Six months pregnant and newly widowed, I came to France to bury a man I never really knew.
My husband died speaking French to someone invisible. Philip Grant—except that wasn’t his real name. The man who bought every photograph at my first gallery show, who married me three months later, had erased his entire past. His family. His twin brother. His bloodline. His real name: Beaumont.
I should have left after the funeral. Should have left when I started waking at 3 AM choking on phantom water. When French words I’d never learned spilled from my mouth. When the cold seeped into my bones and wouldn’t leave.
I should have left before Vincent Beaumont became the only thing keeping me alive. My dead husband’s twin brother. The man who looked at me like I was dangerous. Like I was his. Whose hands on my skin felt like betrayal and salvation at once.
Winter closed in. My belly grew rounder. And something in the château pressed closer. Hungry. Patient. Waiting for me to understand what Philip had done. What Vincent was hiding. Why the lake kept calling my name.
At Château Beaumont, love rots softly in the walls.
And some secrets are buried alive.
