L'été De Tous Les Chagrins -

That was the second sorrow: the cheap, hollow kind, the one that leaves a bruise on your pride.

One evening in late August, she sat on the cracked stone wall overlooking the lavender field. The lavender had already been harvested; all that remained were scruffy, gray-green stubs. The summer was ending, and she had nothing left. No father, no first love, no grandmother, and a brother who was a ghost in a small boy’s body. l'été de tous les chagrins

That was sorrow number one: the reopening of a wound she thought had scarred over. That was the second sorrow: the cheap, hollow

And she smiled. Not because she was happy. But because she had survived the summer of all sorrows. And survival, she realized, is a kind of beginning. The summer was ending, and she had nothing left

The summer ended the next day. A cold mistral wind blew down from the Alps, scattering the last of the dead cicadas. As Chloé locked the farmhouse door for the last time, she looked back at the stone wall. The word Assez was already fading under the wind.