Sandrine hummed to herself.
“I’m keeping the wall color,” I added, knowing that her humming meant she didn’t agree. “Faded elegance.” The ceiling was about four meters high, and the walls had been painted decades, perhaps even a century, ago. Two-toned blue: dark midnight up to about hip height, and a lighter robin’s-egg blue above. Over the doors, as is tradition in Provence, were little painted scenes, oval in form. They depicted the seasons, and I pointed out fall above the door that led from the dining room back into the foyer. “They’re harvesting up there,” I said.
“There would have been hundreds of harvests here,” Sandrine said. “If only the paintings could talk—eh, M Barbier?”
“I’d like to taste some of the wine they were making back then.”
“I’ll bet it was plonk,” Sandrine said. “My grandparents would add water to their wine, and that wasn’t so long ago.”
“You’re probably right.” I was about to say something about the oldest wine I have tasted—a 1929 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Justin—when I stopped. A fast whispering interrupted me—so fast I couldn’t understand it. “Pardon, Sandrine?”
She looked at me, frowning. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “Should we stop for the day?” She was looking at me as if I were a dotty old man.
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said, trying to act nonchalant. “Would you like a beer?”
“That’s why I brought ’em!” she answered. “I’m going down to the cellar to find a spot for the crates; then we’ll really be done for the day.”
“Let’s do it tomorrow,” I said.
She waved her hand my way. “No, I don’t think so.” That was obviously her way of saying she disagreed with me and was going to override my request. “I’ll use the flashlight on my cell phone. Then it will be done.” She almost skipped toward the cellar door, located behind the stairs, and opened it with the key that was hanging below the knob. In a few seconds she called up from down below. “There’s lots of room down here!” I could hear her chatting with herself—oh là là this and that—and I grinned and went to the kitchen to get the beers. I was walking out of the kitchen, a bottle in each hand, when Sandrine came running up from the cellar, her face red, her eyes enormous. She rushed straight past me, toward the front door, and ran outside. I followed her, quickly setting the beers on the foyer console. She had stopped at a pine tree, and was leaning against it, panting.
“What on earth?” I asked.
She rubbed her neck, and tears formed in her eyes. “I couldn’t breathe—”
“Was it too stuffy?”
She shook her head wildly back and forth. “No.” She took a deep breath and felt up to her neck once again. “It was cold, not hot. But I couldn’t breathe.” I was going to ask her to stop being repetitive when she went on, “Someone was choking me.”
I took a step back and almost tripped over the pine roots. I could see that she wasn’t joking, nor was she being theatrical. “In that case,” I said, “we have to call the police!”
“But there isn’t anyone down there,” she said. “How can there be? We’ve been here all day, working right beside the front door.”
“I’ll go down there, then.” Don’t laugh, Justin. I know I was being an idiot, trying to be the hero, but I couldn’t let her see that the author of Everything We Said was a chicken.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, taking my arm. So she could see that I was a chicken.
“It might have been the wind,” I mumbled as we stood at the top of the cellar stairs. I wanted to tell her about my sleepless nights, but it didn’t seem like a good time.
“I’m staying here,” she said, peering down into the depths of the cellar from the top step. “I’ll shine my flashlight down the stairs.”
“All right,” I said, starting down the stairs, making a lot of noise.
Sandrine began singing an old Claude Nougaro song called “Tu verras,” which I thought was a really clever choice: “Ah, you’ll see, you’ll see. Everything will start again, you’ll see.”
Like she said, it was cold down there, and it was vast. The walls were rough stone, and the floor was a dull gray concrete. “It’s too musty down here for the crates,” I called up, trying to be chatty. “We’ll put them in one of the outbuildings.”
I shone my light around, walking from room to room. Empty wine bottles, a broken chair, and stacks and stacks of old newspapers. If there had ever been more in the cellar, it had been cleaned out before I bought the bastide. An ancient-looking heating system took up one of the rooms. I vaguely remembered Sandrine’s uncle, my friend Matton, telling me that it would need changing. The cellar was certainly eerie, but we were definitely the only people there.
I walked back up the stairs, relieved to see Sandrine’s Stars and Stripes miniskirt. “Did you come down here when you cleaned the place for me?” I asked.
Sandrine shook her head. “It was locked, and the key wasn’t there.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just put the key there yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, M Barbier,” she said as I closed the door firmly, locking it. I showed her the key and put it in my shirt pocket. She added, trying to smile, “Maybe I imagined it.”
“Let’s drink those beers now. Outside.” I wanted to tell her to call me Valère, but I also knew from experience that these sorts of working relationships should remain formal. No, Justin, you may not call me Valère. Very funny.
“I need something stronger,” she then said. Her mouth trembled a bit when she spoke, and she bit her upper lip to stop it. “Like whiskey.” She surprised me. Most French women don’t drink hard spirits.
“That I can do,” I said. “And I’ll join you.”
We sat outside, each of us on a chaise longue, staring at the
