Christine Chavanon paced from living room to kitchen. In the hours since she’d returned home with her arm stinging from the stitches, she’d checked the door locks twice to make sure they were secure. Her father’s satchel lay on the center of her dining table. Beside it, his notebook looked old and worn. It felt toxic.
She turned her coffee machine on and recrossed the room to look out the front window again. The main house was dark; the lawn was a pool of inky black. She wouldn’t be able to tell if anyone was there. She closed the drapes, checking that they were a barrier to all unwelcome eyes. She turned the coffee machine off, changing her mind. She didn’t need caffeine; her thoughts were already too wildly discordant. What she had discovered was inconceivable.
She went to a different window, this time turning the overhead light off before she looked out. She waited, allowing her eyes to adjust. There were too many clouds to see any detail. Marie had gone to bed hours ago, turning out all the lights. Christine fidgeted. She should talk to Marie, shouldn’t she?
Turning the light back on, she stood beside the table and opened the notebook again. Her finger traced the writing, line by line. She turned a page and continued. She’d done this a half dozen times already, at first afraid the pain medication was making her believe the impossible. By the third time she was stone sober and focused, and she believed.
She slipped the notebook back into the satchel and stowed it under the sofa cushion. The cushions were sold as casual chic, which meant they were unstructured and didn’t reveal what was stuffed beneath. This felt better. Safer. Tomorrow she could read it all again with a clear head.
Satisfied, she walked to the bedroom and turned back the covers, reaching for a nightgown. On a chair across the room sat the Steiff bear her father had given her twenty years ago. The bear was worn from childhood adoration, his arms threadbare and one eye replaced with a button, but the sight of him brought back all those years, all that she owed her father. She should have paid more attention.
What she needed to do—to say—couldn’t wait. She would wake Marie up.
Retrieving the satchel and notebook from underneath the sofa cushion, she slipped the strap over her shoulder, then covered up with a jacket. She turned off the lights and peered out between the living-room curtains.
It was too late for cars on their road. No one was about. She told herself that whoever had broken into the workshop wouldn’t return, especially only hours after the police left.
Something in the landscape changed. She focused in the distance and not on the workshop. A man was crossing the lawn.
She held her breath and pulled her mobile phone from her coat pocket.
Then she recognized him. Stephan Dupré.
Carefully she closed the curtains and went to bed, taking the satchel with her.