"She was a frightened woman with very little time," Duval says, "who did the only thing she could think of, and then died without ever knowing whether it worked." He puts his glasses back on. "You are what she hoped for. She never found out. That is the tragedy of it — and I would rather you understood that than went on believing she was some sort of oracle."
We see him out. Then we sit on the terrace with the envelope between us.
"Ready?" Cat asks.
"Not remotely." I pick it up anyway.
Inside: a letter, and photographs.
The first is a wedding photo. A small ceremony — a handful of witnesses, a village hall, no fuss at all. Marguerite in a good coat. Hélène with paint under her fingernails, because of course she does. Both of them looking like women who have got away with something enormous.
"They weremarried," Cat says. "I never knew they were actually married."
"Look at the date."
The year the law finally caught up. After thirty-three years, they made it official on a Tuesday, in a village hall, with six people watching.
I unfold the letter.
My dear girls—
If you're reading this, you've survived ninety days under the same roof. And if Henri is reading your faces correctly, you've done rather more than survive.
I hoped you would. I did not know. I want to be honest with you at the end, since I was not honest with anyone for most of my life: I did not know, and it frightened me a great deal more than dying did.
The photograph is from our wedding. We waited thirty-three years for the law to catch up with our hearts, and when itfinally did we celebrated with six people and a very poor cake. It was the happiest day of my life.
I want you to have happy days too. All of them. Every one I didn't get to spend with you, spend on each other.
The farm is yours now, completely. Run it, sell it, burn it down and build something better. I trust you.
But more than the farm, I leave you this: my blessing. Unreserved. For whoever you choose to be, and whatever you choose to do.
Choose love, my darlings. Always.
Grand-mère
I stop reading.
Cat's hand found mine somewhere in the last paragraph. Neither of us says anything for a while.
"Six people and a very poor cake," she says eventually. Her voice is thick. "That was the happiest day of her life."
"She waited thirty-three years for it."
"Yeah." Cat turns the photograph over in her fingers, looking at those two women who got away with it. "Yeah. She did."
And then she's quiet a beat too long.
She puts the photo down. She stands. She says she ought to get someone out to look at the distillery pump before the light goes, and she kisses the top of my head on her way past — warm, easy, ordinary — and she doesn't look at me once.
So I sit on the terrace with my grandmother's blessing in my lap and my grandmother's wedding on the table, and I watch the woman I love walk away across the lavender.
Where'd you go?I asked her.
