8. Cat
CAT
The rain starts just before dawn, a soft pattering that builds to a steady drumming on the old stone roof. I lie in bed listening to it for longer than I should, cocooned in blankets and the particular comfort of a storm outside while you're warm inside.
No running for Iris today. The thought shouldn't please me as much as it does.
By the time I drag myself out of my room, she's already in the living room, cross-legged on the sofa with a book in her lap and a cup of tea going cold beside her.
She's wearing yoga pants and an oversized sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders for once, and she looks almost human.
Better than human, actually, which is a thought I have no plans to examine.
"Morning," I say.
"It's raining."
"Hence the sound of rain."
She shoots me a look—not quite a glare, but close. "I meant I can't run."
"The horror."
"You don't understand. Running is how I—" She stops, pressing her lips together. "Never mind."
I pause in the kitchen doorway. "How you what?"
"Process." The word comes out reluctantly, like she's confessing something shameful. "It's how I process things. Without it, I get..." She gestures vaguely at her head.
"Tangled up?"
"Insufferable was the word I was thinking."
"I wasn't going to say that."
"You were thinking it."
I consider this. "Maybe a little."
To my surprise, she almost smiles. It's there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it, but I don't think I did.
"I'm going to cook," I announce. "Something complicated. Something that takes all day. You're welcome to help or stay out of my way—either works."
"What are you making?"
"Bouillabaisse."
Her eyebrows rise. "That sounds ambitious."
"That's rather the point."
The kitchen becomes my kingdom when I cook. I don't mean that metaphorically—I mean I physically take over every surface, spreading ingredients and tools across the counters like a general deploying troops. Grand-mère used to call it my "controlled chaos." Mum just called it messy.
Iris hovers in the doorway for a while, watching me prep vegetables with an expression caught between curiosity and discomfort. She needs a task, but she doesn't know the language of this kitchen.
"You could slice the fennel," I offer without looking up.
"I don't know how."
"I'll show you."
She crosses to the counter, standing close enough that I can smell her shampoo—something clean and expensive. I hand her a knife and position the fennel bulb on the cutting board.
"Core it first—see this hard bit? Cut that out. Then slice thin, about this thick." I demonstrate with my hands. "It doesn't have to be perfect."
"Everything has to be perfect," she mutters, but she picks up the knife.
Her first attempts are uneven, which clearly bothers her more than it should. I resist the urge to correct her and focus on my own prep—the fish, the tomatoes, the careful layering of saffron and orange peel that gives bouillabaisse its distinctive flavor.
We work in silence for a while. The rain drums on. The kitchen fills with the smells of cooking—onions, garlic, the sharp brightness of tomatoes.
"Can I ask you something?" Iris says finally.
"You can ask."
"Your mother. You said she cut ties with Grand-mère, like mine did. But you talk about her in past tense. Is she—"
"Dead." The word comes out flatter than I intended. "Four years now. Cancer."
"I'm sorry."
"It was—" I stop, focusing on the fish in front of me. "Complicated. Our relationship was complicated."
"How so?"
I don't usually talk about this. I don't usually talk about any of it—Mum, Grand-mère, the whole tangled mess of my family history. But something about the rain and the cooking and Iris's quiet presence makes the words come easier than they should.
"She was troubled," I say. "My whole life, she was troubled. Depression, anxiety, addiction—she cycled through all of it. Good periods and bad periods. And I was always either her caretaker or her burden, depending on which way the wind was blowing."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It was." I slide the prepped fish into a bowl. "But she was my mum. You don't get to choose, do you? You just love them the best you can and hope it's enough."
"Was it enough?"
"I don't know." I set down my knife, staring at the cutting board.
"She died before we had a chance to really reconcile.
Before I could ask her about Grand-mère, about what happened, about why she took me away from the one place I was ever really happy.
She just—slipped away. And I was left with all these questions I'll never get answered. "
Iris is quiet. When I look up, her face is doing something complicated—sympathy, maybe, or recognition.
"I keep thinking about that," she says softly.
"About all the things I'll never get to ask.
My mother is still alive, and she won't tell me anything, and Grand-mère is gone, and—" She shakes her head.
"There's this huge part of my family history that's just...
missing. And I don't know if I'll ever find it. "
"Maybe that's what the letters are for." I think of the envelopes still sitting on the dining room table, waiting. "Grand-mère knew we'd have questions. Maybe she left us the answers."
"Have you read yours yet?"
"No. Have you?"
"No." Iris sets down her knife. "I'm scared to."
"Me too."
We look at each other across the kitchen island. The rain falls. The soup simmers.
"Why didn't you try to find her?" Iris asks. "Grand-mère. After your mother died. You could have—"
"I know." The guilt rises like bile. "I know I could have. I thought about it a thousand times. But every time, I stopped."
"Why?"
"Because I was scared." The truth comes out raw and jagged. "Scared that she wouldn't want me anymore. Scared that whatever Mum said about her was true. Scared that I'd show up after twenty years and she'd just... close the door."
Iris's eyes are wet. I didn't expect that.
"I could have come too," she says. "As an adult. I could have found her, written to her, done something. But I didn't."
"Why not?"
"Because my mother told me not to." The words are bitter.
"And I spent my whole life doing what my mother told me.
Being good, being perfect, being the daughter she wanted.
And now Grand-mère is dead, and all I have is this—" She gestures around the kitchen.
"This beautiful house full of answers I was too scared to look for while she was alive. "
"We were children when they took us away."
"We were adults when we didn't go back."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with shared guilt. I reach for the wine I'd set out for the bouillabaisse and pour two generous glasses instead.
"We should drink," I say. "And stop torturing ourselves about things we can't change."
Iris takes the glass I offer. Our fingers brush, and I feel a small jolt of something I choose not to examine.
"To things we can't change," she says, and drinks.
We drink the first bottle while the bouillabaisse simmers. We open a second while we set the table and ladle out the stew. By the time we're sitting across from each other, eating Grand-mère's soup in her kitchen while the rain continues to fall, something has shifted between us.
"This is incredible," Iris says, and I can tell she means it. "Did Grand-mère teach you?"
"The base recipe, yeah. I've made it my own over the years."
"You're talented."
The compliment catches me off guard. "Thanks."
"No, I mean—" She sets down her spoon. "I've been to nice restaurants. I know what good cooking is. This isn't just good. This is the kind of food that makes you feel something."
"That's the goal." I feel warmth creeping up my neck that has nothing to do with the wine. "Grand-mère always said cooking is just love in edible form. If you're not putting your heart into it, you're just making sustenance."
"She sounds like she was wise."
"She was. And stubborn, and meddling, and infuriating. She once locked me in the lavender barn because I refused to apologize to a goat I'd insulted."
Iris stares at me. "You insulted a goat?"
"I was nine. The goat was being unreasonable."
"The goat was being—" She stops, and then, to my complete astonishment, she laughs.
It transforms her face. The careful control, the protective armor, all of it falls away, and what's left is someone bright and real and utterly, unexpectedly beautiful. The sound of her laughter is rich and warm, nothing like the polished performance I've been seeing.
"The goat," she manages. "I need to hear this whole story."
"The goat started it. Napoleon's ancestor, actually—there's a line of belligerent goats in this village."
"Napoleon." She laughs again, covering her mouth with her hand. "I have yet to meet Napoleon."
"He's very territorial. Just like his namesake."
She's still laughing, shaking her head, and I'm watching her like an idiot, my soup going cold because I can't look away.
Oh no, I think.
Oh no.
This was supposed to be tolerable. We were supposed to get through three months with minimal conflict, sell the property, go our separate ways. I wasn't supposed to like her. I wasn't supposed to want to make her laugh again just to see that light in her eyes.
I wasn't supposed to feel this pull, this growing awareness of her every movement.
"Tell me more," Iris says, still smiling. "Tell me about the summers. About Grand-mère, about the village, about the goats. I want to know everything I missed."
So I tell her. About Napoleon's grandfather, about the time I accidentally set fire to the lavender barn (small fire, quickly extinguished), about the summer Grand-mère taught me to make cassoulet and we ate it for a week straight because we made too much.
About Hélène, who let me watch her paint and gave me my first taste of good wine when I was ten.
About the village fêtes and the harvest celebrations and the way the light looks over the lavender at sunset.
I talk until the rain stops. I talk until I realize that we've been sitting here for hours, empty wine glasses between us, and neither of us has moved to leave.
"I should sleep," Iris says finally, reluctantly. "Tomorrow—"
"Tomorrow can wait." I hear myself say it and don't quite believe it. "The lavender will still be there."
"Will it?"
"It's been there for a hundred years. I think it can handle another night."
She smiles, smaller than the laughs earlier but somehow more intimate. "Thank you. For cooking. For—" She hesitates. "For not making me feel less like an intruder."
"You're not an intruder. You're her granddaughter."
"So are you."
"Not by blood."
"By love." She says it simply, like it's obvious. "That's what she wanted us to understand, isn't it? That's why we're both here."
I don't have words for what that does to me. I just nod and watch her go, the soft pad of her footsteps on the stone floor, the glimpse of her disappearing down the hall.
When she's gone, I stay at the table for a long time, listening to the last of the rain drip from the eaves and trying to convince myself that what I'm feeling is just the wine.
It's not the wine.
I know what this feeling is. I've felt it before, rarely, dangerously—this pull toward someone, this flutter of possibility.
I'm crushing on Iris Beaumont-Clark.
And I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.