26. Soit Dit en Passant

CHAPTER26

Soit Dit en Passant

Remy

When he drove into the back drive of the graceful, oppressively beautiful mansion that was his childhood home and stopped, having given the kids the plan while the staff were assessing his father at the hospital, Remy had barely put the car into park before both Manon and Sah peeled out.

Remy turned immediately to his father in the passenger seat.

“Hang on a second, Dad,” he said.

Guillaume had his hand on the door handle ready to step out, but he twisted to Remy, still holding the ice pack they gave him at the hospital on his face. No broken bones, which with that orb and at his age was a miracle. But they told him to keep that pack on as long as he could take it.

And apparently, his father had developed a high threshold for pain, because it had to be cold as fuck, but he hadn’t stopped icing it since he sat in the kitchen with Manon.

Remy felt his lips thin.

Guillaume looked to the back of the Denali, noticed the kids were long gone, and his eyes darted to Remy.

“Son—”

“I’d like to ask Sah to bunk with Yves for the rest of our trip. Wyn and I’ll move into my old room. And we’ll move you into the guest suite.”

Guillaume took the pack from his face and turned fully to his son.

“Remy, please—”

“I’m not telling you to do that, I’m asking you to think on it. And when I say that, I mean please consider it.”

“Your mother and I have been together for a very long time, fiston,” Guillaume said quietly.

“She’s not too old, or too sick, to learn there are consequences to her actions,” Remy replied.

A warmth swept into his father’s face, along with a sadness, and Remy’s stomach plummeted.

“It is who we are, Remy,” Guillaume whispered.

“By protecting her, she took you from me,” Remy announced.

Guillaume’s body ticked.

“I want you back,” Remy decreed.

Wet hit is father’s eyes, sparkling there, and that was when Remy’s throat closed.

He had to clear it before he went on, “We’ll move her to Phoenix. We’ll look after her. We’ll make sure she has company. Is comfortable. She won’t be alone at her end, I promise you that, Dad. I vow that to you. You can come visit. You can be with her when her time draws near. In the meantime, you find happiness in your life. And I want to meet Estelle again before we leave. I want Wyn to meet her. If she’s up to it, the kids. And I want us seeing each other more. I want my children to get to know their grandfather. Their real grandfather. Not who you had to be because of the way she is.”

It took a second and some clearing of his own throat before Guillaume responded.

“You must know that, although these things you say are most beautiful, I cannot abandon your mother this way. Not now.”

“And I can’t leave you to what’s happening in that house,” Remy retorted.

“Today was bad. She’s distraught. Not herself. She’s dying, Remy.”

“It’s a goddamn miracle she didn’t do worse damage, Dad,” Remy shot back. “I threw that sphere at a bird bath and the concrete broke apart. If she’d hit you two inches up, caught you on your temple…”

He couldn’t finish.

“As I said, today was bad, Remy. I’m usually far more careful so she can’t do such damage.”

Wrong thing to say.

And Remy communicated that in the only way he could, considering he was so angry he wasn’t able to speak, so he growled.

“Son, I’ll be fine,” Guillaume assured.

“I’m not leaving you to that,” Remy repeated.

His dad shook his head. “You have to go back to your life. Reuniting it with your wife. Your concern touches me, fiston, but the dramatics of this are not the norm. I will be fine. She will be fine. It all will be fine.”

“Then we’re coming back far more often.”

Guillaume’s lips tipped up and he replied, “I won’t argue about that.”

Remy held his father’s gaze a moment, debating how far to push this and deciding not to push it any further because odds were he’d get nowhere, and more importantly his father had definitely had enough that morning when it came to his mom.

Instead, he’d push for something else.

“And Estelle?” he asked.

Before Guillaume could stop it, his eyes lit with excitement, but his mouth said, “I don’t think your mother—”

“This isn’t about Mom. This is about the woman you love.”

And then, Remy watched in shock as his father’s upper lip trembled.

He’d never seen his dad betray that type of emotion.

Not once.

Not in fifty-four years.

It took a moment for him to lock it down before he replied, “I will call her.”

“Good,” Remy grunted.

“The children too?” Guillaume inquired. “Are you sure?”

“I am absolutely sure I want my kids to meet the woman who has loved my father for years.”

Guillaume began to look doubtful. “Perhaps you should talk to Wyn about this first.”

At that, Remy pulled his phone out of his back pocket, opened up his texts, and before he read them out loud, he said, “From Wyn. First, ‘Melly needs a raise.’ Then, ‘And we’re adopting her, even if it’s unofficially.’ After that, ‘We need to talk about meeting Estelle, honey.’ And then, ‘I’m pretty sure Manon and Sah will track her down and introduce themselves before we leave if we don’t see to it.’” He looked again to his dad. “Is that enough?”

“I love you with my whole soul.”

Remy’s head jerked like he’d been punched in the face.

But Guillaume was not finished.

“We are losing your mother, but I will be happy when I slip away, because I know I made a son who is the man I wanted to be.”

“Stop, Dad,” Remy said, his voice hoarse.

His father didn’t stop.

“I was not faithful, to either of them. I cannot tell you how much I fretted that I’d bragged of that to you, and you took it in and became me, and that is why you lost Wyn.”

“It isn’t, Papa, I told you that,” Remy whispered.

“I know you know this, Remy, you have children, but please, understand it coming from me to you right now. I don’t need to be happy. I just need to know you are.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Remy croaked, reaching long and catching his dad behind his neck, pulling the man to him, and then wrapping both arms around him.

Guillaume’s arms went around Remy too.

They hugged and held on, and it took some effort for Remy to get his shit together. He felt the same coming from his father.

But when they were both breathing easier, carefully, Remy let him go.

Guillaume ducked his head as he pulled out his handkerchief.

Remy did not hide it as he rubbed the wet from his cheeks.

“I’m hungry, and I’m sure Melly has deftly switched breakfast to brunch. It isn’t quite as easy to make it lunch. So we must get inside,” his father shared.

Remy nodded, sniffed sharply and then got out of the car.

That was a lot. It meant the world. He was keen to tell Wyn about it.

But he should have known he and his dad couldn’t have it without his mother fucking it up.

She did this by sitting at the dining room table with the rest of his family, like nothing was amiss, like he hadn’t just had his father’s face X-rayed because she’d very nearly crushed his jaw.

And she did it by stating the minute Guillaume and Remy strolled into the room, “Finally. I’ve asked them all to show some manners and wait for you. But we’re famished.”

Remy stood stone-still.

Guillaume shifted closer to him.

Wyn began to rise from her chair at the table.

Sabre’s face turned red.

Manon went pale.

Yves placed both hands palm down on the table like he needed that control, or he didn’t know what his hands would do.

And then Remy turned to his father, gently tugged the ice pack from his fingers, but it was not gentle when he tossed it on the table.

It slid across, upending the Waterford saltshaker, skittering the pepper, smearing the butter, glancing off the coffee pot and coming to a stop about a foot from his mother’s place setting.

“We were at the hospital, Mom, so Dad could get an X-ray on his jaw after you attacked him, and when we return, that’s what you have to say?” Remy asked with lethal calm.

She, too, slightly paled, but she also opened her mouth.

“Your father is—”

That was when it broke.

Years…

Years of holding it together tenuously. It just…

Snapped.

“Shut the fuck up!” Remy roared.

Colette bounced back in her chair, her hand coming to her Hermès-scarved neck.

Wyn got up from her seat.

“Remy,” Guillaume murmured, getting even closer as the door to the kitchen opened and Melly came into the room.

“He wants to be with you to your end,” Remy told her. “Right now, that’s his call. It won’t be if what happened yesterday or today ever happens again, Mom. I mean the physical abuse and the verbal abuse. The shouting. The foul shit that spews from your mouth. Definitely you hitting him with anything, even if it’s just your hand. If it happens again, I’m flying out, I’m collecting you, I’m taking you back to Phoenix, putting you in an apartment, and then waiting for you to die.”

“Honey,” Wyn said urgently, and just as urgently making her way to him. “Let’s step outside.”

He glanced at his wife and said, “No.” Then he looked back to his mother.

“I will not have you talk to me this way in my own home,” Colette declared.

“It’s my home too, Mom, as well as Dad’s, and I won’t have you pulverizing his bones in it,” he shot back.

Colette stood, slowly, regally, and shook her head in a feminine way to get the hair away from her face before she stated, “I believe you need to call the airlines and see if you can be on an earlier flight.”

“I believe that’s not your call,” Remy retorted.

Colette looked to his father.

“Guillaume.”

It was a demand.

Handle this.

“Je vais bien,” Guillaume replied.

(I’m fine.)

She knew what those words meant, and she glared at her husband.

“Soit dit en passant,” Guillaume kept going.

(By the way.)

“And I have not seen my family for three years, my love, and we have only one day left with them. Therefore, I am not going to send them home now,” he continued. “So if you cannot be civil to Remy, perhaps Melly can bring you a tray in the mural room where you can eat.”

“Civil…to Remy?” she asked. “Your son just raised his voice to me.”

Guillaume didn’t reply.

Not verbally.

He moved to his chair, pulled it out, looking at Melly, and he said, “I’m sorry for the delay, ma chérie. But we’re ready for brunch now.”

Sabre reached out and righted the saltshaker.

Manon used her napkin to wipe up the butter.

Melly disappeared into the kitchen.

“Do you need more ice for your jaw, Pépé?” Yves asked.

“I’m fine, Yves, but thank you,” Guillaume answered, snapping his napkin in front of him and placing it on his lap.

Colette stood through all of this, glaring at her husband.

Wyn took Remy’s hand and led him to his place at the table, the only person in a middle seat. Yves and Sabre flanked Colette, Manon and Wyn flanked his father.

“Pour me a cup of coffee, will you, Sah?” Remy asked.

Sabre reached for the pot as Remy slid his cup and saucer toward his son.

“I cannot—” Colette began, cut herself off when Melly appeared, and then demanded, “I’ll have a tray in my bedroom, Melisande. At your earliest convenience.”

She then stormed out of the room.

Guillaume seemed tense and couldn’t hide his concern, but he didn’t watch her go.

“So, Pépé, the tailgate is out and probably the ghost tour too, so we decided we’re doing a Star Wars movie marathon, and you gotta tell us where we’re starting. Did you see the originals?” Sabre asked.

“No, Sabre, I—” Guillaume began.

Manon leaned into her grandfather, exclaiming, “That’s impossible, Pépé! You haven’t met Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie?” She then turned her attention to her brothers and declared, “Ohmigod, now we have, like twenty hours of movies to watch.”

“Maybe we should do some select Star Trek,” Yves suggested.

“Maybe we should just boil it down to Galaxy Quest and then get dudded up and go to one of Emeril’s restaurants for dinner,” Sabre suggested.

“I vote that one,” Wyn put in.

“Did you bring another dudded-up outfit to wear?” Yves asked his brother.

“Am I my mother’s son?” Sabre asked in return.

“You are but that doesn’t mean you listen to me,” Wyn stated.

“I do when you talk about looking hot,” Sabre shot back.

Wyn laughed.

So did Manon.

Yves grinned broadly.

But Remy looked to his father.

He was smiling at Sabre, his face maybe not relaxed but the humor was genuine.

He also felt his son’s eyes, so his focus shifted to Remy.

“What do you say, Dad? A sci-fi spoof and see if we can get in at the Delmonico?” Remy asked.

“The Delmonico, Remy? There’s no way we can get a reservation at this late date,” Wyn said.

“Ne t’en fais pas, I will find us a booking somewhere we will all enjoy,” Guillaume assured as Melly returned, arms laden with food.

“Damn, Melly, why didn’t you say you were bringing in a trough?” Sabre clipped, jumping from his chair and moving to help her.

“It is my job, Sah,” she replied as he took the massive bowl of sausage gravy from her.

“This weighs a ton and I’m about to shove my whole face in it,” Sabre said, staring down at the bowl.

“If you do that, Sabre Gastineau, I’m never cooking for you again,” Melly warned.

Sah jolted, muttering, “Right,” and he put the bowl on the table.

That was when Remy heard a chuckle from his dad.

He again looked that way.

And again, saw his father’s face not exactly relaxed.

But the humor was absolutely genuine.

Remy would take it for now.

Because it was good.

And because he had no choice.