Clara stared at the handwriting.
For several seconds she said nothing.
Then she laughed quietly.
“I think my dad wrote that.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Clara’s smile disappeared.
“They’ve been talking about it.”
“About your marriage?”
“My parents think I should marry someone.”
Sophie did not react dramatically.
She simply asked:
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“When do you turn eighteen?”
“February.”
It was May.
Sophie closed the folder.
“Who are you supposed to marry?”
“Mathieu.”
“How old is Mathieu?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Do you want to marry him?”
Clara immediately looked toward the waiting room.
“My parents are okay with it.”
“I asked whether you want to.”
Clara pulled at a loose thread on her sleeve.
“They say it makes sense.”
Sophie waited.
Clara added:
“He’s nice.”
“That still isn’t what I asked.”
Clara became uncomfortable.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie slid the folder back toward herself instead of handing it over.
“Clara, marriage in France is generally from eighteen.”
Clara looked surprised.
“My dad said the legal age was fifteen.”
Sophie stared at her.
“For marriage?”
“He said once you’re over fifteen you can consent.”
Sophie understood what had happened.
Two completely different legal ideas had been compressed into one sentence around a family dinner table.
“Those are not the same thing.”
Clara frowned.
“My dad looked it up.”
“He may have looked up something else.”
Clara took out her phone.
“My mother is waiting for me to tell her it’s done.”
“You don’t need to tell her anything this second.”
That sentence made Clara more nervous than anything Sophie had said so far.
“Why?”
“Because I want to be sure you understand what you’re signing.”
“I haven’t signed anything.”
“Good.”
Clara stared at her.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“Are my parents?”
“I haven’t said that either.”
Clara’s shoulders relaxed slightly.
Sophie asked whether she would be comfortable speaking to someone from the town’s youth support service.
Clara immediately shook her head.
“No.”
“Okay.”
“You won’t call anyone?”
“I haven’t decided anything yet. I just want to understand what’s happening.”
Clara picked up the folder.
“I should go.”
Sophie did not stop her.
Before Clara left, Sophie said one thing.
“If someone asks whether you agree to marry, the answer has to be yours.”
Clara nodded.
She went home.
That evening, the argument began before dinner.
Isabelle was standing in the kitchen when Clara entered.
“You didn’t get the document.”
“They said I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Get married.”
Isabelle froze.
“Who were you talking to?”
“The woman at the desk.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
“What does nothing mean?”
Clara dropped her backpack beside a chair.
“She asked why I needed the papers.”
“And you told a stranger our personal business?”
“You sent me there with ‘marriage file’ written on the front.”
Isabelle picked up the folder.
“Your father wrote that?”
“I guess.”
She called Laurent.
He arrived home twenty minutes later already irritated.
Clara was in her bedroom when he called her downstairs.
The folder was open on the dining table.
Laurent tapped the form.
“What happened?”
“She said I can’t get married before eighteen.”
Laurent sighed.
“You’re not marrying tomorrow.”
“Then why does it say July?”
“We’re preparing.”
“For what?”
“A ceremony with the families.”
Clara stared at him.
“What ceremony?”
Laurent glanced at Isabelle.
Her mother avoided Clara’s eyes.
Clara felt something cold move through her stomach.
“What ceremony?”
Her father answered carefully.
“We discussed this.”
“No. You discussed Mathieu.”
“And you said you liked him.”
“I said he was nice.”
“Exactly.”
“No. Not exactly.”
Laurent leaned back.
“Clara, nobody is forcing you.”
“Then I don’t want to marry him.”
The room went silent.
It was the first time she had said it that plainly.
Isabelle looked genuinely hurt.
“You’ve never said that.”
“Nobody asked me.”
“We’ve asked you dozens of times.”
“You ask me if Mathieu is nice. You ask me if I enjoyed dinner. You ask me if I think he has a good job.”
Laurent interrupted.
“And every time you say yes.”
“That’s not asking me if I want to marry him.”
Her father rubbed his forehead.
“You’re turning this into something it’s not.”
“What is it, then?”
“A plan.”
“For my marriage.”
“For your future.”
Clara laughed from nerves.
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Laurent stood.
He rarely shouted.
He did not shout now.
That made Clara listen even more carefully.
“You’re seventeen. You don’t know what your life will look like in five years.”
“Neither do you.”
“I know more than you.”
“About my life?”
“About life.”
Isabelle stepped between them verbally before either could go further.
