The wave

Emi Shimizu has never said those words before. She has never relied on anyone to pick her up when she stumbles. She didn’t start seeing Langlois by choice—she was just following the hospital’s advice. And she never really told him anything. She learned from a very young age how to build walls to protect herself, having realized, without harbouring any resentment about it, that her parents, her friends, and even Christophe when they were together, loved her without understanding her. And she’s managed fine on her own until today, until this tsunami that nothing, not even morphine, can hold back. The wave is looming over her, ready to swallow her and her son whole—and she thinks of Pax.

She thinks of everything he’s already done for them. The overwhelming power of their love. She needs him. Without him, the wave will pull her under.

“I’m here. Of course I’m here. I’ll always be here for you,” he reassures her over the phone.

“I’m on my way,” she replies.

She slips a note under Alex’s door to let him know she’ll be gone for a few hours and hurries to the garage to the old Honda Civic. She refuses to depend on public transport tonight.

Pax asks Cassandra to go, without any explanation. Luckily his daughter can tell he’s preoccupied and tactfully takes her leave.

The minutes feel like centuries as he waits.

When she finally arrives, she throws herself into his arms. They stay that way for a long time, locked together, in silence. She’s overwhelmed by anxiety and emotion; he’s consumed with worry. But then the words begin to flow. She tells Pax about Alex’s violent reaction, the impenetrable look she saw on his face when he locked himself in his room, all these steps backwards when Emi thought he was finally moving on. How naive: she knows full well that people can never truly escape uncertainty.

It’s humanity’s curse, our inability to know the truth. It’s what kills us—knowing that the truth is there, but out of reach.

“I was so sure he was doing better,” whispers Pax, shocked. “Everything seemed to be going well. He was planning on getting his motorbike licence! And his music! Your son is talented, Emi. Cassandra told me earlier that a record label wants to sign him.”

“It’s all a fantasy. Alex will never get better, and neither will I. That’s what I finally realized this afternoon. My son will live the rest of his life with that savagery in him, that irrational fear of others, of a threat looming over him, wherever he is.”

Pax pulls her closer to his chest. Her body is soft, as if filled with tears. “You’ll get through this, Emi. Time heals all wounds.”

“Time heals . . . That’s all a fairy tale,” she replies bitterly. “You think you’re safe, but then it all comes crashing down on you again. It’s all crashing down on me, Pax. I’m not as tough as I thought, and my son is broken. You know what the worst part is, though? His attacker might already be behind bars. If we’d just been a bit luckier, everything could have been different. Alex would have been able to put it behind him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They arrested a man a few months ago. He’d assaulted another boy in his flat, beating him to death. Just like with Alex, there was no motive, it was the same MO, same weapon—brass knuckles. This time the police conducted a more in-depth investigation, since the victim died. They found fingerprints. He’s in jail, awaiting trial.”

The air grows thin around Pax. He gets up and opens the window, despite the cold.

“The detectives linked it to our case. Everything matches, absolutely everything. But Alex doesn’t remember anything at all, and there were no witnesses, no evidence. So we’re stuck with the uncertainty.”

She turns around to find Pax leaning over the window railing. “Pax?”

He stands up straight and staggers back over to the sofa.

“Come here,” he whispers, holding out his arms. “Life is so unfair, it’s true.”

She buries her face in his shoulder and feels instantly comforted.