15. Iris
IRIS
I've been awake for hours, rehearsing, watching the clock crawl toward a decent hour in Chicago. The moment it ticks over to seven—the earliest my mother would ever forgive a phone call—I dial, before I can lose my nerve.
She answers on the third ring, her voice crisp and put-together even at this hour. "Iris. It’s not Sunday. What’s wrong."
"We need to talk."
A pause. I can picture her sitting up in bed, reaching for her reading glasses, already armoring herself. "Is something wrong with the property? Has something happened with the lawyer?"
"Something happened, yes. But not with the lawyer." I grip the phone tighter, willing my voice to stay steady. "I know about Hélène."
The silence that follows is absolute. Not surprised silence—I've learned to recognize my mother's silences, and this one is the particular quality of someone who's been waiting for a blow to land.
"I see," she says finally.
"That's it? That's all you have to say?" The anger I've been holding back since last night surges up my throat. "You cut off your own mother because she loved a woman. You took me away from her, lied to me about her, let me grow up thinking she didn't want me—"
"I never said she didn't want you."
"You never said anything! That was the point!
" I'm pacing now, unable to stand still.
The terrace stones are warm under my bare feet, and the lavender is swaying in the breeze, and everything about this place is beautiful except for the ugliness of this conversation.
"You just... erased her. Made her into a forbidden topic.
And the whole time, the whole time, it was because you couldn't accept—"
"You don't understand." My mother's voice has gone cold, the way it always does when she feels attacked. "You weren't there. You don't know what it was like to discover that your mother had been lying to you for decades—"
"She wasn't lying. She was living. She was in love, and she was happy, and you couldn't stand it."
"She was living in sin." The words are sharp, vicious. "She was flaunting her—her lifestyle, right there in the family home, in front of my child—"
"I was five! I didn't know what I was seeing!
I just knew my grandmother loved me, and then suddenly I never saw her again!
" My voice cracks. I hate that it cracks.
"Do you have any idea what that did to me?
Growing up without grandparents, without any connection to half my heritage, all because you couldn't accept that your mother was gay? "
"She wasn't gay. She was confused. That woman—Hélène—she manipulated her, took advantage—"
"They were together for thirty-five years!" I'm shouting now, and I don't care. "Thirty-five years, Mother. That's not confusion. That's not manipulation. That's love. And you destroyed my chance to know it."
"I was protecting you."
"From what? From knowing that women can love each other?
From understanding that family isn't about who you're supposed to be, but who you are?
" I laugh, and it sounds bitter even to my own ears.
"You didn't protect me. You just made me like you—closed off, terrified of anything that doesn't fit the plan. "
"I don't have to listen to this."
"No, you don't. You never have to listen to anything you don't want to hear. That's your specialty." I take a breath, trying to steady myself. "I'm not coming back to Chicago."
Another silence, this one sharper.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm staying here. In Provence. In Grand-mère's house." Saying it out loud makes it real, makes it true. "This is my home now. My inheritance. And you don't get to take it away from me again."
"Iris, be reasonable—"
"I'm done being reasonable. I've spent my whole life being reasonable, and all it got me was a mother who lies and a grandmother I never knew." I close my eyes against the tears threatening to fall. "Goodbye, Mother."
I hang up before she can respond.
For a long moment, I just stand there, phone clutched in my hand, staring out at the lavender fields. My heart is pounding. My hands are shaking. I feel like I've just stepped off a cliff and I'm waiting to see if I'll fly or fall.
Then the tears come.
I sink down onto one of the terrace chairs, pressing my hand over my mouth to muffle the sounds. I've never spoken to my mother like that. I've never challenged her, never pushed back, never done anything but nod and smile and be the perfect daughter she demanded.
And now I've burned that bridge. Set fire to it. Watched it crumble into ash.
It feels like freedom. It feels like loss. Mostly it feels like both at once.
"Iris?"
Cat's voice comes from behind me, hesitant. I try to pull myself together, to wipe my face and straighten my spine and pretend I'm fine, but I'm too far gone. The tears won't stop.
"Hey." Suddenly she's there, kneeling in front of my chair, her hands on my knees. "Hey, what happened? What's wrong?"
"I called her." My voice comes out broken, jagged. "My mother. I confronted her about Hélène."
"Oh, Iris." Cat's face is soft with understanding. "It didn't go well?"
A laugh that's more like a sob escapes me. "She called Grand-mère's relationship a 'sin.' She said Hélène 'manipulated' her. She—" I shake my head, unable to continue.
Cat doesn't say anything. She just shifts, rising from her crouch to sit on the arm of my chair, pulling me against her side. Her arm wraps around my shoulders, solid and warm, and I turn my face into her neck and let myself fall apart.
It's not pretty crying. It's the ugly kind, the kind that leaves you gasping and hiccuping, the kind that feels like it's being dragged up from somewhere deep and wounded.
I cry for Grand-mère, who lost her daughter over something as simple as love.
I cry for myself, for all the years I spent trying to be enough for a woman who would never accept me if she knew—
If she knew what?
The thought stops me cold. I pull back slightly, looking at Cat through blurred eyes.
"What is it?" she asks.
"I just—" I swallow. "I just realized. If my mother reacted that way to Grand-mère... if she couldn't accept her own mother loving a woman..."
"She won't accept you either."
The words are quiet, matter-of-fact, and they land in my chest like stones.
"I don't know what I am," I whisper. "I don't have a word for it yet. But whatever I'm feeling, whatever's happening between—" I stop, suddenly aware of what I'm about to admit.
"Between us?" Cat's voice is careful, neutral.
"Yeah." I meet her eyes, and the vulnerability of this moment is almost unbearable. "Between us. And if my mother found out... if she knew I was even thinking about..."
"She'd react the same way she did to Marguerite."
"Probably worse." I laugh, and it sounds hollow. "At least Grand-mère was already grown when she fell in love with Hélène. She'd already given my mother a childhood, a stable home. Me? I'd just be another disappointment. Another thing she couldn't control."
Cat's hand comes up to cup my face, her thumb brushing away the tears on my cheek. "You're not a disappointment. And you're not a thing to be controlled."
"I know that. Rationally, I know that." I press my cheek into her palm, seeking comfort. "But she's my mother. And even now, even after everything, some part of me still wants her to love me."
"That's not weakness, Iris. That's human."
"It feels like weakness."
"I know." Cat's smile is sad. "Trust me, I know."
We're quiet for a moment. Cat lost her mother to death; I'm losing mine to something that might be worse.
"My mother never told me why we stopped coming here," Cat says softly. "But I think... I think part of me always knew it was something about Grand-mère's life that she couldn't accept. Something that made her uncomfortable."
"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.