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3 3 ANDREA DUPREE LINEAGE T heir hosts in the south of France, the Clayburns, had asked Roger and his wife not to bring the babies with them. But Malcolm was only two-and-a-half, and Travis just six months. Roger and Claire felt they didn’t have much choice. Or Claire felt that way. Roger didn’t quite know what to think lately , buffeted as he’d been by Claire’s erratic moods. Rages. They weren’t connected to anything rational or predictable, and they had come on because she’d acquired an illness after having baby Travis. Graves’ disease. An incurable autoimmune disorder that launched antibodies at her thyroid, messing up her metabolism and her ability to think. So she was skinny and crazy. “Thomas and Jane are going to freak,” Claire said as they collected their baggage at the airport in Nice. Roger nodded. They surely would, but he didn’t want to talk about it. “Maybe they’ll understand,” she said. Roger pulled one of their bags from the conveyor. Oversized, of course. A sharp stitch ran up the side of his body as he lifted the ten-ton beast. Another thing to try to fit into the car they’d reserved for the windy, thirty-mile trip from Nice to the village. Roger was leading a course on genealogy again; he’d taught here two years ago, part of the cultural, diy programming the Clayburns loved to “curate” for their wealthy expatriate friends. “Like the salons put on by Gertrude Stein, only with better wine,” Thomas had joked when he initially contacted Roger. Roger had hesitated when Thomas called about reprising the class—they’d just had Travis—but Thomas said Jane and her friends were clamoring for it. They would up his fee and cover his airfare. And they would put him and Claire up in their luxurious rental flat overlooking the rocky hillsides that slanted down to the Mediterranean. Like last time, they would be treated like royalty. As repayment, Roger would betray his hosts by bringing the babies when they’d specifically asked him colorado review 4 not to. There had been other betrayals, too, but he would not stop to think about those now. In the rental lot, Roger stared at a car not much larger than the plastic one Malcolm pedaled around their tiny backyard. The luggage would not fit in the trunk. Seeing their predicament, the lot attendant hurried over. “You upgrade to this.” He pointed to a minivan. Oh, Christ. A minivan! But Roger assented and soon they were strapped into a boxy Renault outfitted with two rental car seats that were far from regulation, but Roger frankly didn’t care. Claire read the directions aloud from the passenger seat as Travis fussed in the back. Neither child had so much as closed an eye the entire trip from Denver to Frankfurt to Nice, not even the baby—a feat of wakefulness Roger hadn’t thought possible. “There’s a difference between people who have kids and those who don’t,” Claire said. “Jane doesn’t understand. And Thomas forgets, since his are all grown.” Roger decided not to engage. Jane embodied an unforgivable combination of wealth, refinement, and stunning beauty, and Claire, who underestimated herself as merely pretty, took regular jabs at her. The digs were worse now, as everything was. “They’re just worried about lawsuits,” Claire continued. “They think Malcolm will climb up on the windowsill and fall from the flat or something. We’ll write up a waiver. That’s what we’ll do.” Roger focused on the landscape, unbelievably blue vistas of sea with a ring of white sand along its shores. Out the other window, rolling hills patched with orchards and vineyards. Soon they turned off the main highway and began the slow ascent to the village. Last time they were here, Thomas informed them that October was brush-burning season in these hills and, true enough, a smoky scent permeated through the open windows of the minivan. The road braided into the hills in sharp Ss, and at every blind curve Roger worried they would Jane embodied an unforgivable combination...

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