16. Cat
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?"
"Fine."
"Liar." Sophie leans forward, chin on her hand. "I saw you two at the market yesterday. The way you look at her is practically indecent."
"I do not—"
"Like she's the last croissant in the basket and you haven't eaten in days." Sophie grins. "It's very romantic, actually. Also very obvious."
I drop my head into my hands. "Is there anyone in this village who isn't watching us like we're entertainment?"
"Monsieur Lefèvre. But he's ninety-three and mostly blind." Sophie sips her coffee. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"Do about what?"
"About the fact that you're clearly in love with her and she's clearly in love with you and you're both dancing around it like idiots."
The word lands like a bomb. Love. I haven't let myself think it. Attraction, yes. Desire, absolutely. But love?
"It's been a month," I say weakly.
"So? My parents met at a bus stop and were engaged three weeks later. Forty years married." Sophie shrugs. "Time is irrelevant. Either you feel it or you don't."
I do feel it. That's the problem. I feel it every time she laughs, every time she frowns at a spreadsheet, every time she pads into the kitchen with her hair still messy from sleep.
I open my mouth to say exactly none of that—
—and behind me, the kitchen goes sideways.
A pan clatters. Someone swears in rapid Provencal. Through the door I can see Mathilde at the pass, silver bob wild, a fistful of tickets and the specific look of a chef whose sous has just abandoned her at the worst possible moment.
I'm on my feet before I've decided to be.
"Cat—" Sophie starts, laughing.
"Two minutes," I tell her, already reaching for the apron on the hook by the door.
The heat swallows me whole, and my hands just know.
I plate the salade nicoise waiting on the pass.
I catch the duck before it turns. I call the next ticket before Mathilde can, and she throws me a look that's equal parts irritation and relief.
For twenty minutes there's no Iris, no inheritance, no ninety-day clock ticking over my head.
There's just the work, the rhythm of it, the way a kitchen makes sense when nothing else does.
Happy, I think, sliding the last plate up. That's the word. I feel happy.
The rush breaks. Mathilde pours two glasses of wine without asking and pushes one at me.
"I'm serious about the offer," she says. "Head chef. The kitchen's yours to do what you like with—I'm too old to fight the stove every night." She studies me over her glass. "You think like a Provencal but you cook like a Londoner. I want you permanently, Cat."
It's not the first time she's asked. And every time, I say I'll think about it—and mean it a little less.
"There are complications," I say.
"The American." It isn't a question.
"How does everyone—"
"It's a village, chérie. We have eyes. Also, Sophie is still at that table grinning at us like a fool.
" Mathilde nods toward the square, where they've already begun stringing lights between the plane trees.
"Think about it. But give me an answer before the fête—three weeks.
The whole village will be here, and I'd like to introduce my new chef. "
Three weeks until the fête. Three weeks until the harvest, until whatever comes next.
I hang the apron back on its hook, and I don't miss the way it already feels like leaving something of mine behind.
That night, we sit on the terrace with a bottle of wine and watch the sunset paint the lavender fields in shades of gold and rose.
It's become a ritual, this evening hour. We started doing it in the first week, when we could barely stand to be in the same room, and somehow it became the one time of day when we could set aside our differences. Now it's something more—a moment of connection, a shared pause in the chaos.
Iris is quiet tonight, her gaze fixed on the horizon. She's been different since the call with her mother—softer, somehow, but sadder too. Like she's grieving something she never actually had.
"Mathilde offered me the job again today," I say into the quiet. "For real this time. Head chef."
Iris turns to look at me. "Are you going to take it?"
"I think I already have. In my head." I turn the glass in my hands. "I keep waiting to find the catch, the reason to say no. I can't find one."
"Then that's your answer."
"Maybe." The truth is stupider and harder than that, and she's the only person I'd admit it to. "I'm not good at wanting things, Iris. Wanting things is how you end up with your heart handed back to you in pieces. It's safer to keep it casual. Never let anywhere matter too much."
"And this matters too much."
"This place matters too much." I don't look at her when I say it, because the sentence is doing double duty and we both know it.
Iris is quiet a moment. "Take it, Cat." Her voice is soft but certain. "Whatever else is complicated, that part isn't. You're allowed to want things. You're allowed to keep them."
"Speak from experience?"
"Unfortunately." She gives a laugh that's almost real. Then, quieter: "I'm trying to learn it too."
"What would make you happy?" I ask.
She looks at me, her eyes very dark in the fading light. "I'm starting to figure that out."
The air between us changes. I'm suddenly hyperaware of how close we're sitting, the warmth of her arm against mine, the way her lips part slightly as she breathes.
"Iris—"
"I'm scared," she says, barely a whisper. "Of what I'm feeling. Of what it means. Of—"
"Of me?"
"No." She shakes her head. "Never of you. I'm scared of myself. Of what I might do if I stop holding back."
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. "What would you do?"
She doesn't answer. Instead she reaches out and takes my hand, lacing her fingers through mine. Her palm is warm, her grip sure.
"I'm not ready," she says. "Not yet. There's too much I'm still untangling, and I don't want to start something and not be able to give you all of it."
"I understand."
"But I need you to know—" She squeezes my hand. "It's not that I don't want to. It's that I want to too much. And I want to do it right."
I lift our joined hands and press a kiss to her knuckles. She inhales sharply, but she doesn't pull away.
"Take all the time you need," I say. "I'm not going anywhere. This is my home too, remember?"
Something in her face softens at that—at the my home, at the too.
The church bells start up in the distance—midnight, carried on the warm night air. Iris looks toward the sound, then back at me.
"I should sleep," she says. "Early start. Jacques wants to get into the south field before the heat."
"Right. Yeah."
She stands, and I feel the loss of her hand like a physical thing. But she pauses before she goes in, looking back at me over her shoulder.
"Cat?"
"Yeah?"
"Take the job." A small smile curves her lips. "I have a feeling things are going to work out."
She disappears into the house, and I sit a while longer, watching the stars come out and wondering if she knows something I don't.
I pull out my phone and text Sophie: I think I'm taking the job.
Her reply is instant: FINALLY. And the girl?
Working on it, I write.
I've spent my whole life leaving before I could be left—burning it down first, so no one else got the chance. But I'm not going anywhere this time. The farm is mine. The kitchen's nearly mine. And the woman asleep inside is the first thing in years I've wanted badly enough to stay and fight for.
Maybe that's the difference. Maybe this time I don't run.
I finish my wine, head to my room, and pass her door. There's still light underneath—she's awake too, probably staring at the ceiling the same way I'm about to.