“That fucker.” Marcel really did know how to push her buttons. “Does he have health issues?”

“He had a heart attack, but that was years ago. He’s changed his diet since then, cut back on his hours…actually, that’s when he promoted Marcel’s father to take over the finance side of the business.”

“But you’re still worried about him.”

“I am, but it’s a long story.” She brought a silver vat into the kitchen, set it on the counter, and plugged it in.

Given how much she didn’t want to talk about it, he figured it was important. “We can talk while you work.”

“Well…” She gazed out the window, as if gathering her thoughts. “So, up until I was fourteen, I went to boarding school in Switzerland.”

“Okay.”

“I was a very good girl, but the price of that was closing my eyes and pretending to sleep while the bad girls snuck out at night. It meant walking past them and ignoring my curiosity to find out about their latest scheme.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yes, it doesn’t end well. The bad girls wore eyeliner and rolled up the waistbands of their skirts, they smoked cigarettes and had sex in the boat house with the boys from the school across the lake. I just really wanted to know what it felt like to be bad. So, over spring break, instead of going home like I always did, this time I stayed in town. For a whole week, I was deliciously bad. I smoked pot and drank. We’d take the train into Zurich and hit the clubs with our fake IDs. It was crazy and awful.”

“Awful?”

“It didn’t wind up being nearly as fun as I’d hoped. I didn’t like drinking. Hated pot. The first night in the club was fun, the second night was…less fun, but by the fifth night? I was bored out of my mind.”

“So, what happened?”

“The night everyone came back, we snuck out and met the boys in the boat house. It was cold, so they built a fire.”

“There was a fireplace in the boathouse?”

“No, they made a bonfire.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. Hang on. We drank, got wasted, and then everybody started hooking up. I’d had enough at that point, so I left. Went back to my room and went to sleep. Well, a couple hours later, the lights were on, and people were screaming and crying. The boat house was in flames. One of the girls had third degree burns all over her body. We found out a few days later that one of the boys died.”

“Jesus. That’s terrible.”