Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
éTIENNE
I'm in the kitchen, watching Sophie push scrambled eggs around her plate with the focused disapproval of a restaurant critic encountering mediocrity.
She hasn't said much this morning. She hasn't said much since I returned from Milan—just watches me with those pale eyes that see too much, rationing her words the way she's learned to ration everything.
Raphael's name on the screen. He never calls this early.
"She's gone."
Two words. His voice sounds wrong. Scraped hollow.
"Who's gone?"
"Madeline." A breath. Ragged. "Her key is on my counter. Her suitcase is missing. Emma found the bracelet—you know, the friendship ones Sophie makes—on the nightstand. She left it behind."
The hallway tilts. I put one hand against the wall.
"When?"
"Sometime before dawn. I don't know exactly—I woke up and she was just gone. No note. Just the key and that little sun drawing she always leaves for Emma." His voice cracks. Raphael, who never cracks. "Her phone goes straight to voicemail. I've called eleven times."
"Where would she—"
"I don't know. London, maybe—she has a friend there from Prestwick. Or back to the States." A pause. Heavy. "She took everything, étienne. Everything she came with. She's gone."
Through the kitchen doorway, I watch Sophie. Still pushing eggs. Still waiting for something she won't name.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Bastien's already on his way."
Of course he is.
I hang up without goodbye.
Sophie looks up when I step back into the kitchen. Her gaze moves over my face slowly, cataloguing the tension I haven't managed to suppress.
"Something happened."
I don't answer immediately. I'm calculating what to say, how much to reveal, whether there's any version of this conversation that doesn't fracture something already strained.
"I need to go to Raphael's apartment," I tell her. "There's been a situation."
"With Madeline."
The certainty in her voice lands like a verdict.
"Yes." I hold her gaze. "She left. Early this morning."
Her fingers tighten around the fork. She doesn't cry. Doesn't ask questions. Just absorbs the information inward.
"Where?"
"We're not sure yet. London, probably."
"Are you going to find her?"
"Yes."
"And bring her home?"
The question is simple. The weight behind it is not.
"That's the plan."
She considers this. I can see her running calculations—probabilities of success, variables she can't control, outcomes she's unwilling to name.
"Grand-mère is coming," I add. "She'll be here within the hour."
"Fine."
"Sophie."
She looks up.
"I'm going to fix this."
Her expression doesn't change. But something in her shoulders loosens, just slightly.
I leave before either of us has to say anything more.
Bastien is already in Raphael's kitchen when I arrive, pacing like something caged. His hair is a disaster, his shirt buttoned wrong. He looks like he hasn't slept in days.
He looks exactly how I feel.
"Finally." He stops pacing. "Took you long enough."
"I came as fast as I could."
"Did you? Or did you take time to check your reflection, make sure you looked appropriately concerned but not desperate?" His voice cuts. "God forbid étienne Laurent arrive anywhere looking like he gives a damn."
"Bastien." Raphael's voice carries warning from across the room. He's at the window, phone in hand, looking like a man who's aged years overnight. "Not now."
"When, then? When do we talk about the fact that she's gone because of him?"
"She's gone because of all of us," Raphael says quietly.
"No." Bastien jabs a finger at me. "She's gone because he told her he doesn't share. Because he stood on that terrace and watched her walk away. Because he's spent months wanting her and pushing her away in the same breath, and she got tired of the whiplash."
"You think I don't know that?" The words come out too loud. "You think I haven't replayed that conversation a thousand times?"
"I think you replay everything a thousand times. Analyze, strategize, calculate—and still do the exact wrong thing because you're so terrified of losing control that you'd rather lose everything else."
"That's enough—"
"—It's not nearly enough." Bastien moves closer. In my face now. "She showed up at my apartment the morning after you fucked her. Did you know what she looked like?"
My jaw tightens.
"Like someone had taken her apart and forgotten how to put her back together.
Like she'd given you everything and you'd handed it back in pieces.
" His voice drops. "I spent a week trying to make her feel whole.
And then you came back from Milan and looked at her like she was property someone else had borrowed. "
"I never—"
"—You didn't have to! That's the point!" His hands are shaking. All the sardonic distance stripped away. "She would have given us anything. Everything. And instead of figuring out how to deserve that, we just kept taking. Kept pushing. Kept making her think she was the problem."
"You want to talk about problems?" The ice in my voice surprises even me.
"Let's talk about how you welcomed her into your bed while she was still raw from what happened with me.
Let's talk about how you let her think you were different, that you saw her clearly—and then disappeared into your studio for days while she managed your son and your household and your emotional wreckage. "
"I was working—"
"You were hiding. Same as me. Different room, same cowardice." I step closer. "The same way you hid when Claire was fucking Guillaume in your own gallery and you pretended not to see the signs because seeing them would have meant doing something."
Bastien goes white. "Don't."
"Why not? We're being honest now, aren't we? Finally saying what we've swallowed for three years?"
"That's not…"
"It's exactly the same. You see everything except what you don't want to see. Your words, not mine. Claire was right about you. Margot was right about me. And Raphael—" I turn to face him. "What did Caroline say? Before she died? What truth did she leave you with?"
Raphael's expression shutters. "Leave her out of this."
"Why? She's part of it. They're all part of it—the women who left, the women who died, the women we failed because we were too busy failing each other."
"Stop." Raphael's voice is barely above a whisper. But something in it makes us both freeze. "Just... stop."
The kitchen falls silent.
Raphael hasn't moved from the window. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Broken open in a way I've never heard.
"Do you remember Sardinia?"
The question lands strangely. Out of place.
"What?" Bastien frowns.
"Sardinia. Fifteen years ago. Before the marriages. Before the children. Before any of it." Raphael turns from the window, and his eyes are wet. "We rented that villa for two weeks. The one with the terrible plumbing and the view of the sea."
I remember. Of course I remember.
"Bastien painted the sunset every night," Raphael continues. "And you—" He looks at me. "You tried to cook and nearly burned down the kitchen. We ate bread and cheese and drank cheap wine and stayed up until three in the morning arguing about everything. Art. Business. Women. Life."
"Raphael—"
"That was the trip where we planned the resort.
Remember? We were sitting on the terrace, drunk on limoncello, and Bastien said 'What if we built something together?
Something that was all of us?' And you pulled out a napkin and started sketching floor plans.
And I—" His voice breaks. "I said it was the best idea I'd ever heard. "
The memory surfaces. Sharp and painful.
Bastien on the terrace, waving his arms, describing art installations that would transform with the light. Me calculating costs on a napkin, already seeing the structure, the possibility. Raphael laughing, pouring more limoncello, saying This is it, this is what we're supposed to do together.
Three men who thought they could build something that would last forever.
"The project was supposed to bond us," Raphael says quietly.
"It was supposed to be proof that we were better together than apart.
And instead—" He stops. Swallows. "Instead I watched it tear us apart while my wife was dying and I couldn't tell either of you because we'd already stopped being the kind of friends who could say I'm drowning, I need help. "
"What?" Bastien's voice is sharp. "Caroline—during the project—?"
"The diagnosis came six months before everything collapsed.
" Raphael's hands are shaking. "I was trying to keep her alive, keep Emma from understanding, keep the business running.
I didn't have anything left to give either of you.
And you were both so—" He gestures helplessly.
"So wrapped up in your own wars that I didn't think you'd notice if I disappeared.
So I did. I disappeared into caregiving and grief, and by the time I came up for air, we weren't friends anymore.
We were just... three men who used to know each other. "
The silence that follows is different. Heavier.
"I didn't know." Bastien's voice is rough. "About Caroline. About how bad it was."
"You were dealing with Claire."
"That's not an excuse—"
"It's not an excuse. It's an explanation." Raphael meets his eyes. "We were all drowning at the same time. And instead of reaching for each other, we—"
"—We blamed each other," I finish. "For not being there. When none of us were capable of being anywhere."
The words settle like dust after an explosion.
Bastien moves to the counter. Presses his palms flat against the marble, head bowed.