“Then you should definitely show him,” Britt said. “But be honest. You could contact any number of experts, and yet you thought of him.”

“He’s the only expert I know on postwar France,” Camille protested. Flustered, she changed the subject. “Mom, did Papa ever talk about Sauveterre?”

Cherisse shook her head. “Not so much. I knew of the family property. He said there was a tenant with a long-term lease, and we never really discussed it further.”

“How do you not discuss something like that with your husband?” asked Britt. “If Wylie kept something like that from me, I’d wonder what else he was hiding.”

Cherisse sighed. “Henry didn’t keep it from me. He had so little to say about it. On one of our trips to France for business, I suggested a visit to Bellerive, but he looked at me like I was crazy. Said it would be a total waste of time—a tiny village in the Var. He said we’d be totally bored.” She sighed again. “Your father is a singular man. Intensely private. His heart was always a mystery to me. I was young and naive enough to believe we’d grow closer as time went on, but instead we grew apart. I don’t believe I ever really knew him.”

“He’s not a mystery,” Camille said. “He’s just . . . Papa.” She gazed at Lisette’s picture. “And he had a mother he never knew. She looks so sad. It makes me sad to know she never got to see her son grow up.”

“It’s awful that he was born an orphan,” Britt said. “Did it mess with his head to be raised by his aunt?”

“He told Julie and me that his aunt Rotrude wasn’t kind,” Camille said. “She resented him because she was a war widow with a child of her own, and Papa—her baby nephew—was the legal owner of Sauveterre. When he turned eighteen, they could no longer afford to pay the taxes, so he leased the place out to a family called the Oliviers, and Rotrude had to move out. Papa came to America, and he never went back.”

Cherisse signaled the barista for another round of coffee. “All right, ladies. Let’s get down to business. Summer is right around the corner. Summer hours at the shop start next week. It’s going to be our best season yet.”

Camille knew her mother wasn’t exaggerating. Business was thriving at Ooh-La-La, thanks to the bustle of sun-seeking tourists, well-heeled locals, and power brokers from D.C. stealing away for the weekend. The wealthy come-heres had built luxurious summer places amid the courthouse towns and fishing villages of the peninsula. Camille had grown up observing their ways. They had always seemed like a breed apart, driving their European cars along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge or the over-and-underwater highway crossing of the Hampton Roads, where aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines were nearly as common as skipjack watermen dredging for oysters while under sail.

The merchants and restaurateurs of Bethany Bay were all too happy to cater to the expensive needs of folks from Philadelphia and New York, offering sailing trips and shore dinners, fishing charters, and luxury home goods from the boutique.