39

JEAN-CLAUDE RETURNED from his errand. He looked bemused.

“Lisette was frantic,” he said.

“Porquoi?”

“This evening was to be festive, she tells me.”

“She doesn’t think Marguerite will be surprised?”

“It seems Marguerite is coming from a wake. Along with everyone else.”

“That can’t be helped.”

“The poor man,” he said. “His poor family.”

“Don’t be too hard on Lisette. She was fond of Laurent Sarazin.”

“And you know this?” he asked.

“Those were her flowers you pinched from the cathedral.”

Jean-Claude became silent. “I was foolish. I must return them.”

“Of course.”

“How sad everything is,” he said at last. “The bell is still tolling. Listen.”

***

When they left the pension, it was late afternoon, and through her eyes, Saint-Pierre had lost none of its morning strangeness. Streets appeared to list seaward like doomed ships, each frame building pressing hard against the next as if in an effort to remain standing. Valerie couldn’t grasp the distance between blocks, how long it might take her to cross the street.

“I must be tired,” she said. “I can’t see depth.”

“I can,” Jean-Claude replied. He offered her his arm. “At least I think I can.”

“Either you can or you can’t.” You must be tired, too, she thought.

“I don’t know which it is,” he said. “Just because I see it doesn’t mean it’s there.”

Valerie wondered if she’d ever again have a sane conversation with anyone.

When they reached Rue Albert Briand, they stood across the street from the Fromagerie Leduc — where the yellow house had been. “It’s gone,” she said.

“No. We are looking at it.”

Jean-Claude was right. The yellow clapboard house stood between the dress shop and the travel agency, but its colour had faded in the afternoon light. The green planter was still there, with its flush of pink geraniums. The lace curtains were pulled shut. On the front lawn was a placard. En Vente/À Louer, it read. For sale/For rent. Beside the front door, Valerie saw the dark outline of a square, as if a sign had been pried loose.

“The tile,” she said. “The exclamation point.”

“We must be on the wrong street,” said Jean-Claude.

They circled the block, then returned to Rue Albert Briand. Valerie went into the dress shop and asked the clerk if she knew about the café.

“That odd little place?”

“It’s such a charming—”

“It comes and goes,” she said.

“We were just here at noontime.”

She looked at them, puzzled. “Maybe someone has bought the house at last.”

***

“We must have been mistaken,” said Jean-Claude.

“Some mistake. I checked my email here. My son—”

“Yes, I understand.” His voice trailed off.

“Your brother—”

“I also checked—”

As if he could tell her anything. As if he had power over time, as if he’d managed quite by accident to punch in the wrong year when he asked her out for coffee. Jean-Claude looked weary. “Perhaps we’ve shuffled time,” he said. “A great poker game.”

“The cards all out of order.”

“We are trapped,” he said.

***

They walked over to the café at the Place du Général de Gaulle. Once they were seated, Valerie noticed Jean-Claude glancing at her arm. He reached out and touched her silver bracelet.

“How beautiful. Where did you get this?”

“It belonged to my husband’s fiancée. She died young.”

“C’est triste.”

“He never got over it.” She told him the story of Ora.

He withdrew his hand. For a moment, he said nothing.

“She belongs to this day,” he said at last.

“It’s true. Yes.” She paused. “As if time never was. As if her plane went up in smoke this morning.”

“Oui. Je comprends.”

“Thank you. Almost no one understands this.”

“Your husband must. It is fortunate that he found you. After his loss.”

Unsure how much to tell him, Valerie was silent. “I came here to think about us,” she said at last. “And then, this morning—”

Afraid of a rockslide of terror, she took a deep breath as she looked out over the water, at the soft clouds, the lazy sailboats drifting by. Ora, she thought, had been woven into the fabric of injustice, of every disgraceful thing that Gerard had set out to expose, and this transformation was, in a sense, her second death. Perhaps she, Valerie, had also died for him. For a while Gerard would lose interest in her, and then passion would hiss and spark, as it did after his return from Rwanda. Then he’d go overseas again, coming back for a couple of illicit nights, dangerous encounters, whatever their imaginations chose to name them. Or he’d go on assignment and vanish. He’d return preoccupied. He wouldn’t touch her. In a day or two he’d leave again.

And now he was one of those anguished souls in Manhattan.

And this time, it was she who’d fled.

***

“I have heard nothing more from my son,” she said.

“Nor I, of my brother. My sister-in-law is checking all the hospitals.”

“Many people have fled by boat,” she said. “Andre could be with them.”

“I hope it does not sound trivial,” he replied. “But the waters of New York are calm. A good day for such a trip.”

Valerie agreed. She imagined Andre making a dash to the ferry, and then she pictured Battery Park, a lazy afternoon, she, Gerard and the kids on the boat, circling the Statue of Liberty. She loved the calm of this time of year. Summer (even late summer in the North Atlantic) didn’t lend itself to a crisis. The season was too languid, too sensual, sailboats drifting in the harbour; the froth on a chill beer, the warmth right down to the bones that says be well. Fear and Dread had to stand in line for a café table like everyone else, c’est tout. On a day like this, it was possible to hope. Yet she’d been fooled before.

“Have you ever had a difficult flight?” she asked him.

“Once or twice we’ve had to turn back to Orly because of engine trouble,” he said.

“And nothing else?”

He paused. “I once flew into the desert.”

“And something went wrong?”

“It was wrong.” He paused. “I was going to leave my family. I changed my mind.”

“Did you ever regret it?” she asked.

“Changing my mind? No. I was not home often enough to regret it.”

His children had left home. His wife had since passed away.

She told him about Mr. Groves’ plane and the odd stories surrounding its disappearance, remembering that hot June day on the airfield, the kids picnicking while the adults fretted. The grownups will take care of everything, said the tart fizzle of Aunt Ann’s lemonade. They’d find Mr. Groves. Things would work out somehow. They didn’t.

She’d never quite got over the fact that they didn’t.

He listened.

***

“When I first saw you, I knew you were a pilot,” she said.

“But how?”

“You seemed caught up in the sky somehow. For a moment I thought you might be Mr. Groves, returned at last. A messenger.”

“I would like to take you flying, if I could,” he said.

“Would it help me find my son?”

“It would help you find hope.” He hesitated. “Perhaps we will find what Mr. Groves was looking for.”

***

Jean-Claude offered to lend her his laptop so that she could check for news, and so they left the square, heading toward his flat on Rue Normand, near the Place de La Cathédrale. They walked through a narrow, cobbled laneway that opened out into the deserted street. There was no one to see them in the shadows. They might have been the last two people on earth.

Dust. She floated into the sky, disembodied.

They walked through the laneway, along Rue Normand.

The bell was still tolling. It marked no hour, only unremitting grief.

***

He was drawn to her, she knew that. For sure, he would have taken her to bed, if she’d let him. Two lonely, frightened people, both wanting solace, stopping by his flat. No, she was too distressed for love.

She took his laptop. “You’re very kind,” she told him, and she wept.

There was no one here to see her. Only him.

“Je comprends,” he said, and he put an arm around her.

“Poor Andre.” Her body could feel the weight of him, as if he were still unborn.

He held her and let her cry.