It was Jack’s favorite place; he felt at home there and because of his love for the château he had made a strenuous effort to learn French. And he had succeeded admirably.
During our travels around the provençal countryside, Sebastian and I had stumbled upon the old mill. It was situated near an olive grove amidst rolling fields, just outside the centuries-old village of Lourmarin. It was secluded enough to be absolutely private, protected by plenty of acreage, yet it was not too isolated from village life to make it boring.
Initially Sebastian purchased it for me as a wedding gift, because I had fallen in love with it and the surrounding land, as well as with the picturesque village. However, once we started work on the reconstruction he began to recognize its great potential. He decided it would make a perfect home for the two of us in Europe, and he made the decision that we would live there for part of every year.
For some time Sebastian had been losing interest in château life and the winery, his charity work taking precedence. More and more, he left the running of the château and the land to an estate manager, and paid only short annual visits. Since he was as enamored of the mill as I was, he gave the château, its land and the winery to Jack that year as part of his inheritance. Jack had been thrilled, had spent every summer in Aix thereafter, and had moved permanently to France once he graduated from Yale.
In these early photographs of mine, Vieux Moulin did resemble a heap of old gray stones, a formless relic that would defeat anyone, even the most stoical, who was hoping to resurrect it, to bring it back to life. As things turned out the project had gone well. Rebuilding and remodeling the original structure and adding two new wings had been one of the most satisfying endeavors I had ever undertaken. Sebastian had enjoyed it too, and we had spent some happy years there together until our divorce. And even afterward he occasionally came back to stay with me when he wanted to escape the world.
Moving through the album quickly, I came at last to the photographs I’d wanted to see in the first place, the finished shots of Vieux Moulin.
How splendid it was, its pink and beige stones turned to gold, gleaming in the sunlight under a pale-blue summer sky swept with recumbent white clouds. My favorite shot was of the house from a distance, viewed across the purple lavender fields at that hour in late afternoon when the sun is just about to set. It had an unearthly golden glow about it that was captivating. And next week, all being well, I would be going back there.
Holding this thought I closed the album and went upstairs to bed.
Sebastian’s funeral was a distressing ordeal for me in a variety of ways, and I was sorrowful and forlorn as I sat in the front pew of the little church in Cornwall.
Jack and Luciana were on one side of me, Cyrus Locke and Madeleine Connors on the other, and I felt wedged in amongst alien beings, even though they were the nearest thing to family I had.
It was not that any of them had said anything unpleasant to me or behaved badly. Rather, it was their attitude that disturbed me. I detected a singular lack of grief in all of them and this made me angry inside. But I bit down on that anger, kept a calm demeanor, presented an inscrutable face to the world.
I sat perfectly still in the pew, my hands folded in my lap, wishing this day had never come into being. We all had to die at some time or other, none of us were immortal, but Sebastian had died too young, too soon. And how had he died? That was the thing that worried me.
Surreptitiously, I stole a look at Jack, who was seated next to me. He was pale, had dark rings under his eyes, and his expression was as inscrutable as mine. Only his hands betrayed his nervousness.
I closed my eyes, tried to concentrate on the service; after a moment I realized I was only half listening to the current president of Locke Industries who was giving one of the eulogies. My thoughts were on Sebastian’s father who was sitting on my other side.
I had expected Cyrus to resemble a cadaver, to be at death’s door. After all, he was ninety years old, but he looked surprisingly fit to me. His white hair was sparse, thinly combed across his mottled bald pate, and the skin of his face was almost transparent, stretched so tightly over his bones they were unusually prominent. Yet his eyes were bright, not a bit rheumy or vacant, and I’d noticed a spring in his step when he went up the path ahead of me earlier. A tall thin man with a mind like a steel trap, that’s how I remembered him, and he didn’t seem much different to me today. Older yes, and frail, but not quite as frail as Madeleine had made out to Jack. When he had spoken to me outside the church a short while ago he had sounded lively and sharp. It wouldn’t surprise me if Cyrus Locke lived to be a hundred.
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