The seaside town was the backdrop of her childhood, a cocoon where she felt safe. A refuge. The place where she had made her life in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy.
Yet sometimes it felt like a walled fortress with her stuck inside, unable to escape.
Just for a short while, the small-town festivities took her mind off Julie. She and Billy dropped into various shops and galleries that lined the main street. The art ranged from borderline kitsch to sophisticated originals to purely magical. At the Beholder, owned by her mother’s best friend, Queenie, they munched on almond toffee and checked out the latest offerings—nature scenes printed on copper or aluminum. The gallery occupied what had once been a customs house, dating back to the eighteenth century. The light-flooded hall and grand hearth created the perfect setting for displaying art.
“They’re mesmerizing,” Camille said to Queenie. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Queenie’s young assistant shamelessly flirting with Billy, which was no surprise. He was the kind of good-looking that made a bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses sexy, and women went nuts for him. “I’m not the only one being mesmerized.”
“He’s quite a catch. Your mother and I often wonder why the two of you never—”
“I’d like to meet the artist,” Camille broke in.
“Of course,” said Queenie. “I was hoping you’d stop by tonight. You and Gaston have something in common.”
“Gaston. He’s French?”
“From Saint-Malo. You’re going to love him.” Taking Camille by the hand, she towed her through the milling crowd to a slender, sandy-haired guy in a striped T-shirt and thin neck scarf. “Gaston,” said Queenie. “This is Camille, my best friend’s daughter.”
He looked up, and when he saw her, his eyes flared wide, making her glad she’d decided to shower and put on makeup before coming out tonight. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “Very happy to meet you.”
Camille could tell he was struggling with his English, so she answered him in French. “Your pictures are truly beautiful,” she said. “Congratulations on this amazing show.”
A smile lit his face. “You’re French, too?”
“My father is. He raised me to speak his native language.”
“He must be from the south,” Gaston said. “Provence? I can hear it in every word you speak.”
The southern part of France had a dialect and cadence all its own, comparable to the unique sound of people from the Chesapeake region, a blend of accents and archaic terms.
“All right, you two. Stop being so foreign and cliquish,” Queenie said.
“We are foreign,” Gaston said with a wink.
“Camille works in photography, too,” Queenie said. “Did she tell you?”
Camille could smell matchmaking a mile off. Her mom and friends and half sisters abhorred a single woman’s status the way nature abhorred a vacuum. Sometimes it seemed her mother had recruited the whole town to find her a boyfriend. For no reason she could fathom, her thoughts strayed to Malcolm Finnemore. The ticked-off client. Not boyfriend material.
“Sorry,” she told Gaston in French. “She always tries to throw me together with random men.”
“Not to worry,” he said, also in French. “I’m an artist. Everybody knows it’s dangerous to hook up with an artist.” He grinned and reverted to English. “So. You like photography.”
“Yes.”
“She specializes in old film and prints,” Queenie said. “I keep trying to get her to do a show here at the Beholder.”
One of Queenie’s assistants came over. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “We’ve got a buyer for the big landscape.”
Queenie went straight into action. She pressed her hand against Gaston’s elbow and steered him to the large piece that dominated what had once been the mantel over the hearth.
Camille took the opportunity to pull Billy away from the puppy-eyed shopgirl, and they went back out into the street.
“Hey,” said Billy. “She was cute.”
“All twenty-year-olds are cute.”
He sent her a fake-resentful look. “Since when are twenty-year-olds too young for me?”
“We’re thirty-six,” she reminded him.
“In that case, you should take me up on my offer to marry you. I’d make an honest woman of you.”
“Where to next?” she asked, ignoring the suggestion. “Ooh-La-La?”
“Lead on,” he said. “I haven’t seen your mom in a while. Plus, Rhonda always serves those little crab croquettes. They taste like an angel farted in your mouth.”
“No wonder I’d never marry you. You’re too obnoxious.”
“Let’s get over there before the angel farts are gone.”
The shop looked bright and twinkly and inviting, as always. Located in a vine-clad brick building that used to be a milliner’s shop a century before, it had twin display windows facing the street. As always, the display was gorgeous, a blend of beach style and continental chic. Despite the kitschy shop name, Camille’s mother had exquisite taste, and her half sister, Britt, had a keen eye for design.
Cherisse filled the place with supremely interesting things—unique home goods, sommelier tools, glass rolling pins, printed toile curtains, Clairefontaine writing paper and pens that felt just right in the hand. Camille had practically grown up in the boutique, listening to Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg while helping her mom display a set of crystal knife rests or a collector’s edition of Mille Bornes or the Dutch bike game of Stap op.
In the 1990s, the first lady was photographed in the shop, buying a fabulous set of Laguiole cutlery, and business kicked into high gear. Socialites from D.C. and even a couple of celebrities became regular customers. There were write-ups in national magazines, travel articles, and shopping blogs touting the treasures of Ooh-La-La, designating it as a must-visit destination.
Camille owed her very existence to the shop. Although she never realized it growing up, her parents had married for reasons of cold-blooded commerce. Her father, Henry, was looking for a marriage path to citizenship. Cherisse, who was fifteen years younger, needed a backer for the shop she’d always dreamed of opening. They both wanted a child, desperately. Desperately enough to believe their shared desire for a home and family was a kind of love. What they eventually had to admit—first to themselves privately, then to each other, and finally to Camille—was that no matter how much they loved their daughter, the marriage wasn’t working for them.
When Camille was eight years old, they sat her down and told her just that.
Their divorce was, as the mediator termed it, freakishly civilized. After a couple of years, Camille adjusted to dividing her time between two households. A few years after the divorce, Cherisse met Bart, and that was when Camille finally learned what true love looked like. It was the light in her mother’s eyes when Bart walked into a room. It was the firm touch of his hand in the small of her back. It was a million little things that simply were not there, had never been there, between her mom and dad.
She was grateful that her parents got along. Bart and her father were cordial whenever they encountered each other. But despite their efforts, the decades-old breakup of her family felt like an old wound that still ached sometimes. When she thought about Julie, she wondered which was harder, to have your family taken apart by divorce, or to lose a parent entirely.
Cherisse, at least, had thrived in her new life. She and Bart had two girls together, Britt and Hilda. Ooh-La-La annexed the building next door, turning it into its sister property, Brew-La-La, the best café in town. All through her high school years, Camille had minded the shop while her two younger half sisters played in the small garden courtyard.
These days, Camille worked behind the scenes with the bookkeeper, Wendell, an insatiable surfer and skateboarder who financed his passion by keeping the books. Despite his shaggy hair and surfer duds, he was smart, intuitive, and meticulous. The sales staff consisted of Rhonda, who was also an amazing cook, and Daphne, a transplant from upstate New York with a mysterious past.
Britt was the resident merchandiser and display designer. Cherisse was in charge of “flying and buying.” Two times a year, she went to Europe to find the lovely offerings that had put the shop on the map. Before losing Jace, Camille used to accompany her on buying trips, soaking in the sights of Paris and Amsterdam, London and Prague. It was a mother-daughter treasure hunt, those unforgettable days.