“They’re protected?”
“Oui.Yes.” He mimed shooting a gun as he said, “To scare. But he…” His brows pulled together and then he growled at me. “I was scared.” He held his hand to his chest.
I mirrored him, wholeheartedly agreeing with the sentiment.“I was terrified. I thought he was going to pounce. I didn’t think wolves were aggressive around humans.”
He shook his head. “They are not…usually.”
“I didn’t even know they were in the Ardèche.”
He paused, thinking, and I noticed that he had a tiny scar bisecting his right eyebrow, but then a lock of hair fell down to cover it. “They are…”
“Rare.”
“Oui.And they don’t usually—” He growled again.
“Growl, snarl,” I supplied with a smile, hiding how oddly appealing I found the sound.
He had a nice voice: low and deep. And his accent was lovely.
“Can you…get up?” He zipped up the first-aid kit as he rose to his feet.
I tried, but the motion of attempting to stand without putting weight on my ankle made me feel a little faint. I swayed, flapping my hand in front of my face and looking longingly at the shade of a nearby willow tree. “Could I please have a glass of water?”
“Here,” he said, putting his arm around my waist and helping me to hop over to the tree. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “You look—” He hung his head to one side, eyes drooping.
“Dead?” I asked.
He laughed again. “White.”
“Pale?”
“Oui.You would like to eat? I have bread, honey, strawberries.”
I didn’t want to put him out, but I’d missed lunch. He saw me hesitating and nodded, disappearing inside again. He brought back a glass of water, half a baguette, and some butter, then he took two empty bowls to the side of the house. I sipped the water and watched as he plucked some wild strawberries, then he went to what looked like a tap fixed to the outside wall.
“What the…” I murmured as I watched golden liquid pour into the second bowl.
He returned and I lifted my eyes to his with wonder.
“We have bees,” he said as he sat down, placing the bowls between us.
“Inside the wall?”
“Yes.”
“Did you put them there?”
“No.” He smiled. “Butwe came to an arrangement. That is what my mother says.”
“That’s incredible.” I glanced at a window in the top floor of the house. “Is your mother asleep up there?”
He nodded, his smile flattening. “She is not well.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, expecting him to say that she had a cold or a stomach bug or some minor ailment.
But he hesitated, looking pained before replying quietly, “She hasmaladie de Charcot. I don’t know how to say in English.”
I didn’t understand the gravity of what he was telling me at the time so we moved on to talk about other things, but a Google search later in my holiday revealed the horrifying truth: that his mother, Estelle, had ALS, a type of motor neuron disease. I was chilled to discover that it was fatal—there was no cure.
