"So what do we do?" she asks.
"I honestly have no idea," I admit.
And that gets me something that's almost a laugh—wet and startled and real. Then her hand finds mine, her fingers not quite steady, and I thread mine through them and hold on.
For a long moment neither of us moves. Then Iris lets out a breath, squeezes my hand once—like she's memorizing the shape of it—and steps back.
"I need to think," she says. It isn't a no. It's a not-yet. "I don't know how to do this halfway."
"I'm not asking you to do anything," I say. "Just stop pretending it isn't there."
Something in her face eases. "That much I can do."
She slips inside, the screen door clapping shut behind her, and I hear her footsteps move through the house—unhurried, careful, the sound of a woman who suddenly has a great deal to think about.
I stay on the terrace, my hand still warm where hers was, and watch the first stars prick through over the fields.
I should be terrified.
Instead, for the first time since she arrived, I feel something dangerously close to hope.
11
IRIS
Neither of us has said a word about the terrace.
It's been there all morning anyway. Every time she hands me a mug or reaches past me for something, we both go a little too careful, a little too quiet. I told her last night I needed to think. I didn't tell her I barely slept—that I lay there until it got light, replaying the exact second her hand closed over mine.
We didn't bring it up over coffee. We didn't bring it up when Cat got off the phone with the notaire, who apparently thinks Jean-Pierre's noise about the will is exactly that—noise, nothing to lose sleep over, just keep documenting everything. We're not bringing it up now, either.
Cat has other plans.
After she hung up, she took one look at me—wound tight and useless, still stewing over everything we weren't talking about—and decided what I needed was to do something with my hands that wasn't making a spreadsheet.
"Cooking is meditative," she said, nodding at the vegetables piled on the counter. "And you've been running on espresso and nerves for three weeks. Your body's about to stage a walkout."
"I'm perfectly capable of feeding myself," I told her.
"You think a cheese sandwich counts as a hot meal." She raised an eyebrow. "You don't get an opinion in my kitchen."
So that's how I end up in Grand-mère's kitchen—our kitchen—the counters buried under vegetables in various stages of prep: aubergines and courgettes and tomatoes so red they look fake, peppers in three different colors, a braid of garlic that smells like something out of a dream.
"You're holding the knife wrong."
I look down at my hand, which is wrapped around the handle of a very expensive-looking chef's knife in what I thought was a perfectly reasonable manner. "I'm holding it like a knife."
"You're holding it like you're about to stab someone in a horror film." Cat appears at my elbow, close enough that I catch the scent of her shampoo. "Here. Like this."
She reaches around me, her hand closing over mine, and adjusts my grip. Her fingers are warm and sure, repositioning mine with the casual confidence of someone who's done this a thousand times. I'm suddenly very aware of how close she is, of the way her breath stirs the hair at my temple, of the solid warmth of her body behind mine.
"The blade does the work," she says, her voice low and patient. "You're just guiding it. See?"
She moves my hand in a gentle rocking motion, and the onion beneath the blade falls away in neat, even slices. It looks effortless when she does it. It looks like magic.
"Now you try."
She steps back, and I immediately miss her warmth. Which is ridiculous. Which is a thought I should not be having about my co-inheritor while holding a very sharp knife.
