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I glance over at him, surprised by the gentleness in the question.

"My mother. She was an aspiring painter," I say, and even now the phrase feels too small for who she was. "Or maybe not aspiring. She was one. She just didn't get the kind of time people like to imagine artists get. She made things anyway."

Gabriel nods like he understands exactly the difference between aspiring and simply being.

"She grew up not far from here," I continue. "Closer to Villefranche-sur-Mer. My father met her while he was traveling. He likes to tell the story like it's one long postcard. She was painting outside. He was carrying too many peaches. One rolled under her easel."

Gabriel smiles.

"She told him his flirting needed work," I say, smiling a little myself now because some stories soften instead of hurt when you tell them often enough. "Apparently his French was tragic. He kept coming back anyway. They fell in love here."

"And you came hoping the magic might be hereditary," Gabriel says.

The words settle in me quietly.

I look back out at the sea. "Something like that."

The truth is bigger and messier than that.

I came because my father used to tell me to fall in love in France, and for years I thought he meant with a person. Now I'm starting to think maybe he also meant with myself. With beauty. With wanting things. With life again.

"I think," I say slowly, "I hoped this place would crack something open."

Gabriel doesn't answer right away.

Then: "It already has."

My throat tightens.

I glance down at the canvas. At the paint still wet under the sun. At the man without a face who somehow still looks like Everett. At the evidence of everything I am clearly not admitting anywhere except here.

"Yes," I say softly. "Maybe it has."

Gabriel brushes a crumb from his hand and stands. "Come with me."

I blink up at him. "Where?"

"To the gallery."

My first instinct is to say no.

Too fast. Too vulnerable. Too much.

But my paint-stained fingers tighten around the edge of the canvas instead.

"Now?"

"Yes, now." He tips his head toward the satchel. "Bring him with you."

I laugh. "I'm not sure Everett would appreciate being referred to as portable art."

"He should be honored."

I should say no.

Instead, I pack up the canvas and follow Gabriel through the winding side streets of Cannes, carrying my painting and my coffee and all the nervous hope I haven't let myself name yet.

The gallery is tucked off a narrower lane I never would have found on my own, behind a whitewashed façade with tall windows and discreet gold lettering that reads Galerie Amaury.