46

WHEN THE PLANE SPLASHED down at Étang du Cap Noir, Valerie had no idea of the time, no sense of where she was. Her watch had stopped and she couldn’t get her bearings from the sky. Odd constellations sketched themselves against the blackness, a dusty crumble of unfamiliar stars. It must be very late, she thought. She had no idea how long they’d flown.

“You slept,” said Jean-Claude.

“Some of the time.”

“It was magnificent,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. “It was.” Valerie glanced at the plane, as if it might disappear.

“Chère Valerie, whatever you’ve seen has vanished.”

“Nothing vanishes.”

“Does it give you hope, to know that?”

“All day long I’ve seen my son. Even as we flew.”

“I did not see my brother.”

“Yes, but there’s still no word—”

“What happened is unspeakable. That is why there is no word.” He took her hands. “I want to vanish into silence,” he said.

“But you just did.”

“No. I flew to make restitution to the dead. There is nothing more I can do.”

“But we found—”

“Whatever we imagined.” He reached to embrace her, but she pulled away from him.

“Don’t frighten me,” she said.

“How am I frightening you?”

“Please don’t come near me. If you touch me, I’ll collapse.”

“But you need—”

“—My son alive,” she said.

***

Valerie could sense that Jean-Claude was afraid to leave her alone, and she watched as he turned away, knowing he’d keep an eye on her from the scant shelter of a few sparse trees. She could feel terror slithering through her body, its hold on her warm and seductive. No. It’ll put me to sleep. It’ll smother me.

She tore off her clothes, ran into the chill ache of the pond, went under and began to swim, and then she felt the silver band slipping from her wrist, but she let it go, treading cold water until her body’s aching turned to numbness. Alone she wept, afraid of the salt heat of her tears. She held her breath and went under until the tears stopped. Safe again, she swam back to shore.

***

Jean-Claude had left his backpack on the dock. Valerie opened it, found a towel and dried herself off. She got dressed and looked around. He was nowhere in sight. At least she couldn’t see him.

She slumped down, face in her hands, exhausted. Images drifted through her head — guttering candles in Union Square, placards in many languages. Si vous avez des renseignements … If you have information.… Gerard had written a phone number on the sign. Maybe she’d imagined the names. Andre Jean Lefèvre. James Eliot Wilson. Sleep nudged her eyes into closing.

A sweet melody, Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” her mother’s hands on the piano, then her voice. Come and sit beside me, Valerie.

She woke up and answered her phone.

“Allô?” She was shaking like a tree about to fall. “Gerard?”

She listened.

“Ma chère Valerie…” he began. “Je suis desolé.”

“Tu as des nouvelles?” You have news?

Dust she became, as she blew into the wind.

Then came darkness. Then she felt nothing at all.

***

When she returned to the pension in Saint-Pierre, Valerie went to bed and slept for twenty-four hours, erasing the twelfth of September 2001 from the page of memory. When she got up and went to make the bed, she found under her pillow a lavender sachet. Apart from that detail, she remembered almost nothing. She didn’t recognize Marguerite’s garden. Its brilliant yellow flowers, its pendulous squash and fragrant herbs had lost all depth, had collapsed into a lifeless surface, as charming and bland as a greeting card. It didn’t matter.

She spent the day making arrangements to leave the island, and the following morning, an officer in képi and white gloves rapped on the door of the pension on Rue Amiral Mueslier. The gendarme was not Lisette’s brother-in-law, but his commanding officer, a captain. He was there to drive Madame Lefèvre to the airport, as a compassionate gesture from the government of France. The captain held out his arm, escorted Valerie down the stairs and helped her into the car. She couldn’t recall saying goodbye to Marguerite or Robert, but she felt sure she must have done so.

They would drive down Rue Amiral Muselier, passing one by one the rakish clapboard houses on the street. It would feel to Valerie as if she were looking at pictures, as if this street no longer existed, as if the lively blue pension, trimmed in red and painted by Robert with such affection, had drawn its curtains, pulled down its shades, and died. It sat as still as a travel poster for a place she’d never been.

Then she noticed Marguerite and Robert. They were standing at the front door, grave sentinels keeping watch. Valerie thought of a lighthouse, its rotating beams. Then she imagined night, the two of them visible to all the ships at sea.