Chapters (22)
“We’ll have your property delivered to you tomorrow,” he promised her. “I’m sorry today was so traumatic.”
“It’s all right, if it leads to your catching them and putting an end to this,” she said in a tired voice. She was exhausted. Guy Thomas knew that even if they did catch them, one day there would be others. She would have to be carefully protected forever. It was the legacy her husband had left her, along with his business and his fortune.
As promised, her crates and boxes arrived the next day in good order. She put all the wooden crates with the art in one of the guest rooms to deal with after the holidays. She carried most of Axel’s boxes up to his room herself, and supervised the others that were too heavy for her. It felt like her final act of motherhood for him, like his funeral with the small pine casket sixteen months before. They were acts she had never wanted to have to do for him. She wondered what the new owners of the château would do with the stars on his ceiling that she had put up with so much love and care, according to the real constellations. He had loved it. She hoped they’d leave them there, just as a tiny souvenir of him, the little boy who had lived there, the last of the Pasquiers. The family name had died with him.