20. Cat
CAT
I wake up to sunlight streaming through the windows and the weight of Iris's head on my shoulder.
For a long moment, I don't move. I just lie there, cataloguing the sensation of her body pressed against mine, the soft rhythm of her breathing, the way her hand rests on my stomach like it belongs there. Like it's always belonged there.
This is real. This is actually happening.
She stirs against me, making a small sound of protest at the light. "What time is it?"
"Early. Go back to sleep."
"Can't." She shifts, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me. Her hair is a disaster, there's a crease on her cheek from my shoulder, and she's never been more beautiful. "We have that meeting with the lawyer at ten."
Right. The lawyer. Jean-Pierre. The legal battle that's hanging over us like a storm cloud.
"We have time," I say. "The meeting's not for three hours."
"I need coffee. And a shower. And possibly a small existential crisis about the fact that I just—" She gestures vaguely between us. "With you. In your grandmother's house."
"Technically our grandmother's house."
"That doesn't make it less weird."
I laugh, pulling her down for a kiss. She resists for approximately half a second before melting into me, her body soft and warm and willing.
"Good morning," I murmur against her lips.
"Good morning." She pulls back, but she's smiling. "Okay. Maybe it's not that weird."
"It's not weird at all. It's exactly where we're supposed to be."
Her eyes soften. "You really believe that?"
"I really do."
We stay in bed longer than we should, trading lazy kisses and softer words. By the time we finally drag ourselves up, shower, and make our way to the kitchen, the morning is half gone and I don't regret a single minute of it.
Ma?tre Rousseau's office is in Apt, thirty minutes through countryside gone violently purple. The lavender's at full bloom now—tourists pulling over to photograph it, the whole valley humming. In two weeks, the harvest starts.
In two weeks, we'll know whether Jean-Pierre can take any of it from us.
Rousseau is small and sharp-eyed and reminds me so much of Marguerite it aches.
Duval recommended her the day the notice arrived—a notaire draws a will up, he explained, apologetic; he doesn't fight over it in court.
Besides, he'll be in the witness box himself, swearing Marguerite was sharp as a blade the day she signed.
He can't be our advocate and our proof at the same time.
Rousseau doesn't waste our time. She's had three days of our documents; she's already told us the case is strong.
What she hasn't told us is this.
"He'll use her relationship," she says. "With Hélène."
The room goes very quiet.
"Use it how?" Iris asks.
"He'll argue it was evidence of instability.
Poor judgment. A woman who—" Rousseau's mouth thins around the words she's about to say on his behalf.
"—abandoned her family for an unnatural attachment, and whose decisions therefore cannot be trusted.
" She sets down her pen. "It's obscene. It is also not illegal to argue, and he will. "
"That's thirty-five years of her life," I say.
"Yes. And it changes nothing about the strength of your case.
" She looks at us over her glasses—and her gaze flicks, briefly and without judgment, to where Iris's hand has come to rest over mine on the table.
"But you should both understand what will be in that room.
Marguerite's private life. And possibly yours. "
Neither of us says anything.
"I don't tell you this to frighten you," she says. "I tell you so that when it comes, it doesn't take the wind out of you."
Iris's fingers tighten around mine.
"We can handle it." Her voice doesn't waver. "Whatever they throw at us."
And I look at her—really look—and the woman who arrived here six weeks ago in her heels and her armor, terrified of anything she couldn't control, is simply not in the room anymore.
"Good," Rousseau says. "Then let's get to work."
The drive home is quiet.
Iris watches the lavender blur past, and I can practically hear her building the list—every risk, every angle, every way this ends badly.
"Talk to me," I say.
"They're going to put her love on trial." She doesn't look away from the window. "Thirty-five years, and they're going to stand up in a courtroom and call it a symptom."
"Yeah."
"And ours." Now she does look at me. "If it helps them, they'll use ours too."
I don't lie to her. "Probably."
She's quiet a long moment. Then, so quietly I nearly miss it: "It was worth it."
I pull the car into a layby overlooking the valley, the lavender running out below us for miles, and I shut off the engine and turn to face her.
"Say that again."
"Last night. All of it." Her eyes are bright and absolutely steady. "Whatever they try to make of it—it was worth it. I'd do it again. I'd do it in front of the whole court. I—"
She stops.
"Iris."
"I love you."
I freeze.
It's the first time. The first time either of us has put the word in the air and given it weight and shape and consequence. She's looking at me like she's just jumped off something high and isn't certain the water's deep enough.
"I know it's fast," she says, in a rush. "But before the lawyers and the court and whatever else comes—I needed you to know that part is true."
I start to laugh.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Because I've been lying awake for two weeks working out how to say it first." I haul her across the gearstick, graceless and desperate, and press my forehead to hers.
"I love you too. I have been in love with you for weeks.
Possibly since you turned up in those ridiculous heels and looked at me like I was a problem to be solved. "
"They weren't ridiculous."
"They were catastrophically ridiculous. I loved them anyway."
She laughs—wet and undone—and then she's kissing me, both hands fisted in my shirt, and I kiss her back on the side of a road in the middle of a lavender field, with a court date coming and her mother out there somewhere and Jean-Pierre sharpening his knives.
Let them come.
I've got her. She's got me.
That's the whole case.