"Why?" I ask softly.
"Because being happy means having something to lose." Cat shrugs, but the gesture is too tight to be casual. "And I'm very good at losing things."
The kitchen is quiet except for the sizzle of vegetables in the pan. I want to say something—something meaningful, something that acknowledges the gift of her honesty—but the words stick in my throat.
"What about you?" Cat asks, not looking at me. "What's waiting for you in Chicago?"
The question catches me off guard. I've been so focused on what I'm doing here that I haven't thought much about what I left behind.
"A job," I say slowly. "An apartment. A life I built very carefully according to a plan I made when I was twenty-two."
"And this is a good life?"
"It's a successful life. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
I think about my apartment—beautiful, expensive, perfectly decorated in neutrals that a designer chose because they would photograph well. I think about my job—impressive title, corner office, sixty-hour weeks that left no time for anything that wasn'ton the schedule. I think about the last time I did something just because I wanted to, and I can't remember.
"I don't know what I want," I admit. "I've spent so long achieving things that I never stopped to ask if they were the right things. And now I'm thirty-two and I'm standing in a kitchen in Provence learning to make ratatouille, and it's the happiest I've been in years, and I have no idea what to do with that information."
Cat turns off the burner and faces me fully. Her expression is soft, open—none of the walls I've learned to recognize.
"Maybe you don't have to do anything with it," she says. "Maybe you can just... feel it. Let yourself be happy without immediately turning it into a task on your to-do list."
"That sounds terrifying."
"I know." She smiles, and it's gentle this time, understanding. "But you're already doing it. You've been doing it for weeks. Every time you laugh at something stupid I say, every time you sit on the terrace and watch the sunset, every time you—" She stops, shakes her head. "You're not the same person who showed up here in her heels and her blazer, ready to treat this whole thing like a hostile merger. You've changed."
"Have I?"
"Can't you feel it?"
I can, actually. That's the terrifying part.
The moment stretches between us, fragile and full of possibility. I'm acutely aware of how close we're standing, of the warmth radiating from the stove, of the way Cat is looking at me like she's seeing something she didn't expect to find.
A knock at the door shatters the silence.
We both jump, and Cat lets out a breath that might be relief or might be disappointment—I can't tell which.
"That'll be Sophie," she says, moving toward the door. "She texted earlier. Said she had news about Jean-Pierre."
Sophie enters in a whirlwind of energy, her bag over her shoulder and her dark hair wind-tousled. She kisses both my cheeks, then Cat's, and settles at the kitchen island like she belongs there.
"Jean-Pierre has been asking questions in the village," she announces without preamble. "At the café, at the boulangerie, at Chez Sylvie. He wants to know about Marguerite's mental state in her final months. Whether she seemed confused, whether she made any strange decisions."
"And what are people telling him?" I ask.
Sophie's smile is sharp. "That Marguerite was sharper at eighty-two than he is at seventy-three. That she knew exactly what she was doing with her will. That if he wanted to inherit, maybe he shouldn't have spent the last decade pretending she didn't exist."
Cat laughs, bright and relieved. "I love this village."
"The village loves Marguerite. And by extension—" Sophie gestures between us. "Her granddaughters. Both of them."
The word granddaughters does something complicated to my chest. I've spent my whole life being the granddaughter who didn't count, the one who was kept away, the ghost. And now here I am, being claimed by a village full of strangers, being included in a legacy I didn't know existed.
Sophie stays for dinner, which becomes an extended affair on the terrace as the sun sets over the lavender fields. The ratatouille is delicious—even the parts I helped with—and Cat opens a bottle of rosé from the cellar that tastes like summer in a glass. Sophie tells stories about Marguerite, about the village, about the time Jean-Pierre tried to buy a vineyard and accidentally purchased a field of sunflowers instead.
