Chapter 3
MOST FAMILIES WERE COMPLICATED, Matthieu reassured himself, as he looked across at his ailing grandfather, feeling torn between a sense of love, loyalty, respect, but also resentment. Until he forgot his mother, he could never forget their treatment of her, and he could never forget the unhappiness they’d brought to her life. Until the day she’d died, she’d been miserable, torn away from the only man she’d ever loved, made to feel that she wasn’t good enough for the de Garmeaux family. The fact she’d been working as a domestic in a three-star hotel when she’d met Matthieu’s father had been a death knell, so that his grandparents and aunt had hated Elodie before they’d even gotten to know her.
And yet, after her death, his grandparents had stepped up, helping to raise him when his father’s busy schedule made him unavailable. It was Lucien and Anais’s house he would go to in the school holidays, not his own home. Henry, by then, was busy with any one of his string of girlfriends.
“This has gone on long enough.” Lucien’s voice was throaty and thin, no longer the loud, booming tone Matthieu had come to associate with strength and success.
“What has, grand-père?” Matthieu played dumb, even though he knew where this was going. They’d had this argument many times. Matthieu never came to agree with his grandfather, and yet he liked sparring with the older man. For a moment, when they argued, things were simple again, and his grandfather was strong. It was only in conflict, Lucien found his voice these days.
“You are no longer a boy.”
“Nor am I an old man.”
“True, true.” A smile cracked the older man’s thin lips. “But you are man enough to settle down. To marry. To be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“You are busy, it is not the same thing.”
“Says the man who worked every day of his adult life—and most nights too.”
“Bah!” Lucien’s growl was irritated. “I still had a life. I still had fun.”
“As do I.”
“You work from early in the morning until late at night. The concept of a weekend is lost on you.”
“That’s not true.” As a point of fact, Matthieu found weekends highly irritating, because his work ethic was not shared across the board. He hated trying to work only to find half his staff unavailable. Naturally, his management team answered his calls at any time, day or night, but outside companies he worked with were not so flexible.
“I’m old.”
Matthieu frowned. It wasn’t so much that his grandfather was old, in fact, but that he was ill. Though he’d recovered from the cancer that had, two years ago, riddled his body, the treatment had been so exhaustive, and had destroyed so much of his immunity—not to mention the sections of his bowel that had been removed—that his quality of life was low, his energy practically non-existent.
“You are as young as Anais, and I do not see her taking to bed for days at a time.”
It was insensitive, but Matthieu knew tough love was the best way to speak to his grandfather.
Usually, at least.
But this time, it wasn’t working.
“Listen to me, Matthieu.” He spoke with urgency, reaching out and placing his hand on Matt’s. Fingers that had always been so capable and confident were cracked and swollen now, the joints fluid filled and wonky. “I know I don’t have long.”
Matthieu frowned. “Why not? Have the doctors said so?”
“They don’t have to,” Lucien dismissed. “I can see it in their faces. And I can feel it in here. I am fading. It’s okay. We live and then we die. That is the only absolute in life, no?”
Matthieu’s lips compressed into a grim line. This was, of course, true, but the prospect of his grandfather’s death filled him with an ache of dread. Feelings he’d repressed years ago came rushing back. The death of his mother, and then his father, had shaped him indelibly. He understood, more than most, the guarantee of life’s end, and yet he wanted, just for a while longer, a reprieve from it.
“Even you will one day leave this earth, and when you do, I want to know that you are leaving something—someone—behind. I want for you what I have enjoyed, all my life.”
“And what’s that?”
“Love. Happiness. Family. The noise of children in your home and heart.”
“Why do you presume I want any of those things?”
“Come on, Matthieu. It has only been two years. Do you think we have forgotten?”