Read Chapter 37: Aftermath: The First Morning

The light came in low and golden, slanting through the shutters of the master bedroom, catching dust motes that drifted like tiny stars. Élise lay still for a moment, taking in the unfamiliar weight of the band on her finger, the warmth beside her.

Julien’s arm was draped across her waist, his breathing slow and even. She turned her head to watch him sleep—the lines around his eyes softened, the perpetual tension in his jaw released. He looked younger somehow, or perhaps lighter. She reached up and touched the silver cup on the nightstand, remembering the weight of it in her hands at the altar, how it had seemed to anchor her to this place, to him, to the life she had chosen.

He stirred, his eyes opening slowly, and a smile spread across his face before he was even fully awake.

“You’re staring,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

“You’re worth staring at.”

He laughed, low and warm, and pulled her closer. They lay entangled for a long moment, the sounds of the domaine waking around them—birdsong, the distant clatter of André moving equipment in the shed, the creak of the old house settling into the morning heat.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” she admitted. “But first—” She sat up, pushing the sheet aside. “I want to see the vines. The way they look on the morning after my wedding.”

Julien propped himself on one elbow, watching her with amusement. “You want to walk the rows in your nightgown?”

“I want to walk the rows, yes.” She pulled a simple cotton dress from the armoire, the one she’d worn on her first day at the domaine, now faded and soft from washing. “The dress can come with me.”

She was dressed in moments, her hair still loose and tangled down her back. Julien pulled on his trousers and a shirt, buttoning it hastily, and they slipped out of the house together, barefoot across the cool stone of the courtyard, the gravel of the path biting gently at their soles.

The vineyard lay before them in the early light, rows upon rows of green stretching toward the hills. The air smelled of earth and grape and the faint mineral tang of the river beyond the property line. The morning was still cool, the heat of July not yet fully risen, and the leaves shimmered with dew.

Élise stopped at the edge of the first row, breathing in deep. She had walked these rows a hundred times in the past year—in grief, in doubt, in determination. But never like this. Never with the ring on her finger and Julien’s hand in hers.

“Where shall we go?” she asked.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said, and his voice had a note in it she couldn’t quite identify—anticipation, perhaps, or nervousness. “A little further up the slope.”

They walked together through the rows, the vines brushing against their legs. The eastern parcel caught the morning sun first, and as they climbed, the light grew stronger, warmer. Élise knew this land now—she had learned its contours, its dry patches, its stubborn corners. But when Julien stopped at a small parcel she rarely visited, a plot tucked near the old stone wall that bordered the property, she frowned.

“This is the parcel that was always sickly,” she said. “The one old Gérard said was cursed.”

“Not cursed,” Julien said. “Abandoned. And then—” He gestured. “Look closer.”

She stepped forward, bending to examine the vine nearest her. The trunk was old, gnarled, but the new growth rising from it was different. The leaves were smaller, more delicate, shaped differently from the surrounding Syrah and Grenache. She ran her fingers along a tender green shoot, and recognition prickled at the back of her mind.

“This is—” She stopped, her throat catching.

She knew this grape. She had seen it painted in watercolor in a small book that had belonged to her mother, kept among the few things Élise had salvaged from the Paris apartment after her death. The illustration had shown a cluster of small, thin-skinned grapes, pale green with a hint of gold, and beneath it her mother had written in her elegant hand: *Le goût de la maison.*

The taste of home.

“Muscat de Frontignan,” Julien said quietly. “The old variety. Almost impossible to find now—everyone’s pulled it out for more profitable grapes. But your mother mentioned it once. When I first came to the domaine, before you ever arrived, she wrote to me about it. A letter she’d saved from her own mother, describing the vines that had grown here when her family owned this land.”

Élise knelt, her hands trembling as she cupped a cluster of tiny green grapes no bigger than her thumbnail. “She never told me. She never told me this place was hers first, that her family—” Her voice cracked. “She always said Provence was a place she’d visited once, nothing more.”

“When you came,” Julien said, dropping to his haunches beside her, “I remembered the letter. I remembered what she’d described—the flavor, the scent. And I thought—” He paused, his voice rough. “I thought if I could give you a piece of her here, a piece of that memory, perhaps it would help you feel less alone in a place you didn’t choose.”

Élise stared at him, tears blurring her vision. “You did this for me? Without telling me?”

“I didn’t want you to feel indebted. Or pushed. You had so much to carry already. And I didn’t know if it would take—if the old rootstock would accept the graft. It took three attempts,” he admitted, a small, rueful smile tugging at his lips. “The first two failed. I thought I’d lost your mother’s grape entirely. But the third—” He gestured at the healthy green vines around them. “The third took.”

She looked at the parcel again with new eyes. There were nearly a dozen vines, each one carefully grafted, each one thriving. She could see the skill in the work, the patience, the quiet devotion of a man who had spent months—years, perhaps—perfecting this gift for a woman he hadn’t even been sure would stay.

“I planted them the spring after you first arrived,” he said. “Before I knew you would ever love this place. Before I knew you would ever love me. I just—” He exhaled. “I wanted to plant something for you anyway. Something that would grow.”

A sob escaped her, raw and unguarded, and she pressed her hand to her mouth. Julien reached for her, pulling her gently into his arms, and she wept against his shoulder, her tears soaking into his shirt. She wept for her mother, for the loss that had set her on this path. She wept for the year of doubt and struggle, for the nights she had stood alone in this vineyard wondering if she belonged. And she wept, too, for this man—this stubborn, silent, impossibly tender man who had built her a garden of memory without ever asking for acknowledgment.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said when she could speak, her voice muffled against his neck.

“You don’t have to.” His hand moved gently through her hair, unpicking the tangles with patient fingers. “You’ve already given me everything I wanted. Everything I didn’t know I wanted until you walked into my cellar and told me I was doing everything wrong.”

She laughed through her tears, pulling back to look at him. “I definitely said that.”

“You did. And you were right. You usually are.” He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “But I had to be right about one thing. I had to be right about you.”

She looked at the vines again, at the mother’s grape growing strong in the Provençal soil. In the soft morning light, she could almost see her mother’s face—not as she had been in the final years, pale and tired in the Paris apartment, but as she must have been once, young and hopeful, walking these same rows.

“What will we do with them?” she asked.

“Make wine,” Julien said simply. “The most beautiful wine this domaine has ever produced. We’ll call it—” He paused, considering. “Perhaps you should name it. It’s your mother’s legacy.”

Élise thought for a moment, touching a cluster of grapes. “Le Chant de Marie,” she said finally. “Marie was my mother’s name. And in the evenings, when the wind comes through these vines—” She closed her eyes. “It does sound like singing.”

“Then that’s what it will be called.”

They stood together, side by side, looking out over the parcel. Below them, the rest of the vineyard spread like a green sea, and beyond that, the village, and beyond that, the hills that rolled toward the horizon. All of it hers. All of it theirs.

“Julien,” she said quietly.

“Yes?”

“I used to think I was alone in the world. Truly alone. After my mother died, after my aunt—” She shook her head. “I thought the world was a place that happened to other people. That I was watching my own life from a distance.”

He was silent, waiting.

“But this morning, standing here with you, I feel like I’m finally in it. Like I’m living my own life, for the first time.” She turned to face him, her eyes still bright with tears but steady. “Planting vines for someone you love—someone you aren’t even sure will stay—that’s not devotion, Julien. That’s faith. And I want to spend the rest of my life proving your faith was well placed.”

He kissed her then, deeply and slowly, the morning sun warming their faces. When they broke apart, she was smiling, a real smile, the kind that reached her eyes and softened everything about her.

“The breakfast you promised,” she said, taking his hand. “I believe I’m ready for it now.”

He laughed, and they started back down the row together, her hand in his, the vineyard singing around them. At the edge of the parcel, she paused, turning to look back one more time at the mother’s vines.

“I can stay here,” she said quietly, as if to herself. “I can stay here, and I can be happy.”

“You are here,” Julien said. “And you are happy.”

She nodded slowly, her gaze still fixed on the green promise of the vines. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

They walked on, the old house rising before them in the golden light, and behind them, the mother’s grape ripened in the morning sun, patient and faithful, waiting for the harvest.