By then, Gabriel had convinced Lorenzo to buy a decent house in St. Paul de Vence, although he still painted in the studio, and Theo joined him there every day after school. Maylis nearly had to drag them both home at night, and she worried about Lorenzo, who was still in good health, and worked as hard as ever, but he was slowly getting frail. He had a cough that lasted all winter, and he forgot to eat when she left him food at the studio, if she wasn’t there to give it to him, but he was as passionate as ever about his work, and determined to teach Theo everything he knew in whatever time they had on earth together.
Much to Maylis’s surprise, Lorenzo got word that winter that his wife had died, and he insisted on marrying her in the church on the hill, with Gabriel as their witness. He said he wanted to do it for Theo’s sake. So they married when Theo was ten.
It was Gabriel who urged Lorenzo to take another important leap forward in his work after that. He had continued to have no interest in a show at the gallery in Paris, but Gabriel wanted to sell one of his paintings at an important auction, to establish a real price for his work on the open market. Once again Lorenzo fought him tooth and nail, and the only way Gabriel convinced him was to tell him he had to do it for Theo, that the money he made might be important for Theo’s security one day. And as always, when Gabriel pushed him hard enough, Lorenzo reluctantly agreed. It was a decision that ultimately changed all of their lives. The painting was sold by Christie’s, in their May auction of important art, for an absolute fortune, more than Lorenzo had made in a lifetime, or had ever wanted to make. And he insisted that the painting wasn’t even his best work, which was why he had agreed to give it up.
Even Gabriel was stunned at what the painting brought. He had hoped to build Lorenzo’s prices into a more serious range over time. He hadn’t expected to get there in one fell swoop. And what happened after that was out of everyone’s control. In the next eight years, Lorenzo’s paintings, when he agreed to sell them, brought astronomical prices, and were in high demand by collectors and museums. Had he been greedy, he could have amassed a vast fortune. And as it turned out, he made one in spite of himself. His reluctance to sell them, and Maylis’s refusal to sell any of the ones he had given to her, drove the prices up even further. And Lorenzo was a very rich man when he died at ninety-one. Theo was eighteen and in his second year at the Beaux-Arts in Paris by then, which his father had urged him to attend.
Lorenzo’s death came as a devastating shock to all, most of all to Maylis and Theo, but to Gabriel as well, who had loved the man for more than twenty years, handled all aspects of business for him, and considered him a close friend, despite the insults Lorenzo had heaped on him unrelentingly till the end. It was an affectionate style of banter they had engaged in since the beginning and that they both took pleasure in. Gabriel had built his career into what it was, and he handled everything for Maylis and her son when Lorenzo died. Lorenzo had been in remarkably good health to the end, considering his age, and had worked harder than ever in his last year, as though he instinctively knew he was running out of time. He left Maylis and Theo a considerable fortune, both in art and in the investments Gabriel had made for him. Maylis was incredulous when Gabriel told her the value of the estate. It had never dawned on her what he was worth. All she had ever cared about was the man she had loved passionately for thirty years.
Despite Gabriel’s entreaties, which Lorenzo had ignored, he died without leaving a will, and by French law, two-thirds of the estate went to Theo as his only legitimate child, and the remaining third to Maylis as his wife. Overnight, she became a very rich woman, particularly with all the paintings he had given her, which formed an important collection. And the rest of his body of work went to Theo, and two-thirds of everything he had in the bank and that Gabriel had invested on his behalf. All of which left Lorenzo’s seven children by his mistresses without a penny from the estate. And after careful discussion with Gabriel, Maylis directed him to cut her financial share from the investments in half, and she gave half of what she had, exclusive of the paintings, to his seven children, who were grateful and amazed. Even Gabriel was amazed by her generous gesture, but she insisted she had enough money, and she knew that several of Luca’s children needed it more than she did. Both she and Theo were set for life, and Theo had twice what she did.
Theo continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts for two years after his father died, and then came home to St. Paul de Vence to live and work. He bought a small house of his own, with a sunny studio. Maylis had moved back into Lorenzo’s old studio and was living in the room upstairs where her son had been born. And the house that Gabriel had convinced Lorenzo to buy for them was standing empty and uninhabited. Maylis said she couldn’t bear to live there without him, in the house where he had died, and felt closer to him in the studio, which Gabriel thought was unhealthy, but he couldn’t convince her otherwise.
Two years after Lorenzo’s death, Maylis was still inconsolable and unwilling to move on. Gabriel came to see her every few weeks. She was only fifty-four by then, but all she wanted to do was stand and stare at Lorenzo’s paintings, and go through them sorrowfully, remembering when he had painted each of them, particularly those he had painted of her when she was young, and when she was pregnant with Theo. It depressed Theo profoundly to see the condition his mother was in, and he and Gabriel talked about it often over dinner at Theo’s house. As a longtime family friend, Gabriel was like a father to him.
Five years after Lorenzo’s death, Maylis was no better, and then finally the deepest part of the wound began to heal, and she started to live again. She had a crazy idea that turned out not to be so crazy after all. She had liked working at the restaurant when she was young, and La Colombe d’Or was a big success. She decided to turn the house Lorenzo had bought for them into a restaurant, and she would show his work there. She had sold only one of his paintings since his death, and had refused all other requests to do so, and didn’t want to let Gabriel sell them at auction. She didn’t need the money, and didn’t want to give up a single one. And for the moment, Theo had no reason to sell his either, so the market for Lorenzo Luca’s paintings was frozen, but their value escalated every year. The refusal to sell increased their worth exponentially, although that wasn’t her goal. But Maylis liked the idea of showing them in their own restaurant, in what had been their home, almost like a museum of his work. And there were six bedrooms she could rent out as hotel rooms, if she ever wanted to, to special people in the art world.