And somewhere out there, a woman named Catherine Aldridge is about to find out she has to share it with me.
I pull out my phone and do something I haven't done in years: I call my mother before Sunday.
She answers on the second ring. "Iris? Is something wrong?"
"Marguerite Beaumont died." I keep my voice flat, professional. "Six months ago. A lawyer just called me. She left me something in her will."
The silence on the other end is absolute. Not surprised silence—my mother is never surprised, only prepared or unprepared. This silence is something else entirely. This silence has teeth.
"I see," she says finally, and her voice is winter. "And what exactly did she leave you?"
"A lavender farm. Half of it, anyway. The other half went to someone named Catherine Aldridge."
Another silence, shorter this time, but somehow worse. "I don't know anyone by that name."
"Mom, who is she? The lawyer said she was another grandchild, but that's not possible unless—"
"Iris." My mother's voice cuts through mine like a blade. "Whatever that woman left you, you don't want it. Marguerite Beaumont was not someone you needed in your life, and this inheritance—whatever it is—will only bring you pain. I suggest you call this lawyer back and tell him you're not interested."
"I can't do that."
"Why not?"
Because she called me her ghost. Because she thought of me. Because my whole life, I've been told this woman was nothing, was nobody, was a door that should stay closed—and now that door is open, and I need to know why it was ever shut.
"Because I have to go to France," I say. "There are stipulations. Conditions. I have to be there in person."
"Then you'll go, and you'll tell them you don't want it, and you'll come home. This is not up for discussion, Iris."
I watch a catering manager walk past with a tray of champagne flutes, each one polished to perfection, each one exactly where it should be. My whole life has been champagne flutes: polished, positioned, perfect. My whole life has been what my mother wanted.
"Actually," I say, "I think it is."
I hang up before she can respond. My hands are shaking again, but this time it feels less like fear and more like something else. Something that might be anger, or grief, or the first stirrings of a rebellion thirty-two years in the making.
I have a merger announcement to execute. Two hundred guests to impress. A centerpiece that's finally, perfectly aligned.
And after that, I have a plane to catch.
2
CAT
The flat looks worse empty than it did full, which is saying something considering the state it was in when Janeen and I lived here together.
I stand in the doorway of what used to be our bedroom—my bedroom, briefly, and now nobody's bedroom—and catalogue the damage. Water stain on the ceiling shaped like a particularly judgmental cloud. The ghost of a poster I hung three years ago, its outline preserved in the slightly less grimy paint around it.
This is what thirty-six looks like, apparently. Unemployed. Single. Standing in an empty flat in Hackney with a suitcase full of chef's whites I may never wear again and a one-way ticket to a place I haven't seen in twenty-four years.
"Cheers to that," I mutter to no one, because talking to myself is a habit I've never managed to break, and honestly, it's not like there's anyone else to talk to these days.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Michel, probably, checking in for the fourth time today to make sure I haven't done anythingstupid. Or my landlord, reminding me that the keys need to be in the lockbox by six. Or—
It's neither. It's a French number, one I've programmed into my contacts with the name Henri Duval (LAWYER) because I am nothing if not aggressively practical about my emotional devastation.
"Monsieur Duval." I answer in French, the language clicking into place like muscle memory. "Is there a problem?"
"No, no, mademoiselle. I only wanted to confirm that you will be arriving today as planned?"
