The sun is a white-hot coin pressed against the windshield, blinding Juliette as she steers the dusty Volvo onto the gravel track. The car groans, tires crunching over the parched stones of the driveway she hasn't seen in over a decade. She squinting against the glare, pulling the visor down with a hand still faintly grey from the limestone she was carving in Bordeaux only yesterday. The air inside the car is thick with the scent of old leather and the dry, peppery heat of the Vaucluse.
She kills the engine, and the silence of the valley rushes in to meet her. To her left, the lavender field stretches out in a sea of geometric precision, the silver-green stalks meticulously pruned for the season. It is far too neat for a dead man’s garden. Henri was many things, but a disciplined gardener was never one of them. She steps out, the heat hitting her linen shirt like a physical weight, and leans against the door to catch her breath.
Something shifts at the periphery of her vision. She reaches for her sunglasses on the dashboard, her heart tripping against her ribs for reasons she refuses to name. In the rearview mirror, a figure steps out from the pruned lavender rows and stops.
