37

THE DOORBELL INTERRUPTED HER reverie. It was Jean-Claude, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

“I am too early, je suis désolé.” He looked at Valerie, a gaze full of concern. “You are crying,” he said.

She hadn’t realized it.

“What is wrong, Valerie?”

“Everything.” She dried her eyes.

“You have had news?”

“No,” she said. “That’s what’s wrong.”

She thanked him for the flowers — magnificent spikes of pink gladiolas, white calla lilies, crimson anthuriums with broad, green fleshy leaves.

“You are a gardener. I thought these flowers would console you,” he said.

She thanked him. “Look at the size. I’ll be consoled for life.”

“They’re blessed,” Jean-Claude replied.

“Oh?”

“Only no one goes to church anymore.”

“Is that where you bought them?”

“I rescued them from the cathedral.”

Lisette’s flowers. This is very strange.

The two of them went into the kitchen to find a vase, but there were none large enough. Outside they found a plastic wash-bucket and a garden hose. Jean-Claude filled the bucket with water, and Valerie finished arranging the blooms.

“Have you any news?” she asked.

“Only these flowers.”

You could have worse news.

She wondered at the strangeness of ordinary things.

This morning, who would have imagined this?

That’s what everyone said about the planes.

***

Jean-Claude told her he was having dinner with friends, one of whom owned a seaplane. I’m going to try to borrow it, he said. You know how desperate I am to fly. After dinner, he’d pick her up at Lisette’s. Valerie asked if he’d deliver the tablecloth while she freshened up, so he’d have directions for the evening.

After he left, Valerie stood admiring the extravagant display of flowers, and then she understood that what she wanted right now was as different from this gift as the delicate cluster of lavender in her garden. It was a thing impossible to have, like a dream you struggle to recall and can’t. She wanted the moment before Andre disappeared, the moment before Matt ran to catch a plane. She wanted the thing that had brought her to Saint-Pierre, the fragile hope of her marriage, the moment before Gerard began to drift away from her.