The kitchen smells like home, and that is the cruelest thing about it.
I stand at the wooden counter beside Margaux, my hands moving through the familiar rhythm of chopping vegetables while she stirs the cassoulet.
"You have a good knife hand," Margaux observes, watching me julienne carrots. "Most city girls hack at vegetables like they're committing murder."
"My grandmother taught me," I say, and for once the lie contains a seed of truth. Grand-père insisted I learn every aspect of the estate, including the kitchen.
"She sounds like a sensible woman." Margaux tastes the cassoulet and adds another pinch of salt. "The secret to feeding a harvest crew is never letting them see you panic. Even when you're running low on bread and the butcher delivered half what you ordered, you smile and stretch what you have."
"Has that happened often?"
"More times than I care to count, especially these past two years." She shakes her head, silver hair catching the lamplight. "We've had to stretch everything since the troubles began, but I refuse to let these workers go hungry. They give us their backs and their hands all season long, and the least we can do is fill their bellies properly."
The troubles. Such a gentle word for the devastation I orchestrated.
"The cassoulet smells incredible," I say, steering the conversation away from dangerous territory. "I haven't had a proper one since I was a child."
"Then you're in for a treat, ma petite." Margaux's face softens into warmth that makes my chest ache. "This is my mother's recipe, passed down through four generations of Allemand women. I've been making it for the Côté harvest crew for thirty-seven years now, and not once has anyone left the table hungry."
She hands me a stack of plates, and I begin carrying them to the long wooden table in the adjoining room.
The space transforms as workers file through the door, their voices rising in overlapping conversations that fill every corner with life.
I recognize some faces from the fields: the sunburned student from Lyon who complained about blisters all morning, the weathered local who has apparently worked twenty-three consecutive harvests, the traveling couple from Belgium who laugh at each other's jokes like no one else exists.
"First time at a harvest dinner?" A young woman with paint-stained fingers slides onto the bench beside me. "I'm Céline, by the way. I do seasonal work to fund my art, and Margaux's cassoulet is the reason I keep coming back to Domaine Côté."
"Valérie," I say, the false name scraping my tongue. "And yes, first time."
"You'll never want to eat anywhere else after tonight." Céline reaches across the table for the bread basket, tearing off a chunk. "The food is part of it, but it's really about the people. Estienne and Margaux have built a proper family here, even with everything they've been through."
"Yeah, I know." I keep my expression neutral while guilt coils tighter in my stomach.
"It's a miracle they survived at all," Céline continues, needing no encouragement. "Most estates would have folded within six months."
"How did they survive?" I ask to keep the conversation going, though I already know the answer: barely.
I reach for my wine glass, hoping the movement hides the tremor in my fingers.
"Estienne came back from America and basically worked himself half to death rebuilding everything from scratch." Céline's voice carries genuine admiration. "He sold his apartment in San Francisco, liquidated his retirement accounts, poured every cent into keeping this place alive."
The cassoulet arrives in an enormous ceramic pot, and Margaux begins ladling portions onto plates while Henri circulates with bottles of last year's vintage.
The workers pass bread and pour wine with the ease of ritual, their conversations weaving together into a tapestry of shared experience.
I watch them and feel the weight of my deception pressing against my ribs.
These people have shown me nothing but kindness. And I have lied to every single one of them.
The door opens, and Estienne steps through with mud on his boots and exhaustion in the lines of his face.
But when he sees the gathered workers, the tiredness falls away like a discarded coat.
"Please tell me you saved me some bread," he calls out, and the room erupts in good-natured jeering.
"You're late, boss," shouts the Belgian man. "We've already eaten our weight in cassoulet."
"Then I'll have to settle for my weight in wine." Estienne moves through the room like water finding its natural course, pausing at each cluster of workers to ask about their day.
He remembers names, inquires about the student's exam results, asks after the elderly worker's grandchildren.
He knows them, I realize with a start. He actually knows them.
Frank never learned the names of anyone who worked below the executive level. He called the groundskeeper "you there" for fifteen years.
Estienne reaches the elderly worker at the far end of the table, a man with hands gnarled by decades of vineyard labor, and something passes between them that makes the old man's weathered face break into a smile.
"Your grandfather must be proud of this vintage, Estienne," the old man says, his voice carrying across the quieting room. "I've been working these harvests since before you were born, and this year's grapes have that same quality I remember from the old days."
"That's because you're the one who taught me what to look for, Marcel." Estienne clasps the man's shoulder with obvious affection. "If the vintage is good, it's because I learned from the best."
The old man waves off the compliment, but his eyes shine with pleasure.
I watch the exchange and feel the foundations of my self-justification begin to crack.
I told myself that destroying Domaine Côté was just business. I told myself the numbers on my spreadsheet represented market share, not human lives.
I told myself that childhood memories had no place in corporate strategy, that the boy who taught me about patience was irrelevant to the competitor I needed to eliminate.
I was such a fool.
Estienne's gaze finds mine across the crowded table, and he smiles—open, warm, utterly without suspicion.
I look away, unable to hold that unearned trust.
"You're not eating," Margaux observes, settling onto the bench across from me. "Is the cassoulet not to your taste?"
"It's delicious." I force a forkful into my mouth, though the flavors turn to ash on my tongue. "I was just watching everyone. This is quite a gathering."
"This is what harvest is supposed to be." Margaux surveys the room with visible satisfaction. "Hard work and good food and people who look out for each other."
I do not deserve to sit at this table.
The thought lands with the weight of absolute certainty.
I built my career on destroying places like this, dismantling the very things that make them worth saving.
But as I watch Estienne laugh at something Marcel says, as I watch Margaux refill plates without being asked, as I watch this genuine community that has survived near-bankruptcy through sheer stubborn love—
I will fix this.
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