40

JEAN-CLAUDE CALLED A TAXI, and together they went back to the pension. It was still difficult to call New York, he told her. As for himself, he could go to his airline office and use the computer there. Later he’d meet her at Lisette’s.

Valerie felt relief, even comfort. She could not give up hope so soon. She had, at least, found friendship, and she felt grateful that she didn’t have to burden Marguerite and Robert with the full weight of her anguish. She worried that there might be more attacks. Jean-Claude had reminded her that in their parents’ time, war had come close to these remote and lonely islands. When the Nazis occupied France, they’d used Saint-Pierre as a listening post. Nazi ears, spying on North America — Robert or Marguerite had used that phrase. In some new form, it could happen again.

Nothing was safe — not then, not now.

***

The pension was quiet. Marguerite had left the kitchen TV on, humming away like a household appliance, a mini-refrigerator that kept the news nice and fresh. Valerie looked, imagining she might see Gerard, ghost-white and silent, and she fixed on a reporter in the crowd, a man with a mike in his hand, his hand on someone’s arm, on a woman’s sleeve thick with ash, and then the reporter put his arm around the woman, and then he put his mouth on hers, and then he vanished into whiteness.

Valerie felt a slow awareness rising over the brim of fear.

As if she were watching Gerard. Or herself.

Seduced like that, pulled in.

***

She set up Jean-Claude’s computer, logged on and waited for the internet connection to plunk out its four-note welcome while the late-day sun idled on the brilliant purple of the coleus leaves, the golden trumpet-flower in a glass bowl on the windowsill, the wonder that in this catastrophic world, the day could offer its own small gifts.

In her inbox was an email from Gerard. He’d sent it an hour ago — four-thirty, New York time. The subject line read Valerie. Clicking it open, she saw that it was blank. From time to time he’d send her blanks when he was on assignment, when he was too frazzled to articulate a thought. It was his way of letting her know he was safe.

She wondered where he’d sent it from. He’s at Andre’s place. Gerard’s with Andre. I have to talk to my son. She dialled his number.

“Hello,” said a man’s voice.

What luck. She’d gotten through. “Andre?”

“I’m his neighbour, Ian,” said the man. “I’m here to water the plants.”

Andre must have closed the windows when he left for work, Ian said, and he’d turned the air conditioner off, too, but the entire city was covered with a haze of smoke and dust and the stench was leaking in through the cracks.

“Plants get stressed in times of chaos,” he said. “I firmly believe that.”

Valerie explained that gardening was her profession.

“Andre has your green thumb,” said Ian.

“I think I might have seen him on TV. Earlier today.”

“Honestly, Mrs. Lefèvre, I hope you’re right.”

She asked Ian to call her if he had news.

“You know, someone left Andre’s computer on,” he said. “That’s so not him.”

Maybe Andre came home, she thought, then ran out again. He’d checked his email, hoping for news about James, and he was so distracted by worry that he forgot to turn his computer off. Then in came Gerard.

Ian didn’t think so.

“One of them would have looked after the plants,” he insisted.

***

Valerie was half-inclined to believe Ian, knowing it was just as likely that Gerard might have found a computer in a newsroom or a cyber-café. Or maybe he was carrying his laptop — she hadn’t thought of that. She stared at the blank screen. As she did, it sounded two notes and the red mailbox flag went up. She clicked it open. Can’t call you, phones are down, Gerard wrote. I will not rest until I understand what has happened here.

My heart is with our beloved sons.

***

She read the last sentence again and again. Beloved sons. As if long ago when Gerard embraced her unborn child, he’d included the man her son would love.

Other than that, it was one of Gerard’s hurry-up emails, a variation of the standard one he always sent from his foreign assignments. Phones down, very busy, can’t rest — the words spun with a dizzy excitement, a passion for truth that made her feel wrong about asking too many questions.

I will not rest until I understand what has happened here.

And here. And here.

Time was melting in the heat.

Gerard is standing too close to the pyre, the one that has never stopped burning. He’s pulling Ora from the wreckage, his mouth on hers.

Gerard blessed Andre, before he was born.

All of us vanishing into whiteness.