"Meaning it shouldn't stay shut. It shouldn't sit here holding its breath, waiting for people who are never coming back." I look at her. "I'm saying we should make it ours. Move in. Sleep here. Let it be a room where people actually live."
Cat looks at the bed for a long moment. At the paintings. At the two hands.
"She'd have hated the shrine," she says.
"She'd have hated the shrine."
So we do it. We strip the bed and fold the old linens away like relics, and we open every window in the room, and we let four years of held breath go out across the fields.
That night we sleep in Marguerite's bed for the first time —ourbed now, and the thought is enormous and I let it be — with the lavender coming through the open windows and Hélène's paintings watching from the walls.
Cat falls asleep first, which never happens.
I lie there in the dark with her weight warm against me, and I think about a woman in this room, in this bed, writingI am a cowardabout a five-year-old she never got to meet.
I'm here,I tell her. Not out loud.I got here. It took thirty-two years and you had to die to do it, and I'll never forgive you for the cowardice, and I understand it completely, and I'm here.
The house settles around us. Somewhere below, a shutter knocks softly against stone.
Choose love, and hold onto it, and don't let fear make you run.
I hold on.
24
CAT
The harvest begins on a Thursday.
I wake before dawn, the way I have every day this week, my body tuned to the rhythm of the farm. Iris is still asleep beside me, her face soft in the gray pre-morning light, one hand curled beneath her cheek like a child. I watch her for a moment—the slow rise and fall of her breathing, the way her lips part slightly, the impossible length of her eyelashes—and I feel something expand in my chest.
Love. Still strange to name it. Still terrifying to feel it. But there it is, undeniable.
I slip out of bed without waking her and pad out to start the coffee. The kitchen is cool and dim, the stone floors cold under my bare feet. Through the window, I can see the first hints of pink on the horizon, the lavender fields still shadowed and waiting.
Today we begin the work that Marguerite did every summer of her life. The work that Hélène watched from these windows, painting the harvest in those bold strokes I've come to love. Thework that I learned as a child and have been waiting twenty-four years to return to.
By the time Iris comes out, I have breakfast ready—eggs and bread and strong coffee, fuel for the long day ahead.
"Ready?" I ask.
"Terrified." She takes the coffee I offer, wrapping both hands around the mug. "What if I mess something up? What if I cut the stems wrong, or damage the plants, or—"
"You won't. And even if you do, it's not the end of the world." I kiss her forehead. "This is supposed to be fun, remember? The culmination of everything we've been working toward."
"Fun," she repeats skeptically. "Standing in a field for twelve hours cutting plants is fun."
"Trust me."
It is, in fact, fun.
The harvest crew arrives at sunrise—a mix of locals and seasonal workers, people who've been doing this for years and people who are learning alongside us. Jacques directs the operation with military precision, assigning sections, demonstrating techniques, making sure everyone has the tools they need.
And Iris—my beautiful, terrified, perfectionist Iris—takes to it like she was born for this.
I watch her work her way down her assigned row, the sickle moving in smooth arcs, the lavender falling in neat bundles at her feet. Her brow is furrowed in concentration, her movements careful and deliberate, and every few minutes she looks up to check that she's doing it right. She is. She's doing it perfectly.
"Your woman works hard," Jacques observes, appearing at my elbow.
