Chapter 36
Time stopped. And so did Nora’s heart.
The sound of someone’s panting breath. Hers. She was hyperventilating. A ghastly silence. An impossible reality, like a vacuum, sucking her in, a fact she refused to process.
She had gone from being the victim to being the executioner.
And soon she would go from being free to being a prisoner—of guilt, grief, human justice.
“G . . . Gérard?”
More silence. Paralysis. Cold. Death.
Seconds ticked by, drawn out by fear, an almost unendurable horror that can only be understood with time, a great deal of time, maybe an entire life, when one knows that the life one is about to leave behind will echo forever across the arid plains of guilt.
Nora stared wide-eyed at Gérard’s body. Just a few moments before, she had been terrified of his presence and his physicality; now she would have given anything for him to move, get to his feet. For him to be alive.
She forced herself to remain motionless; it was the only way to stop time. If she didn’t move, there was still a tiny chance it hadn’t happened. Maybe she could fix it somehow. Go back. Rewind. By wanting it badly enough, praying, believing.
“Gérard . . .”
Nora realized she wasn’t even asking the question anymore.
It was as if she already knew. As if she had capitulated to this reality that had descended upon her with such sudden, unimaginable, excruciating brutality.
She felt her reason close to giving in to madness—the widest path, the least precipitous, the brightest.
But on the path of reason, horror-filled, dark and rocky, she saw two figures moving, two familiar, beloved shadows for whom she would do anything. Their voices echoed in the frigid silence, and the word they uttered pierced her heart with its cold, metallic teeth.
“Maman!”
Almost reluctantly, Nora turned away from the bright, tempting light of madness toward the harsh gloom of consciousness. Only then did she stagger down the stairs, clinging to the banister so as not to fall.
When she reached Gérard’s unmoving body, she knelt. He had fallen onto his front so all she could see was his back, and the bald patch on his head. Covered in blood.
For a few moments, she didn’t dare touch him, she didn’t know how. By the arms? His left arm was bent at an unnatural angle. By the side he was bleeding from? By his head, which seemed to be cracked in several places?
She began to cry, little heaving sobs, feeling the panic return, the path of madness calling her again, flashing its psychedelic lights.
Then she screamed. A shriek that came from deep within her, as if she were exorcizing the fear that had filled her moments—or centuries—ago.
When at last she had shrieked herself out, when her lungs were empty, she began to breathe again, as if clinging to a tiny ledge on the edge of a precipice, trying to regain a foothold in reality.
She stood up and tried to gather her wits. The children! Where were the children? What time was it? 7:15! They would be at their father’s house, of course.
She stared down at Gérard’s lifeless body.
The children, on their own. This was an emergency. Trembling, she stumbled into the kitchen to find her phone. She grabbed it and began trying to tap out Inès’s number, which she knew by heart, had called so many times, as confused, anarchic words raced through her mind.
What on earth was she going to say to her daughter?
She canceled the call with a moan. She needed help. She was too distraught to make the slightest decision. She looked for Mathilde’s number in her contacts. Only she would be able to help her.
At the sound of her friend’s voice, Nora burst into tears.
“Nora?” exclaimed Mathilde when she heard the jagged sobs. “Is that you?”
Unable to utter a word, Nora simply wept.
“Nora, what’s the matter? Speak to me!”
“G . . . Gérard . . .”
“What about Gérard? What’s he done this time?”
“He’s dead.”
There was a brief, stunned silence, then Mathilde said, “What are you talking about? Where are you?”
Nora whimpered. The only sound she could utter was one of sorrow.
“Nora, talk to me. Where are you?”
“At home.”
“Don’t move, I’m on my way.”
Mathilde set off almost immediately, after telling Philippe she had to go out. “Yes, now. Straightaway. It’s an emergency. Nora. No, I don’t know what it is, and no, I don’t have time to put the little one to bed.”
For several interminable minutes, Nora remained motionless on the stairs, staring into space, eyes averted from the body. Its image was carved into her memory. There was no risk of her forgetting it.
Gérard. Dead. The father of her children. Her husband.
The man with whom, a long time ago, she had fallen in love.
This was how it ended—with her sitting on the stairs, him lying at her feet bathed in his own blood, after a deadly fall.
In a house she had rented in order to get away from him.
After too many fights, shouting matches, recriminations, tears.
And happy times, too, back when they had still loved each other, when the pleasure of seeing each other had outweighed the discontents of married life.
After two children.
The sound of a phone ringing tore Nora away from the waltz of fractured images spinning around in her head.
Her heart quaked beneath an icy blade of terror; she felt her blood freezing in her veins, coursing through her limbs and turning them to stone.
What was that sound? It wasn’t her phone.
It was coming from somewhere nearby, right by her.
Gérard. It was his phone. Someone was trying to reach him.
Petrified, Nora didn’t dare move. She waited, her heart in her mouth, for the sound to stop. After five rings, it did.
The house was once more filled with silence. And Nora with dread.
What would she say to the children? How could she look them in the eye? Support them in their grief? How could she ever again claim any authority over them? How would they survive this?
Her thoughts led her to the edge of a horror-filled void.
She still wasn’t ready to face up to what had happened.
She had to stop thinking and find a way to prevent the terrible images from unspooling in her mind’s eye: Nassim’s face, then Inès’s, their expressions of suffering and incomprehension.
What a ghastly tragedy, befalling them so young.
She pictured patrol cars in front of the house, an ambulance, Gérard’s body being carried out on a stretcher.
She saw herself emerging from the house in handcuffs.
And after that?
Who would take care of the children?
The doorbell rang, ripping through the funereal silence that filled the house. Nora let out a cry of fright, before realizing it must be Mathilde. She leaped to her feet and rushed to the door.
When she opened it, her heart nearly stopped. There stood Milo, an awkward smile on his face.