Tangled Ashes (25 page)

“We’ve known Jade for several years,” Sylvia said. “We’ve attended the same church since we moved here, and when she was earning her master’s degree at the Sorbonne, she did an independent study on the differences between the English and the French
approaches to business. My Gavin was one of her main resources, and the interviews she did with him led very naturally into a wonderful friendship for all of us. She was so enamored with the twins when they were born that she volunteered to watch them for us whenever we needed help. So when we started to travel with the children, it seemed only logical to ask her to come along with us and help care for them—if her studies allowed.”

Sylvia paused while a delivery truck from a local lighting store passed through the château’s gates and made its way around the circular drive to the front door. Thérèse came rushing out in a flurry of waving arms and enthusiasm, shrilling instructions at the deliverymen before they’d even exited the truck.

“She’s a character, isn’t she?” Sylvia asked.

Beck nodded.

“And the best at what she does,” she added.

“About Jade . . .”

“Yes—where was I?” Sylvia ran her palm over her belly in a circular motion. “This little one is eager to get out!” she said with a bright smile. “Either that or he’s working on his air guitar in there!” She saw Beck’s serious expression and got back to the topic at hand. “Up until six months ago, Jade was headed straight for a stellar career. Her doctorate was right on track. Prospective employers were lining up to hire her the moment she became available . . . and then she found a small lump in her breast. She was brave enough to see a doctor immediately, and the rest . . . Well, you know the rest.”

“Is it bad?” Becker asked.

“It’s not as bad as it might have been had she waited longer to seek medical help. But it’s cancer. Cancer is never good—and it’s always frightening. Because her mother died of breast cancer, Jade opted for a double mastectomy—about three months before you arrived here—followed by chemotherapy. They hope those
measures will spare her from any recurrences, but . . . one never knows with these things. It sure is taking a toll on her.”

“Then why is she still working?” Becker asked, finally voicing the question that had plagued him since the night he’d found out about her cancer.

“That’s probably a question best answered by Jade. Do you mind if we walk a little?” she asked, applying pressure to her back again. “It seems to be better for me than standing still.”

“Sure.”

Sylvia led off toward the clearing on the far side of the stream. “When she asked to see us a couple weeks after her diagnosis, we figured it was to tell us that she wouldn’t be able to travel with us for the foreseeable future. Imagine our surprise when she informed us instead that she wanted a full-time job taking care of the twins. We’d just announced that I was expecting number three, although it was fairly obvious by then.”

“And you just said, ‘Sure, you can work for us while you go through chemo’?”

Sylvia paused and looked at him with long-suffering kindness. “We’re not tyrants, Mr. Becker.” As she resumed walking, she added, “It took us a long time—and many conversations with Jade—before we offered her the position she now holds. And it came with some pretty strict rules. She was to quit the moment it became too much . . . but you saw what happened the last time she got really bad. She took a couple days off, then was back on duty as soon as she could stand up straight again.”

“Why?” Beck asked. “Why does she want to be working when she should be home resting?”

Sylvia considered his question for a moment. “That’s probably another one of those questions you should ask her,” she said. “But from what she’s explained to me, it comes from the new set of priorities her cancer inspired. I think that, when she came face-to-face
with her mortality, she tried to figure out how she wanted to spend the remainder of her days—particularly if they were limited. And that led her where she is now—working with children she adores in a setting she’s loved since she was a child.”

“She needs to take a break,” Becker said, his voice firm. “She practically passed out the other day, and I don’t think—”

“It’s her decision to make,” Sylvia interrupted.

Becker didn’t like the disclaimer. “What—so you’re going to stand by and not step in while she wears herself out? How can you do that?”

“Sometimes helping others isn’t controlling them, Becker. Sometimes it’s supporting them until they can reach their own conclusions, in their own time.” She stopped and faced him, eyebrows drawn together in sincerity. “I won’t let Jade harm herself for the sake of my children. Neither will Gavin. But we’re both committed to letting her make her own decisions as she battles this deadly disease. It’s the least we can do for someone we love.” She gave him a pointed look. “Isn’t it?”

This again,
Becker thought as he stretched out his hamstrings in the dim glow of a full moon. The Internet had exhausted its distractions hours ago and so had the accounting ledgers he’d pored over while the sun had set. That had left him with nothing but the castle’s noises to occupy his mind, and it had drifted toward the usual quagmires. On the one hand was the lure of alcohol’s anesthetic. He was back to fighting it, having so blissfully indulged in it the night after Philippe had fallen into the river. And on the other hand was his preoccupation with Jade.
Preoccupation
probably wasn’t the right word, but it was a safe word. Safer, anyway, than the alternatives.

As Becker set off at a slow trot around the now-familiar circuit
through the woods, he tried very hard to focus on the efforts of his legs and lungs, on the sounds of night owls and the shadows the moon cast as it pierced, smokelike, through the branches above him. There was no evading the nagging in his mind, the wordless onslaught of question after question that rang like a metronome in his thoughts.

He’d been drawn to Jade since the first day he’d met her. That much he knew. But the attraction had shifted somewhere along the way, from curiosity to a deeper desire to shield and protect. These were frightening emotions to Beck, both because of what they said about him and what they said about Jade. What they said about him was that his defenses had weakened at some point during his time in Lamorlaye, leaving him exposed in a way he had avoided at all costs for the past couple of years. What they said about her was that she was dangerous to him. Both conclusions left him with only one option that would satisfy his need for independence and invulnerability: flight. And with that word came the craving for escape he’d been battling again in recent hours, the need for a drink that would allow him to be absent without leaving the château.

Beck picked up his pace and focused harder. He needed to man up. Get back into the swing of hard labor and keep his eye on the end goal. He’d been weakened by the luxury of thought and the softness of sympathy. He’d been . . .

The pep talk was pointless. As he raced through the woods on straining legs, the image in his mind wasn’t of the château’s renovation or the prospect of insanely busy days ahead. It was of Jade—soft eyes and enigmatic smile. He could tell himself all he wanted that his feelings for her had everything to do with the boredom of being alone, but he knew better. He’d been captivated from day one, and her recent revelation had only served to deepen his desire for a deeper, fuller connection. She was stubborn and contentious and often holier-than-thou, but there was something about
her—something in the words she spoke and the way she looked at him—that moved him. He didn’t like it and he certainly didn’t want it, but the attraction was undeniable. So, flight? It was an urgent instinct to which only part of him wanted to yield. The rest of him, the part he couldn’t control, was frighteningly content to dabble in the dangerous.

As Becker rounded the front of the castle, he saw a vague shadow crossing the lawn in the direction of the gatehouse. On a whim, he veered off course and headed toward the stooped figure in the ratty gray coat. The older man paused when he saw the change of course, and Becker couldn’t blame him for stepping back cautiously as he drew near. He stopped a few feet from the man whose steely eyes, shaded by thick eyebrows, watched him with disturbing intensity.

Out of breath from the run, Becker greeted him, speaking in French. “I never saw you after . . . I should have . . .” He took a deep breath and held out a hand, causing the older man to step back again. “No, I don’t mean any harm,” Beck hastily explained, retracting his hand for fear of further spooking Jojo. “It’s just . . . I shouldn’t have hit you. It was completely a reflex. I saw you holding Philippe and . . . I didn’t think.”

Jojo nodded, but otherwise he stood stock-still.

“I’m trying to apologize here,” Becker said after the silence had stretched into uncomfortable territory. “I hope I didn’t hit you too hard. Like I said, it was—you know—involuntary.”

Jojo nodded again and set off toward his house.

“So . . . no harm done?” Beck called after him.

The figure disappearing into the midnight mist merely held up a hand in acknowledgment. Becker figured that was as much communication as he could expect from the old man and turned to head back to the castle.

T
HE KIDS WERE
off at a doctor’s appointment with their parents again. Jacques’s men were on their lunch break, and the crew cleaning the limestone walls in the entryway had finished with that task and moved on to the marble floors. Thérèse had decided that the chandelier above the grand staircase needed replacing after all—it was an argument she’d been having with herself since Beck’s arrival—and had gone off to an antiques warehouse in Chantilly, where she’d eyed something suitable to grace the newly restored centerpiece of the castle’s foyer.

Beck entered the kitchen so briskly and with such determination that Jade paused in the act of peeling potatoes, one eyebrow raised in question. Beck marched over to the sink and, with a look of ferocious concentration, proceeded to empty each of the five bottles he carried down the drain. He then placed them in the glass-recycle bin under the sink and turned to Jade, hands on hips, something resembling victorious frustration drawing his eyebrows together.

“It’s too hard,” he said.

Jade put down the half-peeled potato she was holding and wiped her hands on her apron before crossing her arms. “And yet you did it. Well done, Becker.”

“Not that,” Beck scoffed, motioning at the drain down which his collection of booze had disappeared. “You.”

“Me?”

“I can’t do this ‘barely friends’ thing. It’s a ridiculous notion, and I think you know that.”

Jade’s chin rose a little higher. “And yet it’s the choice I’ve made, so you really have no option but to—”

“What? Obey?” Becker asked.

“No, that sounds superior.
Concede
might be a better word.”

“Let me make this very clear,” Becker said, ignoring her. “Part of me doesn’t want to be your friend. It doesn’t want to worry about you, and it doesn’t want to wonder what I could possibly do to make life easier on you.”

“That’s flattering.”

“And I’ve got to tell you that I’d much rather storm around the castle half-sloshed with an assortment of reasons to mouth off at workers than be concerned about you, but you won’t let me!”

“Excuse me?” Frustration and astonishment dueled in her gaze.

“You won’t let me! You’re all about laying off the booze and checking my temper at the door, which leaves me . . .” He paused, desperately searching for the right word and raising a finger in victory when he found it. “Which leaves me
raw
.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?”

“It’s like every nerve ending and every synapse is alive, which means I can’t turn my brain off, which means I can’t just ignore that I want to . . . to . . . to help you somehow. If you hadn’t spent all this time talking me out of drinking, I wouldn’t be so incredibly aware
every single minute of the day that you’ve got . . .” He stumbled on the word. “Cancer. You’ve got cancer.”

“Yes, Becker, I know.”

“So you’re just going to have to come to grips with the notion that I want to . . . to . . .”

Jade raised an eyebrow, a smile playing around her lips. “Under any other circumstances, I’d suggest a word or two that might fit in that sentence, but this monologue has been so perplexing that I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“Are you finished?”

Jade merely smiled.

Beck took a deep breath and continued. “You’re going to have to deal with the notion,” he began again, “that I want to—I don’t know—help you. And maybe know you more. You tell me that’s crossing some kind of point-of-no-return line, but it’s a line I only want to cross when I’m sober, so really, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

“What are you trying to say, exactly?”

“How many more months of chemo do you have?” he asked, surprising her.

“You want to know about my treatment?”

“I want to know about you. How many months?”

“Six more rounds.” She seemed too taken aback by his direct question to evade it.

“And a round is a month?”

“Two weeks.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Today, or . . . ?”

“Now. Right now. How are you feeling?”

The smile on Jade’s face spread wider. “I’m fine, thank you very much.”

“Can I do anything for you? You need to sit down for a minute or anything?”

“You could begin by letting me get back to my peeling. That’s what I need from you, Mr. Becker. Nothing more.” She reached for the peeler she’d set on the sink, dismissing him.

Something in Beck wanted to launch into a full-blown rant. Visions of tossing the potatoes across the floor surged through him, the anticipation of such behavior alone a welcome adrenaline rush. But he quelled the impulse with the kind of effort that left him feeling weak and took a moment to calm his nerves.

When Jade looked back at Beck it was with firm resolve in her eyes. “I think I can make the battle in your mind a little easier to manage,” she said softly. “Becker . . . I’ve said it before. I know you think you want to know me better, but I assure you that I have no time for that right now. My life is fighting off cancer and caring for the twins. Anything more . . . complicated than that would be too much.”

“Then why have you ridden me so hard about the drinking?”

“For the children.”

Becker raked his fingers through his hair. “And in the spare bedroom the other night—with the bottles—before you passed out. That was just . . . for the children?”

“It was . . . a lapse. I shouldn’t have gone up after you.”

Becker took a few steps away from the sink, hands stuffed in his pockets, head shaking. “Who takes care of you when you’re not here taking care of the kids?” he finally asked.

“The Fallons make sure I’m all right.”

“Who else?”

“That’s about it. My father lives in Normandy.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I am. Life isn’t about being loved—it’s about loving others.”

Becker’s eyebrows lifted suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that being loved isn’t a priority. It’s a perk. Loving others? That’s a responsibility I take very seriously.”

“You know what one of the main perks of being sober is?” Beck asked, an angry undertone in his voice.

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“It’s being able to tell when your pithy little statements are full of it.”

She paused for a moment, then resumed her peeling.

“You know that being loved is more than a perk! If you’ve dedicated this part of your life to loving those kids, it’s because you know it’s good for them.” He braced himself for the statement he had to make but dreaded voicing. “We . . .” Courage failed him for just a moment, but when Jade looked up at him with a challenging glare, he found the bravura to say it. “We all need to be loved. It’s what feeds us.”

Jade paused again in her peeling and murmured, “How ironic to hear those words coming from you.”

Becker sighed. “I think your self-sacrifice is an admirable thing, particularly under these circumstances, and I realize it takes up a lot of your time. But I also think there has to be some other reason you beat me off with a stick every time I come near you. I don’t know what it is—but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with your highfalutin altruism.”

Jade dropped her peeler and turned to face him, her jaw set. “Dinner will be served in an hour,” she said.

“Fine—I’ll be in the foyer helping with the stone restoration. Might take my mind off the shakes and cold sweats. Thanks a lot for this sobriety thing.”

This time, Beck called the police. The previous nocturnal visits had caused no damage to the castle and had done more to entertain his imagination than to harm the building. But when Beck rose at the
crack of dawn the day before the Fallons’ party and toured the castle looking for anything he might have overlooked in the last-minute rush to meet the deadline, he found a surprise waiting for him in the entryway that made calling law enforcement a no-brainer.

With Thérèse fully invested in a decorative frenzy, Fallon had taken it on himself to have all the doors of the castle replaced by new ones a local artisan had designed in conjunction with a security specialist. The doors matched the old ones nearly perfectly, but they also vastly improved the insulation and safety of the castle’s entrances. Even the half-dozen French doors that led from the château’s interior to the patios had been upgraded to modern, antique-looking replacements. The result, they all agreed, was stellar. Even more satisfying to Fallon than the antique appearance of the structures was the series of rods hidden inside each door that extended into the stone beneath and above it when the elaborate lock was turned.

The air grew cooler as Becker approached the foyer. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. He’d locked the doors himself the night before, and it was still too early for anyone else to have opened them. The first thing he registered as he reached the entryway was the glass lying on the floor just inside the front door. At some point during the night, someone had broken two vertical rows of the door’s windows and apparently tried to hacksaw through the wood that separated them, finding only too late that the veneer concealed a metal core. Whoever had attempted to forge a wide passageway through the front door and into the castle had found their efforts thwarted by Fallon’s fortified investment.

Beck turned to retrace his steps to the office and call his employer with the news, but he stumbled as he glanced into the sitting room Thérèse had installed in the circular space of the southeast tower. He’d been so focused on the front doors as he’d passed the room earlier that he hadn’t noticed the displaced furniture and severely
damaged wall. The Louis XIV divans and chairs had been pushed away from the limestone, and an entire section of carved stone had been pried out of the wall. The blocks now lay on the newly renovated marble floor, most of them chipped and broken from the fall.

Beck shook his head, incomprehension a bullhorn in his mind. The uniqueness of the wall had been pointed out to him the week before by Jacques’s men. They’d discovered a section of smaller blocks that appeared to be chiseled sandstone. The contrast in size and color hadn’t been very obvious until the walls had been cleaned, the limestone of the rest of the entryway turning a much lighter shade than the sandstone. The anomaly was about six feet in height and three feet wide, projecting up from the floor in the shape of a doorway. And though there was no expedient way of proving if it was in fact a walled-off door and if it led anywhere, the general consensus had been to break through it and see what treasures lay beyond. It had taken all of Beck’s persuasive powers and the imminence of the looming deadline to talk the workers down.

Beck took a closer look at the damage. Most of the sandstone was still in place, but a chest-level section had been pried out, a couple feet wide and at least a foot deep. Though no larger than bags of sugar, the blocks of stone that now lay in a layer of their own dust on the castle floor must not have been easy to dislodge. Beck peered into the gap where they’d once been and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just the marks left by whatever metallic tool had been used to pry them loose. Beck had a flashback to the well’s cover and wondered if the castle’s nighttime intruder had a thing for crowbars.

Fallon arrived within five minutes of Beck’s call, entering the castle through the French doors in the dining room. The two men moved to the still-locked front doors and contemplated the damage.

“Well, they looked splendid for the few days we had them,” Fallon said, his humor somewhat forced in light of the setback. He leaned in to peer more closely at what remained of the windows.
“Looks like our ghost tried to saw through the wood and widen the gap.”

“That’s what I figured,” Beck said. “And I’m pretty sure he wasn’t too happy when he found the security bar inside.”

Fallon stepped back. “How wide do you think that gap is?”

Becker pursed his lips. “Ten inches?”

Fallon nodded and cocked his head to the side. After a moment, he said, “Given the damage to the wall, we know that whoever did this actually made it into the castle.” He stepped forward and compared his paunch to the width of the opening in the door. “We can fairly safely assume that I’m not the one who squeezed through here,” he said with a chuckle. “And I suspect Sylvia’s out of contention too!”