I yelled back, “This is my house, mister, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Yes, there is,” he said and he sounded so calm, so collected, while I had fallen to pieces. I feared he was right.
*
“Of course the villa is yours,” my attorney, James Arnold Long, said in his usual calm, controlled, nothing-will-ever-get-to-him voice that I’m sure he uses on all his usually upset and irate clients. After all, he’s the one who has to sort out their problems; they can’t have him getting upset and irate as well.
“He claims he has papers to prove Aunt Jolly—he calls her that—gave him the villa.”
“And when did she supposedly do this?”
I could just imagine old-lawyer-Long, with his half-specs sliding down his nose, flipping through the papers on his desk, probably doing at least two things at once as I knew he usually did, instead of concentrating on my problem, which was now a major problem.
“I mean, he’s a doctor, a surgeon, he has documents,” I said, sounding feeble and feminine and a bit lost. Actually, a lot lost. I was in love with a villa. It was mine.
“Did he give the documents to you, or at least copies?”
“Well, no.… But he seemed very sure of himself and his position as owner.”
“Give me his phone number and his e-mail address,” Long said. “I’ll take care of him.” The lawyer’s voice was firm, determined; he knew his rights, that was his job, after all. “Now you just go about your business, your life, as normal, let us take care of Dr. Prescott.”
I clicked off the phone and went and sat on the terrace, for once not seeing the beautiful view in front of me. I was too in my own head, even when the Siamese jumped onto my lap and settled down as though she now owned me. The dog sat panting at my feet, big brown eyes fixed anxiously on my face, no doubt taking in my worried expression.
Verity was staring at me too, all indignant. “What was that about? What does he mean, it’s his villa?”
She looked so skinny and bedraggled, ready to stamp her foot in the good old-fashioned classic manner of outrage. I shrugged, assuming a nonchalance I did not feel.
“The lawyer tells me it’s all nonsense. Of course the villa is mine. He’ll sort out this Dr. Chad Prescott.” I grinned at her. “What d’ya think, in his pink shorts?”
Verity sighed. “Cute,” she said. “Like all the bad boys.”
I had to admit she was right.
9
The Colonel
Rufus Barrada, or the Colonel, as he was always referred to because of his ten years of service in the French army prior to joining the gendarmes, had seen too many road accidents to be sympathetic. He’d been a happily married man for seven years when his wife was killed. She was walking from their home, an old farmhouse that had been in his family for two centuries, to the Saturday village market, striding along the side of the road when she was struck by a tourist RV and knocked into a rocky ditch.
Agnes, her name was, but the Colonel always only called her mon amour, and she called him mon choux, though never in public, of course. Theirs was a passionate relationship, nurtured over the years, and he was bereft without her. Time, as it usually does, eventually papered over the cracks of despair until it resembled some form of acceptance, though never forgotten.
Their children, the twin girls named Marie-Laure and Marie-Helene for their grandmothers, were now six years old, Laure with long pigtails, blond like her mother, Helene exactly like her father with his thick dark hair that sprouted every which way, falling into her eyes mostly so she seemed to peer at you shyly, which in fact she was not at all.
Laure was the shy one, usually walking behind her sister, head down, clutching her bookbag over one shoulder, small gold-rimmed glasses half hiding her blue eyes. Helene always looked out for her sister though.
The Colonel was to pick them up from school and because of the interviews with the Matthews woman he was late. He spotted them sitting on a low wall outside the schoolhouse, each with an elbow on her knee, chin clasped in hand, eyes blank with the lethargy of the long wait.
He pulled up next to them, apologizing, got out, opened the door, and watched while they climbed in. He fastened their seat belts, double-checked everything, and said, “Okay, girls, we’re off to get ice cream.”
The Colonel drove off with them chattering away about the school day. He was a family man at heart despite his formal demeanor, his position, his uniform, and his reputation for toughness, which came from a hatred of criminals and anyone against the law. He was a “true” man, in his heart.