The silence in the car is suffocating.
I stare out the window at the passing vineyards, watching the neat rows blur into green and gold streaks that mean nothing to me right now.
My reflection ghosts against the glass—pale, hollow-eyed, a stranger wearing my face.
Beside me, Estienne's posture is rigid enough to crack, his hands positioned at ten and two on the steering wheel like a driving instructor's demonstration model.
The distance between our seats feels vast.
Hours ago, there was no distance at all. Hours ago, his body was pressed against mine in ways that made me forget every lie I have ever told.
Now the truth sits between us like a corpse we are both pretending not to notice.
The engine hums. The tires whisper against wet asphalt. Neither of us speaks, and the absence of words becomes its own kind of violence—a slow suffocation that tightens my chest with every kilometer we cover.
I count the vineyard rows as they flash past. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. The rhythm steadies my breathing, gives my mind a place to anchor while the rest of me threatens to scatter into pieces too small to reassemble.
"The stealing," Estienne says finally, his voice flat and strange, like he is reading from a script he did not write. "The running, the lying. That's not the girl I remember from when we were children."
I almost laugh at the understatement. The sound catches in my throat, emerging as a strangled exhale that fogs the window glass.
"No," I agree, watching my breath dissipate. "It's not."
The girl he remembers wore white canvas sneakers and believed that summer would last forever. The girl he remembers had a grandfather who loved her and a future that stretched bright and unbroken toward the horizon.
That girl died a long time ago. I have been wearing her skin ever since, pretending I still know who I am.
Estienne glances at me, and the weight of his gaze makes my shoulders tense. "What happened to you?" His voice carries genuine bewilderment beneath the anger. "What did Frank do to you that turned you into someone who can lie so easily?"
I consider deflecting. The instinct is automatic, a reflex honed by years of survival—redirect the question, change the subject, offer a partial truth that satisfies without revealing.
But exhaustion wins. The weight of carrying secrets has grown too heavy, and my arms are shaking from the strain.
"Everything," I say quietly, the word escaping on an exhale that empties my lungs completely. "He did everything."
The admission hangs in the air between us, and I realize I have never said it aloud before. Not to Christopher, not to the doctors who treated my broken nose and asked careful questions I refused to answer, not to anyone.
"The men in the diner," I continue, forcing myself to look at him instead of the window. "I told you they work for Frank. He will never stop searching because the marital contract makes me his only claim to power. Without me as his wife, he loses the company, the money, and the position he has spent years pretending he earned."
Estienne's hands tighten on the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening against the leather. The muscle in his jaw jumps, and I watch him process the information, watch him recalibrate everything he thought he understood about my situation.
"Why would you need to escape your own husband?" The question emerges rough, almost reluctant, as though he already suspects an answer he does not want to hear. "People get divorced every day, Renée. They hire lawyers and file papers and move on with their lives. Why would you climb out a window in the middle of the night like a prisoner fleeing a cell?"
I turn to look at him directly, holding his gaze with a steadiness that costs me more than he will ever know. "Because he is a monster, Estienne. And monsters do not let go of the things they own."
I watch the shift happen in his expression—the anger that has been directed at me since he found my passport begins to redirect, to recalculate.
His brow furrows, and I can see him fitting pieces together, constructing a picture he should have seen from the beginning if my lies had not obscured the view.
"The bruises," he says slowly, and the word makes my stomach clench. "When you first arrived, I thought they were from running barefoot on that road. From falling in the dark. But they weren't, were they?"
I shake my head, unable to speak past the tightness in my throat.
"How long?" His voice drops lower, rougher. "How long has he been hurting you?"
"Eight years." The number sounds impossible when I say it aloud, too large to comprehend.
The silence that follows is different from before. This silence carries weight and texture—horror and rage and grief tangled together in a tight knot.
"Why didn't you leave sooner?" The question is soft now, stripped of accusation. "If it was that bad, why stay for eight years?"
"Because leaving meant abandoning my grandfather's legacy to Frank's incompetence." I press my palm against my thigh, feeling the tension in my own muscles.
I pause, swallowing hard against the bitterness rising in my throat.
"And because I was afraid," I admit. "Afraid that no one would believe me. Afraid that running would make everything worse instead of better."
Estienne absorbs this in silence, and I watch the landscape of his face transform—stone softening into reluctant understanding, anger giving way to protective fury that has nothing to do with my deception and everything to do with the man who made deception necessary.
When we pull up to the farmhouse, he cuts the engine and turns to me. The gray afternoon light catches his pale eyes, and I see resolution there—a decision made despite better judgment, a door held open that he has every right to slam shut.
"My grandfather's study is in the east wing," he says. "I'll take you there now."
My stomach drops through the floor of the car.
The apology I promised. The meeting I cannot avoid. The man whose trust I exploited with a blonde wig and blue contact lenses and a notebook full of questions designed to destroy him.
Bastien Côté spent an entire day with me two years ago. He showed me cellars his great-grandfather built.
He let me taste wine from barrels that were not ready for anyone outside the family. He spoke to me with pride and openness because I made him believe his story mattered.
If he recognizes me, everything ends.
I follow Estienne out of the car and into the house, my legs moving automatically while my mind races through possibilities and probabilities. The hallway stretches before us, leading toward the east wing.
My only hope is that an old man's memory will fail where mine cannot.
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