Then she threw an embarrassed glance at Nora. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Nora didn’t get it for a moment. She looked at Tiphaine in surprise, wondering what had triggered such a reaction. Tiphaine’s words echoed in her head.
“My men are waiting for me...”
Suddenly she realized. And while Tiphaine’s words weren’t hurtful, her excuses were. Tiphaine realized it at the same moment. The two women stood in silence, each trying to find a way out of the awkwardness.
Nora tried, but somehow managed to make it worse. “No worries, Tiphaine. One more hassle I’m delighted to be done with.” Even as she said it, Nora realized she was making Tiphaine’s blunder worse. The fact that she knew about her and Sylvain’s marital difficulties added to the confusion, as if she were pitying her neighbor for struggling in a foundering relationship. “Don’t listen to me, Tiphaine. I’m talking nonsense.”
“No, no, it’s my fault, it was very rude of me.”
They brushed it off with understanding smiles. Tiphaine began getting ready to go.
“I hope the soup’s good. Let me know if you need me to pick up Nassim again.”
“That’s kind of you. I’m okay for tomorrow, Mathilde’s fetching him.”
“Mathilde? She doesn’t live nearby, does she?”
“Oh, it’s not very far. She’s in Mésanges.”
“That’s crazy. It’s miles away. I’m very happy to do it.”
Taken by surprise, Nora hesitated.
“It makes no sense,” insisted Tiphaine. “If I get him, he’ll be here, and you can just come straight home. I’m very happy to do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Listen, I’m the one suggesting it.”
Nora thought about it a moment before accepting her neighbor’s offer. She walked her to the front door and then, as Tiphaine walked the three yards that separated the two houses, she said again, “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“On the contrary,” Tiphaine said firmly as she put her key in the lock, “it’ll be a pleasure.”
Chapter 23
Gérard Depardieu had already done a bit of searching online, and his investigations had turned up some interesting information. He found out that Sylvain Geniot was an architect; he consulted the firm’s website and read some articles in various trade magazines. Nothing of any real consequence. When he searched for Tiphaine’s name, he found only one site that mentioned her, but it caught his attention: it was that of the local plant nursery. He discovered she was a horticulturist, from which he deduced she must have a good knowledge of plants. He pondered the information thoughtfully.
In the course of his searches, he came across one startling news item. It was an article in the local newspaper from eight years earlier, relating a horrifying domestic accident: Maxime Geniot, age six, had fallen from his bedroom window on the second floor of the family home. The article gave few details, beyond the fact that, despite the swift arrival of the paramedics, nothing could be done to save the child.
Looking over these various pieces of information gleaned from the internet, Gérard noted a puzzling coincidence: the Geniots had lost a child just a few weeks before Milo Brunelle had lost his father.
But he was unable to find any link between the two families. He spent the week pondering the mystery of the relationship between the Brunelles and the Geniots. His deliberations led him to consider two possibilities. The first was as simple as it was logical: Tiphaine was Milo Brunelle’s mother. After the death of David Brunelle, her first husband, she’d married Sylvain Geniot and taken his name, while her son had kept that of his father. Gérard decided he had to see if this hypothesis checked out; if it did, it would put an end to the matter. If, on the other hand, Tiphaine was not Milo’s mother, that meant she and Sylvain were his guardians; it was unlikely that the Geniot family had adopted the child, otherwise he would bear their surname.
The only way to find out what linked the Geniots and the Brunelles was to consult the records of the family court that would have met at the time when the couple were formally appointed the boy’s guardians.
This raised further questions: if Tiphaine wasn’t Milo’s mother, why had the boy not gone to live with his mother? And where was she now? At the time, Gérard had been told that his client had committed suicide, and the case had been closed. Preoccupied with the birth of his own son, Gérard had not delved any further and he, too, had closed the case.
But now the case had risen from the ashes, triggering his interest again. If only because he needed to find out who this asshole was who was hanging around his wife.
The immediate problem he had was time.
Since Nora had left, Gérard had been obliged to reorganize his life. Having custody of the children every other week was a real challenge for him, on top of shopping, cooking, and keeping the house in some semblance of order, despite the maid who came in twice a week. The weeks he had the children he had to adjust his work schedule, leaving work much earlier than he would have liked, and being frustrated by not being able to complete a fraction of what he had to do. The weeks he didn’t have them he doubled the number of hours in the office and worked ten times as hard, spending almost all his waking hours going over his cases and drafting pleas.
He arranged as many of his appointments as he could for that week, to avoid finishing late when the children were with him. Inès didn’t like to stay home alone, or at least that was the pretext she used to hang out in the street with girlfriends or—worse!—with boys when he told her he wouldn’t be back until the end of the afternoon. Nassim didn’t like staying behind in the after-school program, as he had let his father know in no uncertain terms the one time he was late to pick him up after class. Not to mention that he would rather be at his mother’s house anyway than at Gérard’s. That was out of the question. And the thing Gérard feared most of all.
Almost without noticing, he had begun to realize how much he missed the children when they weren’t there. Terribly. It was true that even back when they were still a real family, he’d never spent much time with them. But at least he saw them every day. Enough to know they were happy and doing well at school. He talked to them and gave them hugs. And when he got home too late in the evening to see them, or at least too late to see Nassim, he’d slip into his son’s bedroom to watch him for a few minutes, filled with quiet happiness as he observed the serene expression on the face of the sleeping child.
