“I made my bed—I must lie in it,” she said, echoing her husband’s words.
Her great-aunt gave a low curse in French that made her blush.
“Tatie!” Rosalie said, scandalized.
“You made your bed, oui. But you can change the sheets. You can sleep on the sofa. You can decide not to sleep. You have many choices.” Her dark eyes gleamed beneath the wrinkles as she placed the hot omelet on a china plate in front of her. “But what you must not do is sleep on a cot in your child’s room, accepting a sexless marriage, or crawl back in surrender to your husband’s bed, accepting a loveless one.”
“He’ll never divorce me.”
“Who is speaking of divorce?” As Rosalie ate the omelet, her great-aunt tilted her head. “You told me you received another offer for your land in Sonoma. A very generous one.”
“Yes,” she muttered as she ate. She still hated the thought of selling her parents’ land. But she couldn’t just abandon it forever, lying fallow and forlorn. “They want an answer. I need to decide, one way or the other.”
“Go home,” Odette told her firmly.
Finishing the delicious omelet, Rosalie realized she’d been hungrier than she’d thought. “You want me to come back with you to Mont-Saint-Michel? I’m not sure if I could...”
“No. Home.” Her great-aunt looked at her. “California.”
Go home?
A whoosh of fear went through Rosalie, making her light-headed.
Odette put her wrinkled hand over hers and said very gently, “It’s time.
It was an uncharacteristic display of sentimentality for her fierce great-aunt, and one that Rosalie was still thinking about two hours later, after Odette had departed in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce on her scheduled return to France.
Her aunt had only been at the villa for a few days, but immediately, Rosalie missed her. She felt more alone than she had since her parents had died.
Go home, her aunt had said.
Could she? Could she finally face it?
The last time she’d been to Emmetsville had been for her parents’ funeral. She’d tried to erase that from her memory. The smell of ash in the air. The blurs of anguished faces. The sound of crying, including her own. And worst of all, the awful thump as dirt hit the coffin lids. Her parents had been buried together, for eternity, leaving Rosalie alone.
Cody Kowalski, the neighbor who’d once asked to marry her, had tried to approach her at the graveside service. He’d started to say something, then stopped, red faced. Stammering, I’m so sorry, he’d simply fled.
But Cody didn’t need to say anything. Rosalie’s guilt filled in the blanks. If she’d married him, if she’d stayed in town, she could have saved her parents, as he’d saved his.
Even after all this time, the thought was radioactive inside her.
While the baby took his early-afternoon nap, Rosalie went into the empty study inside the villa. It was a very masculine room, with wood and black leather. Sitting at the dark wood desk, she drew out her laptop computer from the bottom shelf. After opening it, she reread the email from the California corporation offering to buy her family’s land. She should just accept it. They’d send a check to Italy, and she’d never have to go back. Never have to face her fear.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Alex came into the study. “Where have you been? I was...” Then he saw her stricken face. “What’s wrong?”
Heart pounding, she looked up at him. “I need to go home.”
His face shut down. “This is your home.”
She shook her head. “I’ve had another offer for my parents’ land.”
“So?”
“I’ve been putting off the decision.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”