“We must be the only guests,” I whisper to Iris as we take our seats at the dinner table.

“Jacques said the hotel doesn’t officially open until June,” says Iris, tucking her napkin into the collar of her grandfather shirt. “He must have liked the cut of our jib. I certainly like the cut of his.”

I should feel bad. Ordinarily I would. We appear to be taking advantage of Jacques, who perhaps finds it difficult to say no. Especially to such a sorry troupe of travelers as we must surely have appeared when we arrived.

But I don’t feel bad. I feel cocooned. As if I’m in a bubble, suspended in a place that’s out of time somehow. Apart. Where reality has no weight.

It’s a peculiar feeling.

My being a vegetarian does not seem to faze Jacques who, as far as I can make out, both cooks and serves the meal, for I can detect no hint of any other staff in the château.

I eat stuffed red peppers, green salad, artichokes in garlic and butter, potatoes baked in their jackets—all from the vegetable garden and greenhouse, Jacques tells us—slices of homemade sourdough bread smeared with black olive tapenade, chocolate fondant with orange zest and vanilla ice cream, slabs of thick, soft Brie, peppermint tea, and heavy, crystal goblets of dense, earthy red wine that Jacques produces from the cellar, the bottle shrouded in layers of dust.

It is a testament to how good the food is that the three of us barely speak until we have finished every last morsel. I should feel uncomfortably full and jaded, but I do not. Instead, I feel light and full of energy. Not the kind of energy that fuels housework. A different kind. A kind that might lend itself to something frivolous. It might be the dress. The silky caress of it.

But Dad is tired, his head nodding onto his chest and the lids of his eyes lowering like blinds.

“Will we take the last of the wine out to the garden?” Iris asks, using the edge of the table to help her stand. “It’s a beautiful night.”

I look through the window. The night is bright from the light of an almost full moon and a vast scattering of stars.

“I should get Dad to bed,” I say, coaxing him awake with my hand cupped on his bony shoulder. I remember Mam asking him to lift Hugh and me onto his shoulders so that we wouldn’t miss any of the floats at the Saint Patrick’s day parade. I remember that feeling, of being lifted off the ground, my skinny legs dangling down the wide expanse of my father’s chest, and the ground below feeling like a long way down.

Jacques, clearing the table, says, “Iris is right, Terry. You should take the night air. It is better than a digestif, in this part of France.” He continues clearing the table as he speaks. “I have a monitor you can borrow, if you like. So you will hear your father if he wakes.”