Under the Same Sun, Part 2: Last Light

The path to the ridge was not difficult. That was one of the things Martin liked least about it at first.

He had wanted effort. Effort would have given his body a clean assignment and spared him the slower task of remaining beside another person without hiding inside practical motion.

Leonie climbed a few meters ahead of him through thyme, stone, and sun-cured grass. She did not fill the silence for him. She never had. Even years earlier, when she and Claire were close and Martin still thought usefulness was the same thing as emotional generosity, Leonie had possessed the unsettling gift of leaving a silence intact until someone either inhabited it honestly or revealed why he could not.

By the time they reached the ridge, the heat had dropped into that merciful late-hour warmth that belongs more to skin than to air. Below them, La Bergerie du Soleil lay in pale stone and shadow. The pool held the last flat sheet of blue. Beyond it the valley opened in terraces, fig trees, dry fields, and low silver olive leaves catching the light like small deliberate answers.