The rain hadn’t stopped in three days.
It was the kind of French autumn drizzle that painted the world in silvers and greys — melancholic, tender, and far too familiar for a man like Lucien Vallois. As the novelist watched from the window of their countryside manor in Chinon, he thought of her — not as she was now, stiff and distant in silence — but as she had once been.
Barefoot in museums, whispering stories to faded paintings. Her gloved hands brushing away centuries of decay like it was dust on a childhood book.
“Art remembers what people forget,” she had said once, eyes gleaming beneath the Louvre's golden lights.
She never knew she was talking about herself.
That evening, Éloïse had taken the car without a word. She needed air, she’d said.
Space.
Time.
Lucien had nodded, like always.
He never begged her to stay, even when everything inside him screamed to. Instead, he watched her go — her figure wrapped in a tan trench coat, hair pinned with a single pearl clip, the rain softly collecting on her shoulders like dew.
Hours passed.
The phone rang at 22:47.
His breath stopped halfway through the ring.
“Monsieur Vallois? Il faut que vous veniez immédiatement… c’est votre femme. Il y a eu un accident.”
He arrived at the hospital with trembling hands and ink still smudged on his cuffs. The halls smelled of disinfectant and loneliness. Under the harsh light, he looked ghostly — as if part of him had shattered the moment her name was spoken.
Through the glass, he saw her.
Pale.
Still.
A single cut on her temple bloomed like a crushed petal. Machines beeped with clinical indifference beside her. His wife. His muse. His story.
The nurse turned to him gently. “She’s stable… but there’s something you should know.”
When Éloïse opened her eyes hours later, Lucien was by her side.
“Éloïse?” he whispered, reaching for her hand. “C’est moi… Lucien.”
She blinked. Her gaze drifted over him — eyes a little foggy, expression distant.
And then she said it.
“Lucien… Vallois?”
“Yes,” he breathed.
“You’re the writer, right?”
Lucien froze.
She didn't say my husband.
She didn’t say you.
Just… “the writer.”
Her mind had pressed delete on their story.
He smiled through the breaking.
“Oui, je suis l’écrivain.”
(Yes, I’m the writer.)
And in that moment, Lucien Vallois made a decision.
If life had erased their love, he would write it back — not with ink this time, but with each moment, each glance, each kindness she no longer remembered.
Because even if she didn’t know it yet…
She was still the girl in the yellow rain.
chapter ends
Teaser begins
Then she saw it — a poem, marked with a folded corner.
She read the words slowly, aloud, barely a whisper:
She is not a painting I wish to possess,
but a moment I want to live in, again and again.
She walks like the sky owes her light…
and laughs like the world is still beautiful
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