Page 2 of The Good Girl Effect (Salacious Legacy #1)

Camille

Ten months later

" B onjour, Marguerite," I call pressing open the door of the bookstore. After dropping my bag under the counter, I stretch my arms over my head and move toward the aisles.

Working at the used bookstore doesn’t pay much, but it’s enough to cover my half of the rent at the flat that I split with an obnoxious and annoying woman who works at the boulangerie.

And I like working with books. At least with them, I can escape this mundane life for a moment.

The measly pay is enough to get me by until I can get out of this village for real and go somewhere better.

Maybe London. Maybe Paris. Maybe Rome. But it’s not like a lonely girl with no parents, no money, no education, and no skill can just pick up and leave the village where she grew up.

My stubborn curiosity and poor drawing skills wouldn’t get me far.

So until then, I’m stuck at this boring job in this boring village, living this boring life.

It takes me a few hours to get the cart full of new donations put away, but to be honest, I’m going slow on purpose. If I hurry, then I won’t have anything to do, and hardly anyone comes in now that summer is over, so if I finish too quickly, then I’ll really be bored.

Marguerite is at the checkout desk now, handling customers while I peruse the books in the romance section because they have the best covers and titles.

After peeking around to make sure no one is watching, I slide a book from the shelf.

The spine is pink, and the text is bubbly, and on the cover are a pair of lips blowing bubble gum.

Blondie shouts “Call Me” in my ear as I pull a pen out of my back pocket.

After another quick glance around, I flick open the front cover of the book and draw a tiny black cat with a spiky mullet blowing a bubble on the inside.

It makes me chuckle as I finish the doodle before closing the book and sliding it back into place.

The drawings are just something I’ve always done. My father used to call them my little signature. He’d find them all over the house when I was young, shouting at me from the kitchen when I’d forget the rules: no furniture, no walls, no floor.

“Tu as encore fait des bêtises, Camille,” he used to shout. You’ve been causing trouble again, Camille.

But he’d still find tiny black cats or snakes or turtles popping up on a dinner plate or the leaves of a plant. He wasn’t really mad. He was never really mad.

I smile at the memory as I walk down the aisle.

My pen goes back into my pocket as I run my fingers along the shelf. I don’t know what it is about the next book that catches my eye. It’s an old one that hasn’t been picked up in years; I know every untouched book on these shelves by heart now. But something about it grabs my attention today.

It has a dark blue leatherette spine with the title Le Passeport , which is a boring and strange title for a romance novel. But then I get the idea to draw a gorilla with a suitcase and bucket hat on the inside, so I slip the book from the top shelf.

As I thumb open the front cover to find the title page, something falls from between the pages and lands on the floor. I put the pen back in my pocket as I lean down to retrieve the beige envelope. I stare at it curiously, turning it over to see the messy, scrawled handwriting on the front.

It’s addressed to a woman—Emmaline Rochefort.

The top of the envelope is ripped open, so as the song in my ears changes to something slower and more romantic, I put the book back on a random shelf and peer into the envelope. Inside, there is a folded piece of paper and a small square photo.

It feels like an invasion of privacy, but I can’t help myself as I pull them both out.

Flipping the photo over, I stare down at the couple smiling back at me.

It’s a young, handsome man with his arm around the shoulder of a beautiful brunette woman.

They’re both grinning, cheeks pulled tight from ear to ear and bright, pearly white teeth showing.

They appear so happy it’s almost hard to look at them. Two very real people in what looks like the throes of a blissful moment together. One small photograph has captured that, so now it’s like they’re inviting me to be a part of the moment too.

Tearing my eyes from the photo, I look at the letter next. It’s folded beige paper with scribblings all over it, from the front to the back.

At the very top, it says, Dear Emmaline .

The letter is scrawled in messy English.

I can’t stop thinking about you , it starts. But I stop reading there. It would be an invasion to keep reading.

Turning it over, I find the closing sentence sweetly signed: Love, Jack .

“Camille,” Marguerite calls from the front of the store.

I quickly shove the letter, envelope, and photo into the pocket of my jacket before I answer, “J’arrive!” Then I dash up to the front of the store, and Marguerite hands me a list of tedious tasks.

For the rest of my shift, I think about the letter and the couple. How did the envelope end up in a book in our small used bookstore? Who still writes love letters anyway?

The temptation to read it is almost too much to resist. And every free moment I have, I pull it from my pocket and glimpse another line.

I miss you so much.

I never expected to fall in love with you.

Please come back.

On my lunch break, I walk down to the bakery to buy a quiche. My rude roommate, Ingrid, is working, and she barely acknowledges me as she tosses me my lunch.

I don’t reply as I take it and walk out the door. On the table outside, I pull out the letter. Instead of inspecting the message, I look at the address listed on the envelope.

The woman, Emmaline Rochefort, must have lived here in Giverny.

The man, Jack St. Claire, has an address in Paris.

How did an English-speaking man in Paris end up writing a love letter to a French woman in a small village?

The answers might be in the letter itself, but for some reason, it feels forbidden to read it.

It’s so personal. So intimate. Whatever he wrote on that paper is meant for her eyes only, even if it did somehow end up in the bookstore where I work.

Maybe it never made it to Emmaline. Maybe someone else found it and opened it, using it as a bookmark and discarding it between the pages when they lost interest in reading it.

Maybe Emmaline did read it and has been looking for it all this time. If that book has been on our shelf for years, then what became of the couple in the photo?

Since I can’t bring myself to read the letter in its entirety, I decide to pull out my phone and look up their names instead.

David Bowie croons “Starman” into my ears as I type Emmaline Rochefort into the Google search bar first.

Of course, she’s not the only Emmaline Rochefort. So I scroll through the results page, finding old women and teenage girls in various locations around the globe. But eventually, a social media page pops up, so I click on it.

The image at the top of her page is of her and a little girl. Immediately, I can tell the woman on the screen—with the pearly white teeth and warm, congenial smile—is the same woman in the photo. It’s eerie, really. Finding some stranger online from one small photo and a name.

From there, I scroll, and my heart sinks.

I miss you, Emma.

You’re in our thoughts forever.

Gone too soon. Prayers for your family.

Comment after comment after comment of some random person online sending messages to an account as if they can speak to this person beyond the grave. I’m hit by a twinge of grief.

Not for this woman I don’t even know, of course. But seeing this immediately brings back memories of my father’s restaurant’s social media page. One day, it was filled with photos of his famous pan-seared fish, and the next, it was flooded with messages like these.

Gone too soon.

Prayers for your family.

We’ll miss you, Laurent.

Messages he’ll never read but words of sorrow that just needed to be expressed.

I glance down at the photo on the table. The happy couple stares back up at me.

The woman in my photo is dead.

Judging by the comments on her page, it happened only two years ago.

For the rest of my lunch break—and then some—I delve into this woman’s life.

I manage to scroll far enough to see past the in memoriam comments and see tidbits of her real life.

Pictures of her with her daughter, an adorable toddler with bright blue eyes and brown hair set in bows on either side of her head.

And then I find what I’m really looking for.

It’s a photo of the beautiful woman, adorable little girl, and a dashing man standing together on the steps of the Sacré-C?ur.

They are bundled in wool jackets and hats, and like the small photo on the table in front of me, they look happy. They look like they’re in love.

Even without reading the letter, I feel some sense of comfort in knowing this happy couple stayed together. Even if she passed away. Even if the ending wasn’t exactly happy. Even if I still have no idea what that entire letter says, I’m glad to know they got married and had a child.

After my lunch, I try to put my little obsession away, but I still carry it with me for the rest of the day.

When my shift ends at four, I leave work and stop by the market to pick up some food and a bottle of wine.

My roommate doesn’t cook or bother me much when I’m in the kitchen or dining room.

She does, however, hog the TV in the living room and plays her nauseating reality TV shows far too loud.

So I pick another playlist and keep my earphones in as I cook, this time listening to ’90s grunge. Nirvana shouts through “Heart-Shaped Box” as I doodle on the wine label and wait for my pasta to cook.

All the while, I think about the couple.

How do people find love like that? What did that woman have to do to get a handsome, seemingly successful, and, from what I can tell, normal man to give her so much attention?

The only men I can get to look my way are creepy old men or chauvinistic young guys who only see tits and ass and fail to notice I have a face and a personality.

My dating life has been abysmal, to the point now where I turn down every single advance, even if the other person seems halfway decent.

Every date I go on lacks connection. I won’t settle for a life of contentment with someone else just to have a partner.

I want fireworks and magic. I want to stare into someone’s eyes and feel seen.

I want to find a soul that matches mine.

I’m glad my pretty woman in the photo found love. Good for her.

After my dinner is done, I take it to the dining room table and browse more photos of the woman’s social media. It’s out of boredom and curiosity. This isn’t an obsessive stalker thing. I’m not a creep. I'm so entranced, though, that I don't even hear when Ingrid comes in from the living room.

“What is that?” Ingrid asks, nodding toward the letter under my phone.

“Nothing,” I reply, tugging it closer.

She takes a step closer and tries to reach for it. In a panic, I abandon my phone and fork to rescue the letter and photograph, spilling my wine in the process.

Ingrid rolls her eyes and chuckles to herself as I check to make sure the letter is intact. It’s at that moment that I realize I might be a little too obsessed with this random piece of mail I found in a book today.

But I feel like I know Emmaline and Jack.

Not to mention I am in possession of something that once belonged to her. Something special. What if he’s been looking for this letter? It’s silly of me to think this way, to think that some strangers in a photograph mean anything to me.

What if I could return this letter to him? It may seem insignificant to most, but he clearly loved her enough to write it. He must be sick with grief, and this letter could be one small token of remembrance.

It’s a wild idea, but my life is so boring and mundane that wild ideas feel like a lifeline. Wild ideas feel like hope. Because why not? Why can’t I take the train to Paris and give this man a letter I found?

Why wouldn’t I?

If he were mine, I’d want someone to do the same for me.