Sylvain couldn’t help but let out an ironic chuckle. “To do for a neighbor.”
Tiphaine threw him an icy look. “You asshole.”
She walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs. The sound of her angry footsteps echoed around the house. If Milo didn’t already know they’d been fighting, he would now. Sylvain heard a door slam, then silence.
Wearily, he opened the china cabinet, took out a glass, and tipped the rest of the wine into it from Tiphaine’s glass. Then he walked pensively over to the dining room window and looked out onto the yard.
It was still light outside. The backyard was resplendent with colors, scents, and patterns. Tiphaine had reproduced almost identically their yard next door, with ornamental plants at the top end and the vegetable garden at the other, even down to the row of shrubs at the back concealing the compost bin. During the first years they had lived in this house it had been a bit like the communicating vase phenomenon: as their former yard withered, their new one grew lush with new flower beds and more climbing plants.
In fact, the whole house looked like the house next door when they lived there. They’d made the decision to move for several reasons. First, because they had become Milo’s guardians and the house belonged to him. This had meant they had three options.
They could have rented it out, but they were put off by the work that would have involved.
They could have sold it, but it was Milo’s decision whether to hang on to it or get rid of it, since it had belonged to his parents and was now his. When the family court ruled that he could make the decision only once he reached the age of legal majority, this was no longer a possibility.
The final option was for them to move in. Again, there were pros and cons. It was quite difficult to make the case for this option given the “events” that had happened there. But what had happened in their own house was even harder to bear. They had redecorated Maxime’s old room for Milo, but it remained unoccupied for many months. When they had brought the child home with them after the “events,” there were all sorts of reasons not to have him move into that bedroom. He was having terrible nightmares, which Tiphaine used as an excuse to have him sleep with them. To begin with, this was fine with Sylvain. Their priority was to support and protect the child and make him feel as secure as possible.
But as the situation dragged on, Sylvain tried to initiate a return to “normality,” repeatedly bringing up the idea of moving Milo into the vacant bedroom. But Tiphaine’s vehement response left him no hope. He understood then that it wasn’t the child who needed Tiphaine, but she who needed him. She wasn’t having him sleep in the conjugal bed for his sake; she was holding on to him with the force of despair, as though clinging to a life buoy to keep herself from drowning.
Their sex life, already on its last legs, didn’t survive.
Once they officially became Milo’s legal guardians, it fell to them to deal with the boy’s possessions, which included the house. For weeks Sylvain had been thinking that moving away from the area was the only way out of the grief and sadness in which they had been festering for so long. But Tiphaine categorically refused to consider it, arguing that uprooting the child, causing yet more upheaval in his life, would be damaging for him. It was essential that he keep his points of reference and his routines, and that could be achieved only in a familiar setting. Sylvain capitulated.
But when the question of the house next door came up, he refused to drop it. What could be more familiar than that? For Sylvain, it was becoming increasingly urgent to leave the house where their son had died, even if it was only to move next door. It was Maxime’s bedroom that he wanted to get away from. Tiphaine maintained it like a mausoleum, implicitly forbidding Milo access to it. In desperation, Sylvain gave her an ultimatum: either they move next door, or he would leave her. Terrified by the idea of finding herself alone with her shame and torment, Tiphaine resigned herself to the move. And so Milo found himself back in his own home, his own room, his own surroundings.
At first, Sylvain was optimistic that the situation would at last improve. Not that things would go back to how they were before; he didn’t even fantasize about that possibility. Nothing would ever be the same again. But perhaps they were at last entering a new period in their lives, leaving behind their grief, self-loathing, and guilt.
But it wasn’t to be.
Their relationship continued inexorably to deteriorate. The wall that separated the two houses was clearly not solid enough to contain the hell he had hoped they would leave behind. And now they didn’t have Maxime’s old room to remind them anymore of their lost Eden, they were pushing each other away, never to find each other again.
This time, Sylvain gave up and accepted his fate, like a guilty man relieved to receive the sentence that would, at last, allow him to atone for his crime.
Chapter 21
It was agreed that Tiphaine would babysit Nassim at Nora’s house on Thursday. Tiphaine left work at four o’clock sharp, drove to the school to pick the child up, and brought him home. She rang the doorbell as she had on Tuesday, to let Inès know they were there, in case she was already home. And, just like on Tuesday, there was no answer. She put the key in the lock, opened the door, and followed Nassim into the house.
A strange sensation came over her as she walked into the kitchen. A feeling of absence, almost physical, like the gnawing ache of hunger. Uneasy, Tiphaine tried to get ahold of herself.
“Would you like something to eat?” she asked Nassim as she opened the refrigerator to inspect the contents.
He did. She prepared a snack for him. He ate it, hungrily, at the kitchen table, with her sitting opposite him. How many times had she shared this moment with her son, sitting in this very room, asking him how he was, how his day had been. The only difference was that Nassim sat facing the window, while Maxime always used to have his back to it.
“Did you have a good day at school?” she asked Nassim. The child nodded. He really wasn’t talkative, not like Maxime, who’d tell her in detail about every noteworthy episode of his day.
“Tell me what you got up to!” she insisted.
“I did some work.”
“I’m sure you did. But apart from that? How was recess? Lunch?”
“I don’t know. Nothing special. Just like usual.”
“So how is it usually?”
“Um...I don’t know.”
End of the discussion. The child’s refusal to engage irritated Tiphaine, who was feeling increasingly on edge. She watched him sitting up straight as he munched his cereal, his eyes lowered—he was too perfect, too well behaved. Tiphaine gave a sad little smile and offered him a glass of orange juice, which the child politely declined.
