"We were children when they took us away."
"We were adults when we didn't go back."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with shared guilt. I reach for the wine I'd set out for the bouillabaisse and pour two generous glasses instead.
"We should drink," I say. "And stop torturing ourselves about things we can't change."
Iris takes the glass I offer. Our fingers brush, and I feel a small jolt of something I choose not to examine.
"To things we can't change," she says, and drinks.
We drink the first bottle while the bouillabaisse simmers. We open a second while we set the table and ladle out the stew. By the time we're sitting across from each other, eating Grand-mère's soup in her kitchen while the rain continues to fall, something has shifted between us.
"This is incredible," Iris says, and I can tell she means it. "Did Grand-mère teach you?"
"The base recipe, yeah. I've made it my own over the years."
"You're talented."
The compliment catches me off guard. "Thanks."
"No, I mean—" She sets down her spoon. "I've been to nice restaurants. I know what good cooking is. This isn't just good. This is the kind of food that makes you feel something."
"That's the goal." I feel warmth creeping up my neck that has nothing to do with the wine. "Grand-mère always said cooking is just love in edible form. If you're not putting your heart into it, you're just making sustenance."
"She sounds like she was wise."
"She was. And stubborn, and meddling, and infuriating. She once locked me in the lavender barn because I refused to apologize to a goat I'd insulted."
Iris stares at me. "You insulted a goat?"
"I was nine. The goat was being unreasonable."
"The goat was being—" She stops, and then, to my complete astonishment, she laughs.
It transforms her face. The careful control, the protective armor, all of it falls away, and what's left is someone bright and real and utterly, unexpectedly beautiful. The sound of her laughter is rich and warm, nothing like the polished performance I've been seeing.
"The goat," she manages. "I need to hear this whole story."
"The goat started it. Napoleon's ancestor, actually—there's a line of belligerent goats in this village."
"Napoleon." She laughs again, covering her mouth with her hand. "I have yet to meet Napoleon."
"He's very territorial. Just like his namesake."
She's still laughing, shaking her head, and I'm watching her like an idiot, my soup going cold because I can't look away.
Oh no, I think.
Oh no.
This was supposed to be tolerable. We were supposed to get through three months with minimal conflict, sell the property, go our separate ways. I wasn't supposed to like her. I wasn't supposed to want to make her laugh again just to see that light in her eyes.
I wasn't supposed to feel this pull, this growing awareness of her every movement.
"Tell me more," Iris says, still smiling. "Tell me about the summers. About Grand-mère, about the village, about the goats. I want to know everything I missed."
So I tell her. About Napoleon's grandfather, about the time I accidentally set fire to the lavender barn (small fire, quicklyextinguished), about the summer Grand-mère taught me to make cassoulet and we ate it for a week straight because we made too much. About Hélène, who let me watch her paint and gave me my first taste of good wine when I was ten. About the village fêtes and the harvest celebrations and the way the light looks over the lavender at sunset.
