"You really should. You smell terrible."
I laugh—genuinely laugh—and something in my chest loosens. "Thanks for that."
"Anytime." Cat's smile is small but real. "Go. Clean yourself up."
I go inside, and I don't look back, and I tell myself this is progress—this small honesty, this tiny step toward being someone who feels instead of someone who plans.
It doesn't feel like much.
But it's a start.
14
CAT
Monique's dinner invitation comes with the weight of ulterior motive.
"Just a simple meal," she says when she corners us at the market, her eyes twinkling with something that looks suspiciously like scheming. "Jacques is making his bouillabaisse. You girls have been working so hard—you deserve a proper evening out."
I know Monique well enough to recognize when she has an agenda. She practically raised me during those long summers, feeding me pastries and gossip in equal measure, teaching me the politics of village life with the same dedication Grand-mère brought to teaching me cuisine. If she wants us at her table, she has a reason.
But her bouillabaisse is legendary, and I've been craving it for twenty years.
"We'd love to," I say, and Iris nods beside me, probably grateful for any excuse to avoid another awkward dinner alone with me at the farmhouse.
Things have been strange between us since the lavender field. Not bad, exactly—just charged. Heavy with everything we're not saying. Every accidental brush of hands in the kitchen hums through me for the rest of the morning, and I'm fairly certain Iris feels it too, based on the way she keeps finding excuses to be on the opposite side of every room I enter.
It's exhausting. It's also kind of hot. I'm trying not to think about that part.
The café is warm and golden when we arrive, filled with the smell of garlic and saffron and the low murmur of conversation. Monique has set up a private table in the back corner, away from the other diners, which confirms my suspicion that this isn't just about bouillabaisse.
Jacques greets us with kisses on both cheeks and immediately begins pouring wine—a rich, amber rosé from a vineyard just over the hill. "Local," he says proudly. "From the same grapes Marguerite used to press."
"I didn't know she made wine," Iris says.
"She didn't. Not officially. But she had an arrangement with the Delacroix family—they'd press her grapes, she'd help with their lavender." Jacques shrugs in that particularly French way that manages to convey an entire philosophy of life. "Everything is connected here. That's how it works."
We eat and drink and talk about nothing important—the weather, the harvest predictions, Jacques's ongoing war with the neighbor's rooster. But I can feel Monique circling, waiting for the right moment, and when the bouillabaisse bowls are empty and the second bottle of wine is half gone, she finally strikes.
"You've been finding things," she says. "In the house. I can tell."
Iris and I exchange glances. We haven't told anyone about the photographs, about the box from the barn, about the slowly emerging picture of Grand-mère's life that we're piecing together like archaeologists at a dig.
"Some things," I admit cautiously.
"About Hélène?"
The name drops into the conversation and sits there. I feel Iris go rigid beside me.
"Yes," I say. "About Hélène."
Monique nods, unsurprised. "I thought so. You have questions."
"Many questions."
"Then let me tell you what you need to know." She refills her wine glass, settles back in her chair. "Hélène Voclain came to Provence in the spring of 1980. She was a painter—quite a good one, actually, though she never achieved the recognition she deserved. She'd come to capture the light."
"The light," Iris repeats softly.
