LE PÈLERIN, MINERVE—WEDNESDAY EVENING
It was after seven; dusk was falling. Lia gathered her hair into a low ponytail and twisted it into a chignon. She decided on a sleeveless gray chiffon blouse that draped low, crossing loosely in front to tie on one side, and a pair of black jersey wide-legged pants. Her feet were crisscrossed by the thin black leather straps of low sandals.
After tenting foil over the roast chicken, she took a cool glass of Lirac Blanc to the terrace. Clouds had pushed in from the sea and lingered in the southeast, where they grew into shifting towers of black and gold. To the north, the light was as clear and bright as spun glass. The breeze sharpened, and the air held the musk of impending rain.
Lia heard the soft thump of a car door shutting and walked inside, pausing to light the candles on the table. The doorbell chimed low and resonant. Inhaling deeply, she checked her reflection in the mirror above the hall table, tried to still her heart and her hands, and opened the door.
“Lia, hello.” He stood on the doorstep, the picture of elegance in a sky-blue button-down, caramel corduroys, and a dark blue sweater draped loosely across his shoulders.
“Lucas. This is a surprise. What are you doing here?”
“I was shooting some video outside Caunes-Minervois and thought I’d see if you were home.” His excuse rolled out as finely woven as his sweater. “I should have called first. But it occurred to me just as I was passing Minerve to stop in.”
“How did you know where I live?”
“You told me the cottage was Le Pèlerin.” He pointed to the brass plaque attached to the stone wall.
Did I? Lia couldn’t recall telling him anything other than she was renting a house in Minerve.
“I know it’s last minute, but would you care to have a drink? Or dinner? The new bistro in the village is getting great reviews.”
“Lucas, I’m sorry, I’m expecting someone.” The oven timer sounded. She glanced inside. “Just a moment.” Lia dashed to silence the chiming alarm and opened the oven door to see that the white flesh of the potatoes had crisped to a golden brown. She switched off the heat. When she turned back, he stood in the kitchen threshold.
She watched as Lucas took in the place settings, the candles, and the centerpiece of tulips. His body seemed to ripple; his irises deepened to seal black.
“Were you really just in the neighborhood?” Lia asked.
“You caught me,” he said, opening his hands in concession. “I wasn’t far, within a respectable detour distance. But yes, I went out of my way to see you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated with a smile, as if the answer were obvious. “Because we’re creative partners, and I want to know you better. Because I was hoping to take you to dinner.”
“Even though I’ve told you I’m not ready to see anyone?” The moment the words fell out of her mouth, she wished for a rewind button.
“Apparently, you’ve changed your mind.” He nodded to the waiting table.
“You’re assuming this dinner is a date.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation, Lia.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“But I’m here.” Lucas waved a dismissive hand toward the table. “He isn’t.”
She burst out laughing. “Uncle,” she cried in English.
He gave her a puzzled look. “Oncle?”
“It’s just an expression,” she continued in French. Lucas moved into the kitchen to stand beside her. “It means, ‘Enough, you win.’ You should have been a lawyer, Lucas. You have the perfect reply for everything.”
The discreet aroma of his cologne exuded an ancient scent of vetiver and sandalwood. Lia pushed away the sudden, unbidden image of her body pressing into his, her face buried in his neck. The room fell into shadow as the sun dropped behind the canyon. She switched on a small lamp that sat at the end of the kitchen counter and refilled her wineglass. Lia lifted the bottle over another glass, but Lucas shook his head.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you.” His voice softened, losing its flirtatious tone. He leaned against the center island and crossed his ankles. For a man about to make a confession, he looked relaxed and confident.
“What do you mean?”
“Two years ago, I went to your lecture at the Institute for Cathar Studies. That’s when I first heard you talk about Castelnau’s death. But you also spoke about the Cathar belief in reincarnation and the fluid nature of the afterlife. You spoke so beautifully about the history of Languedoc and the spirits that roam this region.”
Of course she remembered. It was the lecture she’d given three days after her husband’s death, the same night she’d met Jordí Bonafé. “It wasn’t a large crowd,” she replied. “I’m certain I’d recall having seen you there.”
“I came late and left early. After you spoke, I knew I’d heard all I wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She set her wineglass on the counter.
“There didn’t seem to be a right time. I didn’t realize until I looked you up the next day that you were Gabriel Sarabias’s wife, and the coincidence shocked me. I’m sorry. It must bring back painful memories.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
“I was afraid I’d lose your trust if you found out I’d been there.”
Trust. A word she felt she had to learn the meaning of all over again. Raoul, the man who set her spine tingling, seemed to be playing a cat-and-mouse game; Lucas appeared when he wasn’t expected, always with a lifeline extended to her. She glanced at the screen of her cell phone. No texts. No calls. Seven had long since passed. Lia willed Raoul to arrive. Did she imagine it, or had his Jeep roared past the cottage a few minutes before, leaving behind the fumes of second thoughts?
“My invitation to dinner is still open,” said Lucas. “Though whatever you’ve made smells delicious. I’m guessing by the way you keep checking the time that your guest is late. He’s a fool for missing this.”
“Would you excuse me for a moment?” Lia slid the phone from the counter, letting it drop into her palm. She stepped onto the terrace and closed the door behind her. Raoul’s voice answered, but it was only a brusque request to leave a message.
“Hey, it’s Lia. It’s getting late. I’m a little concerned about you. Don’t worry about dinner. I’m…stepping out for a bit. Just give me a call when you get a chance.” She disconnected the call. “You really aren’t coming, are you?” she murmured to the blank screen.
Lia closed her hand over the phone and regarded the man standing inside. Desire and devotion were written clearly on his face and in his dark eyes; he’d treated her with nothing but kindness and deference. But honesty? There were layers to Lucas that covered some central truth.
“Bistro La Candela, isn’t it?” Lia asked when she reentered the dining room. “I’ve been meaning to try it out.” She blew out the candles flickering on the table.
“That’s the one. Let’s walk down.”
OUTSIDE LE PÈLERIN—THE SAME EVENING
Raoul drove slowly past the cottage, taking in the bronze BMW parked just outside. He caught a glimpse of a tall, lean man with dark blond hair passing over the threshold of the open front door. He drove into the village and circled back; the car remained in front of the cottage. This time, however, Le Pèlerin’s door was closed.
“Lia,” he said aloud. He considered going straight to the front door to be greeted by her tawny beauty. He could feel the silk of her skin, smell the lavender and sea bound in her hair, hear the richness of her voice that warmed as it rose to her throat and emerged husky and low from her lips. He ground his teeth at the thought of leaving her with Lucas, but instinct told him it wasn’t time for a confrontation. He drove on.
• • •
Raoul had awakened less than two years before as a man fully formed in a world that was not unfamiliar. His hands knew the motions and the required skills. He could drive a truck and a tractor; he understood motors and electricity, a toothbrush, a computer. But he had no recollection of when and where he’d learned to live in this present that had quietly waited for him. He’d surfaced as a winemaker with his name on the title of a vineyard and only his dreams for memories. Raoul knew every inch of the vineyards he now worked, every hillock and slope, though the forest had disappeared in some places, grown tall and dense in others. Yet he felt like a half-empty vessel, moving forward with intuition but no sense of direction.
He drove out of the village, toward the river canyon, and parked the battered Jeep on a dirt track used by farmers to access the vineyards north of Minerve. He sat, hands kneading the steering wheel, and listened to the shuddering wind that rose from the canyon and ran its fingers through the oak and cypress that lined the river. Their branches groaned and scraped against one another, adding their lamentation to the rage that built in Raoul. Imagining Lia standing close to the stranger, her body angled toward him, listening, laughing, the man tucking a stray curl behind her ear, Raoul’s fists clenched. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint as he remembered.
• • •
A few weeks before Christmas, he’d been in a bar in Narbonne, enjoying a late afternoon pastis with Domènec. Coming back from the restroom, he’d seen a man alone at a table, gazing out the window into the descending darkness. In that instant, the air had filled with the stench of smoke and burning flesh; images of fire and charred bodies poured into his vision. He’d had to lean into the wall for support as the floor swayed beneath his feet. When Raoul’s head had cleared, he’d seen the front door closing on the man’s heels. On impulse, he’d followed and watched as the stranger drove away in a bronze BMW.
Since that moment, he caught himself looking over his shoulder, starting at sudden noises, struggling with insomnia, on guard against an inexplicable malice. When he could sleep, vivid dreams with movie-set images of medieval Languedoc, full of burning buildings and screeching raptors, plagued him until he woke with dread in his gut.
The night of the winter solstice, a different vision came: a woman, emerging naked and ghostly from a dark room, impossibly beautiful, with eyes belonging to his beloved wife. Knowing she was in danger, Raoul reached out, but the woman dissolved into blackness. Another dream followed not long after. He found himself in the basilica in Carcassonne’s fortress city, helping her escape from a danger he couldn’t name, one that vanished when he’d returned to search inside the church. He woke with the certainty he’d been dreaming of some other life. Until Lia had appeared in the kitchen at Mas Hivert.
She was real in the present and yet somehow a part of his past. As was the stranger from the café, the stranger who had started the nightmares Raoul couldn’t escape, the same man who had entered Lia’s home. How were they connected?
Raoul wandered a dark corridor with a light at the end that grew fainter and more distant the longer he walked.
The muted phone vibrated against his heart. He listened to Lia’s message. Ten minutes later, he stood outside Le Pèlerin.
• • •
The village was silent as Lucas walked her home. They’d discussed nothing personal during their meal of duck breast and foie gras with truffles—only their book project. Bending their heads over his iPad, working through a bottle of full-bodied Fitou, they’d studied Lucas’s photographs, and Lia had typed notes into her phone, which had given her an excuse to check for a call from Raoul. None had come.
On her doorstep, an unsettled fog of awkwardness and dread drifted around Lia. She inserted her key into the lock and turned to Lucas.
He cupped her face in his smooth hands and traced a line from her earlobe and along her jaw to her mouth with a long finger, a gesture that left her feeling delicate and treasured. He drew her up and settled his lips against hers. She didn’t resist his sweet, cool mouth, but the kiss was wrong. He released her face, and the warmth of his hands lingered on her skin. She eased back against the door, grateful for its solid weight.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you sitting on the wall in Narbonne,” he said.
“We’re colleagues, Lucas,” Lia replied. “Shit,” she hissed in English. Then, in French, “I shouldn’t have let you kiss me.”
“It’s what two people who are attracted to one another do.”
“You assume I’m attracted to you?”
“Can you tell me honestly that you aren’t?”
“I can’t work on this book with you and have this—whatever this is—between us.”
“Then I’ll take that as a maybe.” His tone was playful, but he hadn’t stepped back—she fumbled for the door handle behind her. Lia could take the easy way out and tell him she thought she was falling in love with someone else. But that was too close to the truth, and it was a truth that startled her. It was another step on the path of letting go of the past. Of letting go of Gabriel.
“I’ll call you.”
“You’ll call me,” he echoed in a hollow voice. “Of course.” He pulled car keys from his front pocket. “I hope so. We’re on deadline.”
“Lucas.”
“I can’t compete with an empty table, Lia.” He nodded to the cottage as if they could see through the stone and timber to the abandoned dinner inside. “Let me leave with some dignity.”
And so he left. She shut the door behind her and heard the bass rumble of the engine as his car came to life. It faded as Lucas drove down the hill and away from Minerve.
Lia dropped her cell phone and keys on the hall table just as a gust of wind slammed a wooden shutter against the house. The crash nearly sent her out of her skin. She raced through the kitchen to the glass wall that overlooked the terrace, secured the windows, and stepped outside to fasten the shutters. Each gust of wind brought needles of rain—a downpour was only moments away. Just before closing the glass doors and wooden front from the inside, she faced the oncoming storm.
He sat on the far edge of the terrace, perched on the iron railing, as he had in December. His feathers appeared black against the bruised sky, and the wind pushed at them from behind, but the eagle stood firm. “Mon aigle,” she whispered, her heart hammering. “Ne me quitte pas—don’t go.” She took a tentative step forward. The eagle opened his beak wide but made no sound. She whimpered in awe and took another step. Balancing with the grace of an acrobat, he lifted from the railing and let the wind take him away. When the rain hit, she heard a high, piercing cry.
• • •
Raoul had stayed in the shadows watching the house, waiting for their return.
As the kiss unfolded just feet from where he hid, he felt the pieces of his mind disassembling, the past and the present falling in shards of glass to the bottom of his soul. He heard his wife’s voice and felt her body, as vulnerable as the dove for which she’d been named.
“Our souls can cross time, Raoul.” Paloma curled into his chest, fitting perfectly in the circle of his arms, as she tried again to explain the Cathars’ vision of the afterlife to her nonbelieving husband.
And yet, eight hundred years after his precious Paloma, Bertran, and Aicelina had burned alive in a church in Gruissan, eight hundred years after a fever had burned him alive in a cave not far from where he now stood, Raoul had returned. If only he could understand why.
He dissolved into the darkness and left Le Pèlerin—and Lia—behind.