then ... but, no, these thoughts had nothing to do with the memory of her father. She hadn’t spoken to him about the factory in more than ten years—not since she had finished high school, when he had convinced her to take a preparatory class for the entrance exam at an engineering school.
Héloïse, who had succeeded in all subjects and especially in music, found herself in an advanced math class, surrounded by boys whose sole preoccupation seemed to be to answer the professor’s questions before the next student could. At the time, she had played the game, amused by the envy some had shown toward her marks—which were always among the highest, whatever the subject. Gradually, this spirit of competition left her, and she found that she preferred the pleasure of sharing her curiosity and discoveries with her classmates in order to complete projects as a team.
When her grandmother gifted her tiny old Fiat 500 to Héloïse, in celebration of both her eighteenth birthday and new driver’s license, she hurriedly set about organizing a trip for the Easter vacation. With her cello and accompanied by a pianist friend from high school who also played guitar, she met up with other string musicians. Together they went down to the south of France and enchanted tourists with their music in some of the most beautiful villages in the Luberon.
The trip went very well but, on returning to write her exams, she failed several of them in a row. As a consequence, the option to pass into the next year of preparatory study was suddenly compromised, and with it her chance of being allowed to write the entrance exams for engineering schools. Her father, furious and demanding an explanation, put the blame on his mother-in-law, whom he had never forgiven for having power as a major shareholder in the company. She had never exercised this power, but the very fact that she could have chosen to was too much for him. The argument became heated. Wanting to defend her grandmother, the teenager declared: “I’m old enough to be in charge of my own life now.”
Henri Rami was not used to anyone standing up to him. But facing defiance in his own daughter—for whom he entertained ambitions she didn’t even suspect— made him speechless. Through a reproachful silence, he turned this single incident into an ongoing family drama. The silence widened into a gulf. The father sought refuge in his work, and the daughter felt obliged to carry out her threat. She decided to quit school at the end of term and devote herself to music.
Like her grandmother, who had been a well-known opera singer in the Paris of her youth, Héloïse was gifted with an exceptionally good ear. Her mother, Juliette—who had been a pianist in her own youth—had sent her to the conservatory in Tours, where during her entire childhood Héloïse had received a serious education in music. Now she decided to exploit her gift.
When the crisis broke out between her husband and their daughter, Juliette Rami did not know how to intervene. She had very mixed feelings. She certainly understood the need for her daughter to learn a profession that would assure her financial independence. She herself had suffered enough in not having her own career separate from her husband’s, even though she had finally come to accept this. Yet, at the same time, the thought of her daughter one day becoming the very image of her business-executive husband—obsessed with work to the point of not having an interest in anything else—filled Juliette with horror. She told her daughter she would support her, whatever choice she made. When Héloïse declared that she wanted to become a cello teacher, Juliette gladly accompanied her on the piano while she practiced.
The car slows once more as it enters the last bend before the plateau. Here the road turns sharply left around an ancient vineyard lodge with a crumbled wall. Héloïse’s fingers grip the wheel. It was into this wall her father’s car had crashed one night in June. If only he hadn’t stayed so late at the office that night with that new engineer ...
He had seemed quite engrossed, spending more and more evenings at the factory with the new engineer, whom he’d hired at the beginning of the year. Henri Rami was a workaholic who stayed hours after his employees left for the day, even though he had been strongly encouraged by his doctor to reduce his activity since his heart attack two years before. Héloïse drives on, still deep in thought. If only he hadn’t left at the last minute, as he usually did, to attend her concert ...
Every summer solstice Héloïse and Thomas, her boyfriend since that first trip in the Fiat 500, played sonatas for cello and piano in the little church in Chenonceaux. The concerts were free, even though Thomas played with a chamber music ensemble that was beginning to have some success. It was their chance to play for their families and childhood friends in a particularly calm and lovely Touraine atmosphere.
Héloïse frowns at the sudden thought that her father never accepted her boyfriend not only because he was a musician but perhaps also because he wasn’t an engineer ...
Once the vineyard lodge is behind her, Héloïse takes a deep breath. She has averted her fears. Her father’s life and death are now a part of the past. Ahead of her are fields of late-season sunflowers, their blackened heads standing out starkly against the background of the forest she loves so much. And between them, at the end of a path to the right where a sign reads Industrial Zone, and looking like a grounded flying saucer, sits the H. Rami enterprise.
The “industrial zone” of the district consists, in fact, of this one solitary enterprise. The few trees surrounding it seem to have escaped from the nearby forest and approached the large bay windows in the building’s golden-yellow walls in order to peer into them.
The H. Rami company designs and builds wooden furniture with metal components for boats, shops, and community-use buildings. The isolated trees seem to question the fate of those companions uprooted from their natural habitats to be processed into goods. The products that left through the big doors on the south side of the building were for the most part luxury goods, and this seemed to satisfy the remaining delegation of trees, which offered their generous shade to the two parking lots.
Héloïse’s car pulls into the lot reserved for management and visitors. At this hour it is deserted, yet she hesitates in choosing a place, her tires screeching as she turns the wheel sharply one way and then the other. Six vacant spots are reserved, each with a small sign announcing the name of one of the chosen few. Only one place is reserved for visitors. She finally parks in the spot that still bears her father’s name, and makes a mental note to have the name changed to that of his successor before she leaves.
She gets out of the car, absentmindedly picking up her bag. As she heads toward the giant wooden door, which contrasts sharply with the metallic walls, she thinks of Thierry Ambi, the engineer. He brings out conflicting feelings in her. He was the last person to see her father alive, but did not attend the funeral with all the other employees. He gave the excuse that his son was having health problems. And now, it is his name that is to replace her father’s on the little parking sign ...
She has an appointment with him at eight o’clock this morning to prepare for the monthly meeting for all supervisors of the company at nine o’clock. It is the first meeting since the return to work at the end of August, after the summer holidays. At that meeting, she will announce her decision to name him the new chief executive officer. It should come as no surprise: everyone remarked on his effectiveness in dealing with the company’s day-to-day affairs since the accident, even though he had only been there a short six months.
Thierry had initially arrived to set up the new system for managing all the company’s databases—“ERP,”1 he called it, without anyone knowing the meaning of this awkward-sounding acronym. This responsibility allowed him to quickly learn all the details of running the business. Gossip within the company was that, given the amount of time he spent with the boss, it would have been too bad for him if Thierry hadn’t been up to date with absolutely everything. No one seemed aware that it wasn’t for Thierry’s sake that the boss
