Read Chapter 24: The Foreman's Fate

The man standing in the doorway of the domaine’s kitchen was thin as a scythe, his face cracked leather from sun and wind, and he smelled of garlic and stale tobacco. Pierre introduced him as Miguel Santana, a shepherd from the high passes beyond the Spanish border.

Élise looked from Pierre to the stranger, then to Julien, who had come in from the cellar with wine stains on his sleeves. The morning light through the shutters carved deep shadows into the man’s face.

“Tell her,” Pierre said.

Miguel removed his worn hat and turned it in his hands. “Madame, I knew your uncle. André Marchand. I worked for him, years ago, when he bought sheep from my father.”

Élise’s breath caught. “My uncle is dead. He died in a landslide in the Pyrenees.”

Miguel shook his head slowly. “No, madame. I saw him. In Barcelona. Two weeks ago. He was sitting in a café on the Rambla, drinking coffee like a man with nowhere to be. I would not forget that face. He paid me well once, when he did not have to.”

Silence pressed against the room. Julien stepped forward, his voice low and careful. “You’re certain.”

“I am certain, monsieur. I came with Pierre because I owed André a debt of honesty. When I heard he was presumed dead, I knew I had to speak.”

Élise’s fingers found the edge of the wooden table, steadying herself. Her mind raced through everything—Aunt Joséphine’s ledger, Delambre’s blackmail, December’s deadline—and now this. An uncle who was not dead. A man who had vanished and left her the vineyard, or had he left it at all?

“Why would he hide?” she asked, more to herself than to them.

Miguel shrugged. “I did not ask. But he looked well. Not like a man in trouble. He looked like a man who chose to disappear.” He glanced at Julien, then back at Élise. “I have a cousin who is a barber in Barcelona. He says an old Frenchman comes in twice a month, every month. He passes the café at noon on Thursdays. Always alone.”

After Pierre led Miguel to the guest room for rest and a meal, Élise and Julien stood in the cellar among the silent barrels of fermenting wine. The air was thick with the sweet, yeasty scent of the old-vine must, still working its slow transformation.

“I thought you should know,” Julien said quietly, his hand brushing hers. “What Miguel said—it means something.”

“It means my uncle abandoned me to a vineyard he knew was drowning in debt,” Élise said, her voice bitter. “It means he left me a trap, and he’s drinking coffee in Barcelona while I fight off the bank.”

Julien was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Or it means he left Madrid for a reason. Someone forced him out. And whoever did that might still be watching.”

She looked at him. There was something in his tone she couldn’t place—less like curiosity, more like caution. “What do you know, Julien?”

He held her gaze but said nothing.

That afternoon, they drove to Arles and found a private investigator in an office above a tobacconist’s shop. The man, a former gendarme named Besson, listened without expression as Élise explained the situation. When she finished, he pulled a notepad from his drawer and asked for dates, names, locations.

“If your uncle is alive and in Barcelona, I can find him,” Besson said. “These things take time. Money, too.”

Élise wrote him a check from the small reserves she’d guarded against the bank. Julien watched but did not protest.

They returned to the domaine as dusk settled over the valley, the cypress trees turning to black silhouettes against a sky of gold and violet. Élise stood on the terrace, watching the light fade, her mind churning. Julien came up behind her, his hand settling on her shoulder.

“You think I’m hiding something,” he said.

She turned to face him. “I know you are. You’ve been different since Miguel spoke.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. For a long moment, he simply looked at her, and she saw the war in his eyes—the same war she felt in herself, between the trust they were building and the secrets they each carried.

The postcard arrived three days later, slid beneath the domaine’s front door in the dead of night. It was a picture of Barcelona’s cathedral, the towers stretching toward a bright blue sky. On the reverse, a single line in handwriting Élise recognized from the ledger’s margins: a neat, sloping script that had transcribed debts and names with cold precision.

*I am well. Do not look for me.*

The postmark was stamped that week. Barcelona.

Élise stared at the postcard until the words blurred. He was alive. André was alive, and he knew she was looking. The postcard wasn’t a reassurance—it was a warning.

She found Julien in the barrel room, racking the old-vine wine into smaller vessels with quiet precision. He looked up as she entered, and she saw the postcard in her hand register in his eyes. His hands stopped moving.

“He knows,” she said. “He’s out there, and he knows.”

Julien set down the siphon tube and wiped his hands on a cloth. He took the postcard from her, read it, and turned it over as if looking for more. When he looked back at her, his face was unreadable.

“I have to go to Barcelona,” she said.

“No.” The word was too sharp, too fast. He softened. “Not yet. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”

“Then what do you know, Julien?” Her voice rose. “You’ve been holding something back since that man spoke. I can feel it. Tell me what you’ve done.”

The words hung between them like the dust motes drifting in the cellar light. Julien’s jaw tightened. He looked at the barrels, at the postcard, at the woman who had crossed a country and a world to stand in his cellar.

“André didn’t disappear because of the landslide,” he said slowly. “He disappeared because of me.”