"You think she knew about Hélène?"
"Maybe. Or maybe she never let herself know it outright—just felt that there was a part of Grand-mère she was never going to be let into, and couldn't stand it." Cat shrugs. "Either way, she let her own pain destroy our family. Just like your mother did."
"They have that in common."
"They have a lot in common. Stubbornness. Pride. The inability to let anyone in."
I look at her—really look—and I see something I didn't expect. Not pity, not sympathy, but recognition. She understands this. She understands me.
"How did you survive it?" I ask. "Growing up with that?"
"That’s all I did. Survive, I mean." Cat's laugh is self-deprecating. "I'm kind of a mess, if you haven't noticed. I push people away before they can leave. I assume everyone's going to disappoint me eventually. I don't trust—"
"You trust me."
The words come out before I can think about them. Cat goes still.
"Yeah," she says after a moment. "I do. I'm not sure when that happened, but... yeah. I trust you."
Something warm blooms in my chest, pushing back against the cold grief that's been sitting there since last night. I reach up and cover her hand with mine, the one still resting against my cheek.
For a moment I just let her hold me—her hand on my face, mine over hers, the afternoon sun warm on both of us. I'm close enough to feel her breathing, close enough that pulling away would take more effort than staying.
So I don't pull away. I press my forehead to her shoulder and let myself be held—which is not a thing I do. Which is not a thing I've let anyone do in longer than I want to admit.
"I told her I'm not coming back," I say against her collarbone. "To Chicago. I told my mother I'm staying."
Cat goes still. "Did you mean it?"
"When I said it? Completely." I pull back far enough to see her face. "Ask me if it'll still be true when the ninety days are up and I honestly can't tell you. But this afternoon, with my mother on the phone reminding me exactly who I'm supposed to be—it's the truest thing I've said in years."
Something behind her eyes shifts. She doesn't smile, quite, but the careful thing she's been holding in her face lets go.
"Not yet." I hear how it sounds and don't take it back. "I know we should talk about it. Be sensible. Make a plan. And I have made a plan for every single thing in my life, Cat, and none of them ever felt like this."
She looks at me a long beat.
"Okay," she says. She stands but she holds out a hand and pulls me up with her. "Come on. You can cry into an onion where it'll actually be useful."
So I follow her into the kitchen, and she puts a knife in my hand and stands close enough to fix my grip without being asked, and we make dinner while the light goes down outside. We just cook—her humming something under her breath, me managing not to lose a finger—and it's the most settled I've felt since I stepped off that plane.
I still don't know what happens after the ninety days. I don't know what I am, or what this is, or how much it's going to hurt if I've read her wrong.
But I know I want to be right here, in this kitchen, with her.
And wanting, I'm starting to learn, is its own kind of brave.
16
CAT
Sophie finds me at Les Oliviers, tucked at the little table by the kitchen door where Mathilde lets me sit when I can't stand to be at the farmhouse pretending to work.
"You look terrible," she says cheerfully, dropping into the chair across from me.
"Thank you. That's exactly what I needed to hear."
"I'm a doctor. Honest assessments are my specialty." She flags down a passing server for coffee, then turns her sharp gaze on me. "So. How are things at the farmhouse?"
