41

GATHERING HER PARCELS, Valerie locked up the pension and began her walk to Lisette’s. Twilight was falling in the garden, on neighbourhoods silent with unease, on TVs glowing in the windows. No one was out in the street. Even at rest, Saint-Pierre breathed the worried stillness of the whole earth.

She turned her cell phone on.

Marguerite and Robert lived at the base of the hill, its stash of houses clinging to the slope like tough vegetation, roots sinking into hard soil. Lisette’s house was near the end of a road that twisted upwards, on a little street jammed with motorbikes, tiny row houses, thumbprint gardens ragged with clover and bergamot, front doors that opened on to the narrow sidewalk. The neighbourhood had the offhand charm of a Norman village, its cobblestones lustrous, as if they’d been washed by the sea.

Lisette’s house had a bright red door and a tiny stoop crowded with pots of straggly pink geraniums. Beyond the door was a long, narrow corridor that led to a flight of stairs. Valerie went upstairs and knocked.

“Ma chère, you are early, thank goodness.”

Lisette took her parcels, and Valerie could smell the fragrance of her cologne, Roses Sauvages. Her black hair gleamed, knife-edge straight, and she wore a long rose-coloured dress, flower-shaped earrings, a string of pearls. Her home was stylish, a leafy perch above the town, its glass doors overlooking the bay, opening onto a small terrace garden. To Valerie’s eyes, it was a hidden wonder, a vantage-point well-concealed by trees. As she peered through the canopy of green, she saw water, and she recalled Gerard making a video high above Manhattan, its two great rivers conjoined below him.

Yesterday.

Lisette took the tarte from her. “Oh, but this is lovely, ma chère,” she said.

“It was so easy.”

“My own chef-d’oeuvre is warming in the oven. Brie aux abricots.”

“Did I see you in the fromagerie today?”

“Oui, and so you met Jacques Leduc,” said Lisette. “Such a conscientious man, n’est-ce pas? He didn’t go home to watch TV.”

“He has a TV in the shop,” Valerie remarked.

“Humming in the background, c’est tout. My husband can’t take his eyes off the screen.”

“Oui. Je comprends.”

“You’d think the sky was falling down.”

***

Lisette had invited twelve friends, but Laurent Sarazin’s sudden demise (along with his wife’s absence) had reduced that number to ten.

“We’ll have leftovers,” she said.

“I’m sorry about your loss.”

Lisette paused. “Merci. A dear man,” she said.

“Did he love flowers?”

“Why yes, he did.” Lisette looked startled by the question.

“I saw you carrying flowers to the church. That’s why I asked.”

“Ce sont pour les obsèques,” said Lisette. “For the funeral.”

And Jean-Claude swiped them, Valerie thought. She felt uneasy. There was some connection between those grandiose flowers and the day’s horror and how Lisette had carried those blooms through the streets of Saint-Pierre, broadcasting her private grief to a world in shock. I loved him, I loved him, doesn’t that count for anything? Now Lisette was crying like a child, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, unconcerned that she’d smeared her eye shadow, because Laurent Sarazin had made her weep, a kind man who’d no doubt given Lisette more than one bouquet of flowers. Thank you for your business, he’d say, if others were in earshot. Or we value our customers. Bon anniversaire, as his hand brushed hers.

Each of his bouquets would have been tidy and compact, perhaps an arrangement of carnations and forget-me-nots delivered at a precise time, on a particular day; a vast accumulation of restrained loveliness over the years, acknowledged by the explosion of grief in Lisette’s garish funeral offering. Sitting in a bucket in Marguerite’s garden, Valerie thought.

This was no day to cause anyone grief. She hoped Jean-Claude was as good as his word, that he’d return the flowers to the church.

No wonder she didn’t go to the wake, poor soul, thought Valerie. She would have fallen apart. Lisette ran off to wash her face, and moments later, she returned, her makeup re-applied. She was calm, as if nothing had happened.

***

Guests started to arrive, beginning with Jacques Leduc and his wife. The owner of the fromagerie greeted Valerie, and she was about to thank him, that she’d managed to check her email, that she’d taken his advice and asked at the pottery shop, but she stopped herself. Too complicated — she’d have to mention that strange woman who’d sent her to a café that later vanished.

“Have you had a chance to try the fromage St. Paulin?” he asked.

With pleasure, she told him how tasty it was.

His wife apologized to Valerie, that she hadn’t been at the shop to assist her. More guests arrived, including the couple from the bakery who’d supplied Robert with breakfast croissants that morning. Valerie realized she’d seen the wife at the cathedral when she noticed the lace collar on her blouse.

“Weren’t you in the group at the church?” the woman asked her.

Valerie explained that she’d come upon it by accident.

Madame Leduc had been there also.

So were Andre and James, Valerie thought. You were holding hands with them. She felt comforted, that the two women were keeping her son and his partner alive.

***

Lisette’s husband Pierre was the manager of Banque des Isles. He was a careful man, soft-spoken, discreet in dress and language, as suited the financial confidant of half the businesses in town. He’d come inside to join the guests with cordial handshakes, greeting them with the modulated tones of a présentateur on Radio-France. With him was a sombre-looking gendarme in uniform, dark and with a trim moustache, his flat-topped képi in hand. The sight of him rattled Valerie, as if he’d come with dreadful news.

“My brother,” said Pierre.

Valerie recalled that Marguerite had mentioned him. The young man had just arrived from France for a two-year posting, she’d said. It is not like Canada. Here when the policeman takes a break, it is not with coffee and beignets. A glass of brandy, un morceau de gâteau … he’s a charming man and company for Lisette.

The gendarme, like his brother, looked too serious to fool around with another man’s wife. He’d come here straight from work, he said, and he’d have an added shift tonight.

“That is unfortunate,” said Pierre.

His brother shrugged. “They need me at the airport. En cas d’urgence.”

“An emergency? In Saint-Pierre?”

“Well—”