My Grape Escape Read Online Free Page A

forehead.
    “ Non ,” I said and pulled him down beside me so I could nestle my head in the crook of his shoulder. “I was just thinking about your mother and your grandmother down there. Did you even notice they were fighting?”
    “ That wasn’t fighting.”
    “What constitutes fighting around here?”
    Franck considered this for a moment. “When things start to get thrown around.”
    “Doesn’t conflict make you feel uncomfortable?”
    Franck stared at me in amazement. “ Bien sûr que, non . If everyone got along all the time life would be unbearably boring. Besides, there are six of us in the house right now – what did you expect?”
    "Wouldn't it be great to have our own little place here?” I mused. “We could come and visit and enjoy everyone without living in each other’s pockets.”
    I remembered the forty thousand dollars from my grandfather. We would always want to return to Burgundy to visit with Franck’s family and our friends. Burgundy was in Franck’s blood and it had filtered into mine as well. Sometimes we would want to come for long periods of time…
    I touched the stone wall of Franck’s room and thought about how long ago those stones has been stacked. Centuries ago. I loved the old buildings in France. Most of them had been built before the Europeans even reached the coast in my part of the world. A flame of something forgotten ignited in me.
    “Maybe we should start looking for a little place of our own here.” I lifted my head to get a better view of my husband’s reaction.
    Franck gave a start but after considering this idea for a while he leaned over and kissed me back against the duvet.
     
     

     
     
    “I found something!” Franck came rushing in through the front gate just before dinner the next day, followed by his father whom he had picked up on his way home from Beaune.
    His triumph rendered him oblivious to the deep freeze that had settled like hoarfrost around the kitchen table. As far as I could tell, the Cherry Pit Incident had never been fully resolved; just five minutes ago Mémé had criticized how Michèle always let Franck’s little brother Emmanuel-Marie have ketchup on his pasta.
    Emmanuel-Marie, with all the perfidy of a nine-year-old, got up to go to the bathroom and took the ketchup bottle with him. Franck’s mother had conceived him twenty years after Franck, following a brutal treatment for a rare and deadly form of cancer that struck her at thirty-five. According to the doctors, her disease should have killed her, not to mention rendered her sterile several times over. During her illness and treatment Michèle had travelled to Lourdes and prayed to the Virgin Mary for help. The pugnacious towhead emerging from the bathroom, pulling up his shorts with one hand and clutching his bottle of Heinz with the other, was tangible proof that those prayers to the Virgin Mary were answered.
    Franck flipped open the pad of paper he had been carrying. I glanced over but couldn’t decipher any of his scrawls.
    “On my way down to Beaune I drove around a little,” he began. “I saw a sign in Marey-les-Fussey in front of a house for sale. Maybe two houses actually, on an incredible piece of land looking on to the vineyards.”
    My heart started to beat a little faster - from excitement rather than panic for a change.
    “I’ve got the number for the real estate agent. From the sign it looked like he was from Châlon. It was the only house I saw for sale, and the fact that it is in Marey-les-Fussey…” Franck caught my eye. “I believe it’s a sign.”
    No-one at the table rolled their eyes at the talk of signs. Mémé and Michèle both nodded and waited to hear more. Signs and divine intervention were par for the course for Franck’s family; Emmanuel-Marie was sitting right beside us, after all.
    I hadn’t been brought up to pray to the Virgin Mary, or anyone else, but now I realized that Franck had most likely been praying to her since last night for the