Precious Gifts by Danielle Steel

Author:Danielle Steel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Right up until the moment Joy and Juliette left for St. Paul de Vence for their meeting with Sophie Marnier and her mother, Véronique was still of two minds about going with them. The three of them had breakfast on her terrace, with birds fluttering in and out, and the delicious breakfast the hotel served. She decided not to join them, and then when she saw them leaving, she changed her mind at the last minute.

“I’ll come!” Véronique said hastily, grabbed her handbag, and ran out the door with them. She was wearing white jeans, a white blouse, and flat pink shoes for their exploration of the château after the meeting. And she jumped into the car with the two girls. They had a driver and they knew that St. Paul de Vence was half an hour away, and the little town where the château was was just a few minutes farther.

Véronique sat in the back of the car next to Juliette, looked out the window, and said not a word. Joy was in the front seat, chatting with the driver. And Véronique was thinking back to the day she’d bought the château at Paul’s insistence. He had even talked about their moving there at first. He had been in love with the beautiful old eighteenth-century château. Véronique had loved it, too, but restoring it and then maintaining it was a lot of work. The project had been expensive, but Paul had been crazy about the place, so Véronique thought it was worth it. She and the girls stopped going there when she gave it to him in the divorce, and Paul never took the children there again. He spent time there in the summer with friends, and eventually stopped going entirely, particularly once the house needed to be maintained. He just boarded it up, and hired local caretakers to keep an eye on it for him and do minor repairs. The house had been the victim of deferred maintenance for twenty years, and now it had become the responsibility of the girls, or whoever bought it from them. For their sake, Véronique hoped they would put it on the market soon, to avoid it becoming a burden on them. It made no sense in any of their lives. It hadn’t made much sense in her and Paul’s life, even as a family, but even less now in theirs. And Véronique didn’t want to invest in maintaining or repairing it for them. The Château de Brize was a money pit and always had been.

They drove slowly through St. Paul de Vence and saw the main square. Old people were sitting under the trees and talking, in front of the local restaurant. And Véronique could see the familiar stone path that wended its way up a steep hill to the church. It was a few feet wide and only open to foot traffic in the medieval town. And then they drove through it to Biot, a few kilometers away. It still had old fortifications, and was a pretty little town.

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