Camille did, too, and she was glad he’d kept it. Sometimes, though, she worried that the upkeep was getting to be too much for him. She didn’t like to think of him all alone in his historic, too-large house, tending his garden and cooking beautiful meals for friends. Though he was retired, Henry often poured samples at the Grand Crew Tasting Room on busy summer evenings. People loved him, with his quick, expert way of pouring and his in-depth knowledge of wine.

Camille liked knowing he got out every once in a while, especially now that his cancer had gone into remission. Still, she worried about what would happen to him when he grew too old to manage the big house.

When she was young, she expected her father to meet a woman and bring her home. She used to envision what it would be like to have a stepmother, which caused her some apprehension. As she grew older, she wanted him to find someone, the way her mom had found Bart, wearing her new happiness like a glistening mantle.

Henry was good-looking even now, at seventy-two. He was stylish and interesting . . . and so very French. He was also a master gardener and an excellent French country cook. He was creative and sure of himself, and totally resourceful. Sometimes when they worked in the kitchen side by side, he would give her a wink and say, “I would make someone a wonderful wife, eh?”

Every few years, she would ask him the same question. “Papa, why have you never remarried?”

After Jace died, her father had asked her the same question. “Why have you never remarried?”

That shut her down entirely. After that conversation, she never asked her father again why he went through life alone. Because now she understood. After Jace was gone, everyone had expected her to move on, including Camille herself. It hadn’t happened. Five years later, there didn’t seem to be room in her heart for anything but grief. It was the one constant in her life, and she knew there was a part of her—admittedly irrational—that didn’t want to let go of her grief, because that would mean losing him completely. Holding on to sadness kept him from fading away forever. She knew—on an intellectual level—that this was not the healthiest way to grieve. She’d gone to months of therapy to arrive at that realization. Yet knowing this hadn’t helped her move on. She had never remarried because she’d come to believe that no love was worth the pain of loss.

After emerging from the fog of shock and grief, she had put together a life for herself and her daughter that made sense—most of the time. Except for those moments when she felt so lonely that her heart felt like a bottomless well.

Her dating life was mostly ridiculous. Her relationships had been short—mercifully short—until Drake Larson. She’d stuck with him for six months before admitting defeat.

People said she was attractive. She had her father’s dark hair and eyes, and her mother’s dramatic cheekbones and full lips. But when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t see a beautiful woman. She saw a woman who worried constantly, who lived inside a sadness she couldn’t manage to climb out of, and who regretted how daring and incautious she had once been, long ago.