Late January, 20xx
The train from Paris to Avignon rattled like a memory I couldn't suppress. I sat with my coat collar turned up, head leaning against the glass, watching a pale winter landscape blur past.
Vineyards stretched in rows of skeletal vines, their bare arms raised as if pleading for a sun that had long stopped listening.
The cold had followed me south. It curled around my ankles, pressed through the wool of my coat, clung to my chest like remorse. I didn't mind the cold. In fact, it suited me now.
I arrived just before sunset, the village hadn't changed. The cobblestones were still uneven, the scent of pressed olives and woodsmoke still clinging to the hillsides. Children played soccer in coats two sizes too large. A woman sold bread from her window.
The details were all the same—only I had changed. Or rather, something in me had cracked, quietly and irrevocably.
The vineyard was empty when I reached it. My family had long since leased the fields to local workers. I kept the house locked but intact—a memory preserved in dry lavender and dust. The windows stared like blank eyes into a valley that once felt endless.
Now it felt like a coffin.
I unlocked the front door with a key I hadn't used in years. The air inside was stale but undisturbed. Old wallpaper peeled at the edges, a few books remained where I left them. A photo of my mother in the foyer, her eyes kind and weary, seemed to ask a question I could no longer answer.
I lit a fire, opened the bottle of wine I'd brought. Poured one glass, left the second untouched.
Rain began to fall—not softly, but as if the sky had been holding its breath and suddenly exhaled. No warning, no drizzle. Just a downpour that hammered the roof in waves. The wind carried something strange in it, a pressure that made the walls groan. I stood at the back door, watching the vineyard vanish behind a veil of water.
It was too early for a storm like this. Provence winters were cold, yes, but this felt unnatural—like weather from a different season, or a different world.
The unease settled slowly. I told myself it was grief, or guilt, or fatigue.
But I kept staring at the vines, as if something might emerge.
---
Hours passed. I didn't eat, and the wine turned sour in my mouth. I wandered the halls—touching old furniture, testing floorboards, revisiting rooms like one might return to the site of a disaster. I avoided every mirror I passed. I couldn't bear to see myself—not yet.
At midnight, the power flickered, then cut. The storm howled louder. I lit a candle from the drawer in the kitchen and carried it to the upstairs landing. The air was thicker now, humid and electric. I could feel it beneath my skin.
Then, all at once, the lights returned.
I flinched
Not just because of the sudden illumination, but because for a fraction of a second, I thought I saw something at the edge of the field.
A figure? A shadow?
But when I pressed my face to the glass, there was nothing, only rain.
Still, the unease didn't leave me. It had rooted itself somewhere deeper. Something had shifted in the soil of that place—in me. I had come to this house to escape the world—to mourn, to unravel. But now the silence seemed to hum with some interior echo, like I wasn't truly alone.
---
I slept on the couch in the parlor, if you could call it sleep. My mind wouldn't quiet. Images of Elodie returned, not her death but her presence—the sound of her voice, the way she'd sit with her spine too straight, trying not to seem broken. Her laugh, once, when something slipped through.
And the note.
Tell him I danced
What did it mean? What was I supposed to take from that?
I awoke to gray light and a vineyard cloaked in fog. The storm had passed, but its mood lingered. The vines dripped, and the earth had become soft, unstable. Somewhere in the fields, a bird cried once, then fell silent.
I stepped outside with coffee in hand. The air was thick with petrichor, my boots sank slightly into the soil. A vine branch snagged the hem of my coat like a hand reaching out.
I pulled away, but I didn't go back inside.
Instead, I stood there, in the ruins of harvest, and let the morning soak into me. The rain had come early. And it had not left empty-handed.
Somewhere in me, I knew: this place would not give me rest.
Not anymore.