Page 10 of Where the Snakes Sleep

“Excusez-moi,” I say. Excuse me. The words come out too loud, too American. I clear my throat and try again, softer. “Pardon. Je cherche—” Sorry. I’m looking for— I fumble with the paper, holding it out toward her like an offering. “Chemin des Oliviers?” Olive Path?

It’s the street that should lead me to the outskirts of town, where I should at least be able to see the cottage.

The woman stops. She turns to look at me—not at my face, but at the paper in my hand. She takes it from me without asking, holding it close to her face, her lips moving slightly as she reads. The vegetables in her basket shift with the motion, a tomato rolling against the woven edge.

She frowns. The expression transforms her weathered face into something harder, the lines around her mouth deepening into grooves.

“Legrand?” she says. The name comes out like an accusation.

I blink. For a moment, the word means nothing—just a sound, syllables strung together in a French accent that makes everything sound like a question. Then it clicks. Legrand. It’s the name on the death certificate, the name on the will.

“Oui,” I say. “Yes. That’s—it’s mine. The cottage is—”

I trail off because her expression has changed again. Not to anger, exactly. Something worse. Something that lives in the space between judgment and pity, the look of someone who has decided something about you before you’ve finished speaking. Her eyes move from the paper to my face, scanning me. She takes in my sneakers, my jeans, my travel-worn jacket, the backpack slung over one shoulder, the American cut of it all. Her mouth tightens into a thin line.

She says something in French. Rapid, clipped, the words running together like water over stone. I catch none of it except what might be “chez Legrand” and what might be “vous êtes”—you are—followed by something I can’t parse.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I want it to. “I don’t—my French is—”

She holds up a hand. Stops me. Then she turns, sets her basket on a low stone wall beside the road, and points toward a narrow lane that branches off from the main road and disappears between two stone buildings.

“Chemin des Oliviers,” she says, pronouncing each word with the exaggerated clarity of someone speaking to a child. She gestures again, more emphatically this time—straight, then left, then right at what appears to be a small stone archway half-hidden by an overgrown fig tree. “Là-bas. Après la fontaine.”

Fontaine. Fountain. I know that word, at least.

“Merci,” I say. “Thank you. Merci beaucoup.” Thank you very much.

She doesn’t respond. She picks up her basket, adjusts it on her hip, and walks away without another word. The sound of her shoes on the cobblestones fades behind me, and I’m left standing in the middle of the street.

I follow her directions.

The street she pointed to—if you can call it a street—is more of a passage. The walls on either side are close enough that I could reach out and touch both at once. The cobblestones are slick with something—moss, maybe, or centuries of wear.

After a minute, the passage opens into a small square. A dry fountain sits in the center, its basin filled with dead leaves. A few olive trees grow in terracotta pots along one wall, their trunks gnarled and ancient-looking. The square is empty except for a dog sleeping in a patch of sun, and it doesn’t stir as I pass.

Past the fountain, the path continues.

My shoulders ache from the weight of my backpack, and sweat trickles down my spine despite the mild temperature. The village seems to be thinning out as I go, the buildings growing farther apart, stone walls giving way to patches of wild grass and the occasional gnarled olive tree.

I follow the path around a bend, and suddenly the hillside opens up before me. The view is breathtaking—rolling hills covered in vineyards and olive groves stretch toward the horizon, the late afternoon sun painting everything in warm gold. The air smells of earth and herbs and something sweet I can’t identify.

And there it is.

My cottage sits nestled into the hillside, a few minutes’ walk away. From this distance, it looks exactly like the photos Maître Aubert sent—stone walls, red-tiled roof, windows flanking a wooden door. But seeing it in person makes me catch my breath. It’s a little bit bigger than I expected. Vines crawl up the western wall, and the garden is indeed badly overgrown, just as the photos showed, with wild rosemary and lavender spilling over stone steps.

I stand there for a moment, suitcase handle gripped tight in my palm, watching as sunlight shifts across the stone facade.

My inheritance; my fresh start.

A bird calls somewhere in the olive grove beside the path, and I’m startled back to the present. The sun is definitely moving lower in the sky now. I need to reach the cottage before dark.

About a hundred yards past my cottage, set higher on the hillside where the land levels into a broad terrace, there’s another house. Or not a house—an estate. The word feels right even before I’ve fully processed what I’m looking at.

It’s enormous. Two stories of pale limestone, with tall windows and a wrought-iron balcony running the length of the second floor. The roof is slate, not tile, and it catches the light in a way that makes the whole building look like it’s glowing from within. A gravel drive curves up from a gate I can’t quite see from this angle, lined with cypress trees that stand at rigid attention like sentinels.

It looks like something from a magazine. Or a movie. The kind of place that has a name, not just an address.

The contrast is almost too much. I feel the old, familiar urge to laugh at myself, to preempt the judgment by offering it up first, but there’s no audience for the joke. I wonder who lives there. If it’s a family, or one of those tight-faced couples who retire to France for the tax breaks and the wine. Or if the place is empty most of the year, inhabited only by caretakers and the house’s own memory. I wonder, for a moment, if the neighbors will resent my presence. Or if they will be the kind to never notice me at all. Whoever they are, I bet they really belong there. Not like me.