The Heat
By the second week, the heat had accomplished what conversation could not — it had stripped away pretense, reducing both families to their essential selves the way a kiln reduces clay to ceramic. Philippe read in the shade and avoided the pool. Jerome swam laps with the grim determination of a man whose body is his last remaining project. Claire cooked elaborate Provencal meals that no one fully appreciated, and Mathilde contributed salads of such architectural complexity that eating them felt like an act of demolition.
The children, freed from the careful choreography of Parisian playdates, had formed an alliance that their parents watched with a mixture of relief and suspicion. They disappeared into the garrigue each morning and returned each evening sunburnt and secretive, carrying the particular knowledge that children acquire when adults are not watching — the location of a wasps' nest, the depth of a stream, the taste of wild thyme chewed straight from the stem. Claire envied them their ease. She could not remember the last time she had entered a room without first calculating its social geometry.
The argument, when it came, was about the pool. Jerome wanted to hire someone to fix the filter. Philippe considered this an unnecessary expense, since the pool had functioned adequately in its compromised state for years. But the argument was not about the pool, just as