. He was a man who kept things." Jean-Marc paused. "He kept a lot of things."

Camille looked toward the château. November 15 was coming, the harvest was gone, and her uncles were moving fast. But her father had planned for this—she was sure of it. The note from her mother, the cellar, the third cask. He had known he was dying, or had suspected it.

*He kept a lot of things.*

And she was going to find every one of them.