To say I was uncomfortable to hear my father speak like that about a woman was an understatement. The fact that it wasn’t my mother made it even worse. I stood up and left him alone in his study with his bottles and his memories.

I’d always suspected that my mother’s attempts to be the perfect wife had to do with that fiery woman my father could never forget.

I looked at my reflection one last time before joining the guests downstairs. Hopefully, my father had invited Juan. I hadn’t seen him since the incident with Silvia and I was hoping for an opportunity to apologize for my rudeness. If he liked the way I looked tonight, I might be able to earn his forgiveness more easily.

There were about a hundred guests scattered throughout the foyer and the inside patio of the house. My father took my hand at the bottom of the stairs. He looked jubilant. I hadn’t seen that proud look in his eyes before and having his attention was intoxicating.

“Ma chère, there’s someone I want you to meet,” Papá said into my ear as I waved to Silvia at a distance and searched for Juan among the faces. “Laurent, je présente ma fille, Angélique.”

“Enchanté,” the man said.

Good thing I was holding on to my father’s forearm. In front of me stood a monument of a man and a true aristocrat. He kissed my hand, making my stomach float.

“Laurent has just arrived from France. He’s a novelist.”

A novelist? How sophisticated!

“I’ve never met an author before,” I said in my botched French. I didn’t speak it as fluently as I should have, considering my father was French. But it was his fault because he spoke in Spanish most of the time. “What is your novel about?”

“Oh, many things,” he said, “love, lust, starvation, war.”

I’d always had a gift with people. I knew exactly how to engage them in conversation. All I had to do was ask them about themselves. It hadn’t failed once. I used my gift with Laurent.

It only took a few questions before the Frenchman told me all about himself. He was an artist, he explained, and the medium was irrelevant as long as he could express himself. He was a big fan of an innovative (fancy word!) new painter named Henri Émile Benoît Matisse. According to Laurent, there were exciting artistic movements emerging all over Europe.