Nima and Greta always came back here for the summers.
They would drive down from Paris in the early morning, the city falling away behind them until only open roads, fields, and small sunlit villages remained. Greta would sit by the window watching everything change slowly, as if the world itself was loosening its shoulders. They would stop at villages and pick up wine, olive oil and supplies.
When they arrived, the villa was always waiting in the same way: pale stone warmed by the sun, faded blue shutters, and cedar trees shadowing the fading light in a quiet circle around the garden and the pool. And at the center, the fig tree, soft and shifting, its pale blossoms drifting like sweet juice through the air, inviting.
Their summers fell into an easy rhythm.
They laughed more here. Not constantly, but in sudden bursts, while cooking in the old kitchen, when something spilled, when a joke landed unexpectedly in the warm evening air. Nima would tease Greta about burning the bread, and Greta would pretend to be offended, but she’d be smiling too.
Afterward, they would stay outside as long as the night sky darkening permitted, talking or not talking, letting the night settle gently around them. The air cooling from the day and the vibrating nature around them.
Greta read a lot there. Books left open on her lap, pages turning slowly in the heat. Sometimes she’d read aloud a sentence she liked, not expecting a response, just wanting it to exist in the air between them.
They went on long walks too, along dusty paths lined with cypress and wildflowers, the smell of cedar following them like a ghost. Nima would walk a little ahead, Greta behind, then beside her, then drifting off again, never quite still, but always together.
And always, always, the fig tree waited back at the villa, holding the center of their days like a quiet oases.
Time went too fast, and every summer had its ending.
When it was time to leave, Greta would grow quieter. The packing would be slow, reluctant. She would stand in the garden longer than necessary, looking at the lilies, the violets, the drifting pale green scent of the now fruitless fig tree as if trying to memorise how the warm air felt on her skin.
On the drive back toward Paris, she would often cry.
Not loudly. Just silent tears she tried to hide by turning her face toward the window, where the landscape was already becoming less soft, less slow.
“I don’t want it to end,” she would say sometimes, in an unheard voice.
Nima would keep one hand on the wheel, the other briefly finding Greta’s.
“I know,” she would answer.
And still, they would leave.
But every year, they came back again, because somewhere between the laughter, the long dinners by the pool, the quiet reading, and the walks under the cedar shade, the villa had become more than a place.
It had become the place where summers felt like they might last forever, even when they didn’t.
