Chapter 45
The weather turned foul that afternoon, lasting through the weekend. The Geniots spent Sunday with Tiphaine’s family, pretending to be a regular couple. For the last eight years they had never shown any affection in public, which meant that no one noticed the chill between them.
Tiphaine seemed to have perked up again.
She had abandoned the listless air she’d maintained throughout Friday evening, and over the course of Saturday she grew gradually more cheerful, more so after the police officers’ visit.
By Sunday she was up and about again, though that didn’t allay Sylvain’s concerns.
There was something hard about her. Cold.
Determined. To do what? It was impossible to know.
She was a warrior about to go on the offensive—he was sure of that.
From time to time he caught her staring at him, and the gleam he saw in her eyes sent a shiver down his spine.
He knew her by heart. He knew she was up to something.
That afternoon he took her aside and spoke to her frankly.
“You have something up your sleeve. I know you do. Be careful, Tiphaine: we may have gotten away with it once, but we won’t have such luck next time. Tell me the truth: did you have anything to do with Depardieu’s disappearance?”
By way of an answer she simply threw him a contemptuous look, then turned and went back to join the others in the living room.
Nora, meanwhile, spent Sunday holed up inside, alone, her nose glued to the upstairs windows that looked out onto the two neighboring backyards.
Her stomach was in knots. There was a lump of anxiety stuck in her throat, keeping her from breathing freely.
She dragged herself from one room to another, short of breath, tortured by this forced stillness, this unbearable apathy.
If one of the Geniots were to discover the body before the police did, what would happen?
Why hadn’t the police searched the house, the basement, the attic? The garden?
Not to mention the children’s growing anxiety about Gérard’s radio silence.
The atmosphere at home had become electric.
Several arguments had broken out between them, which Nora, already at her wit’s end, could barely deal with.
The children were able to express their suppressed anxiety about their father only with bursts of aggression toward each other, which was torture for Nora.
All three were jittery with the endless waiting.
Inès and Nassim were waiting for their father’s return, or at least some sign of life, an answer, an explanation.
She, powerless to offer them the least comfort, unable to reassure them, was waiting for the tragic news to break, and all the sorrow and pain that would come in its wake.
Her unbearable responsibility. The weight of a secret she could never admit.
To make matters worse, she hadn’t heard anything more from Mathilde.
Her friend’s silence filled her with resentment, regret, and guilt.
Disappointed and uncomprehending, Nora felt caught in the trap of solitude.
She had no one to share the burden of her guilt, to alleviate the horror that was flooding her mind in great waves.
As she began to realize that the only person who had the strength, love, and composure to help her through this terrible ordeal was Gérard himself, she almost collapsed in despair.
The only thing that helped her to bear the torture of her conscience was the total absence of any sign of life from Sylvain.
Not a word, not an email, not even a brief text message to tell her that he’d be in touch as soon as things had calmed down.
She was furious with him, though she blamed herself even more for having believed in fairy tales; for having killed Gérard, even unintentionally; and for having hidden his corpse in the Geniots’ yard. But there was no way back.
Lost in thought, her forehead pressed against the glass of her bedroom window, Nora was drawn from her lethargy by the shouts of her children downstairs: they were fighting again. She closed her eyes, tempted to stay there without moving, to sink into a stupor that lacked any emotion or pain.
With a sigh she forced herself to move, put one step in front of another, leave her observation post and move away from the window.
To leave the room.
Downstairs in the entryway, Nassim was accusing his sister of stealing his pencil case.
“Why do you think I care about your dumb pencil case?” she yelled at him in the most jeering tone she could muster.
“It was in my backpack, and now it’s not there!” the boy yelled back, shaking his open backpack under Inès’s nose, as if it were irrefutable proof of her guilt.
“It’s not my fault if you don’t know where you put your things!”
“I didn’t touch it,” said Nassim furiously.
“Nor did I!” Inès said, even more furious. She was mad at being bugged by her younger brother for something she hadn’t done.
“What’s going on?” said Nora, coming down the stairs.
“She’s taken my pencil case,” said Nassim, pointing an accusatory finger at his sister.
“Yeah, right!”
Nora reached the bottom of the stairs, took her son’s schoolbag from his hands, and felt about inside.
“It’s not in there,” Nassim insisted.
“I’m just checking, am I allowed?”
Once she had ascertained that it wasn’t there, she put the bag down on the floor.
“It wasn’t you, Inès?”
“Goddamn it!” Inès barked angrily. “What on earth would I want with his stupid pencil case?”
“Please don’t speak to me like that,” said Nora, raising her voice. But her heart wasn’t in it. Nora wanted to say to Nassim that no one cared about his pencil case, and he should go and play somewhere else.
“Maybe you left it at your father’s house.”
“No, I brought it here, I know I did. I put it in my backpack.”
“Maybe it’s fallen out. Are you sure you’ve looked everywhere?”
“Yes.”
Nora looked around the entryway, peering under the coatrack, the shoe cupboard, the chest of drawers .
. . where she saw Gérard’s folder that had slid underneath when she had slapped him.
Her blood froze. It was a bright green, plasticized file folder, just like the ones he used for work.
Nora stood up, trying to control the fear that gripped her, to hide the sudden panic she was sure could be read on her face.
“Have you searched your room?” she asked, trying hard not to sound flustered. Luckily Nassim was so focused on his pencil case that he didn’t notice anything. Inès had already gone back into the kitchen.
“I haven’t taken it out of my bag since we got back.”
“It has to be somewhere. Go check your room while I keep searching down here.”
“But I told you—”
“That’s enough, Nassim! Can’t you see it’s not here? Go and do what I said.”
Nassim, looking mutinous, grudgingly obeyed his mother and went upstairs.
The moment she was alone in the entryway, Nora crouched down to pick up the folder.
She opened it, cast a brief glance at its contents, and saw that the name Geniot was repeated several times.
With a shaking hand, she snapped it closed and looked around for a place to conceal it.
The sound of footsteps coming from the kitchen forced her to come up with a hasty hiding place; just as Inès appeared, she shoved it above the coatrack, on the shelf where they put their scarves and hats in the winter.
“Found it?” the girl asked.
“What?”
“The pencil case!”
“No . . . no, not yet.”
“I’m sure it’s at Papa’s.”
Nora was so distracted by the discovery of the folder and its startling contents that she didn’t react.
It was only when Nassim came back downstairs, increasingly frustrated by the disappearance of his pencil case, that she was forced to interrupt her muddled contemplations and continue the search.
After a good twenty minutes of doggedly hunting, they finally located it where no one had thought to look—in the front pocket of Nassim’s schoolbag.
The incident over, everyone returned to what they’d been doing, and Nora was finally able to satisfy the curiosity that had been gnawing at her since she’d happened upon the folder. She grabbed it from the shelf and, heart thudding, went and locked herself in the bathroom.
The folder wasn’t very full, but what she learned from a cursory glance threw her into deep dismay.
She read the account of the Brunelle affair that had been written up eight years previously, in which the attorney had meticulously detailed the charges against his client, the manner in which his detention had unfolded, and the suspicions of the accused regarding his neighbor.
The file folder also contained a copy of the family court’s decision about Milo Brunelle’s guardianship, including Tiphaine and Sylvain Geniot’s address at the time—her house, the house that Nora had been living in now for several weeks.
Which meant that Tiphaine had been David Brunelle’s neighbor when the events had taken place—the neighbor David Brunelle accused of being responsible for the death of Ernest Wilmot. Sylvain, however, seemed to have avoided any suspicion. Why?
And why had her neighbors never mentioned that they used to live in this house?
The next document made her shudder in horror.
It was a printout of an article from the internet about the death of six-year-old Maxime Geniot.
The child had died after a fall from his bedroom window.
The kind of domestic tragedy that happens far too frequently.
The implication of the article was that his mother had been responsible, for it was due to her carelessness that the child had been left alone in his room with the window open.
Nora stopped reading for several seconds.
Tiphaine and Sylvain had lost a child! The most terrible thing that can happen to a parent. They had never talked about it. Never even mentioned it. As if it had never happened. As if Maxime had never lived.
As if . . .