Séverine was in the kitchen garden, kneeling in the mud, pulling carrots that were mostly leaves.
The rain had finally stopped. The garden sat inside an old brick wall, half of it gone to weeds, the other half planted in rows so straight they looked measured with string. A wheelbarrow with a flat tire leaned against the barn Damien had raided that morning.
She was wearing the black cashmere turtleneck again, the one from the porch. In daylight, Aria could see that both elbows had been darned.
'She dressed up to meet us,' Aria thought. 'She put on the one nice thing she owns to tell us to get off her lawn.'
"Jade's lying down," Aria said, picking her way up the row. "She isn't sleeping, but she's lying down. So I brought a different translator."
Damien stopped at the end of the row, hands in his pockets.
Séverine looked at him the way a cat looks at a vacuum cleaner.
"He fixed your roof," Aria said.
"Je sais. Théo me l'a dit."
"She knows," Damien said. "Théo told her."
