“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...
As if Milo had taken Maxime’s place.
Nora swallowed, and a retrospective terror seized her, squeezing her chest to the point that for several long minutes she could hardly breathe. Was it possible to recover from the death of a child? Into what abyss of grief and pain had Tiphaine and Sylvain collapsed? What had they gone through, enduring a suffering like no other, the kind of suffering that knows no respite or redemption, that drags you to the very edge of vacillation, the only refuge for surviving the present, for continuing to live, or at least trying to?
When you’ve lost all reason for living, what other choice do you have but to live without reason? To give yourself up, body and soul, to the euphoria of madness? To let go. She, Nora, had just taken a life by accident, and she felt like she was losing her mind. And that was an adult man whom she no longer loved. How was it possible to survive the loss of a child more beloved than anything else in the world?
It was unimaginable.
Nora understood now that the only link still connecting Tiphaine to reason was Milo. There were almost no limits to what she might do. Her moral conscience had been shattered when Maxime fell onto the deck. And that made her very dangerous.
And now the woman had become her enemy. By falling under Sylvain’s spell, Nora had disturbed the fragile mental equilibrium of a vulnerable soul, damaging the veneer of normality that prevented that great leap toward other psychic realms. Where consequences do not exist—or are so very insignificant compared with the death of a child. Where there was no point anymore in holding back.
And she, Nora, had entrusted her son to this woman.
She had let her into her house. She had even given her a front-door key. The key!
Tiphaine still had the key to Nora’s house. She had to get it back. But maybe Tiphaine had already made a copy. Nora decided to have the lock changed rather than take the slightest risk. Today was Sunday. She weighed the risks of waiting until the next day. It would cost her a fortune. She hardly had any money in the bank. But safety was more important. She would do it first thing tomorrow morning. To reassure herself, she put her own key into the lock on the inside to block anyone if they tried to come in from outside.
She went through the notes, questions, and deductions written in Gérard’s scrawl, everything he had tried to warn her about before he died: the Geniots’ responsibility for Ernest Wilmot’s death, and even the possibility that they were in some way involved in the deaths of Milo’s parents, a double suicide whose motive remained unclear.
What had happened the night David Brunelle was in police custody? Apart from a few official documents and with no material evidence to support his suspicions, Gérard had relied mostly on hypotheses.
“Maman!”
Inès was standing outside the bathroom door, whining that she needed to pee. Nora hurriedly closed the folder and looked around for a place to conceal it. There was nowhere discreet enough to evade her daughter’s curiosity.
“Maman! Let me in. What are you doing in there?”
“Nearly done,” Nora answered, flushing the toilet. She was out of ideas. She pushed the folder under her T-shirt and buttoned up her cardigan over it. She glanced in the mirror to check it wasn’t visible. “No need to get worked up.”
She unlocked the bathroom door. Her daughter glared at her and went inside like a queen entering her boudoir. For once, Nora was thankful for teenage self-absorption.
She went back downstairs. She had to get rid of the folder. If anyone were to find it in her house, that would be the end of everything.
But at the same time she knew it was the perfect weapon with which to control Tiphaine, to calm her desire for vengeance, or even to feed suspicions about her, if those cretinous police officers were ever to find Gérard’s body.
Perhaps she shouldn’t get rid of it too soon. Thinking about it, the documents were her only protection against the machinations of a woman who seemed prepared to stop at nothing. The folder was the only thing that would allow her to play on the ultimate weak point of a woman who had nothing left to lose. It might be better to keep hold of it a little longer. Just in case.
Trying to convince herself this was the right decision, Nora looked around for a place to conceal it. She went into the kitchen, thinking she might hide it in a drawer, before giving up on this idea; Inès was always rooting around the cabinets and drawers, looking for food or some utensil or other that Nora had no idea how to use. It was the same in the bathroom. Nora went into the dining room. It was too sparsely furnished to offer any options. She went into the living room; looking around, her eyes were drawn to the bookshelf. What better hiding place for a book, or something resembling one, than tucked in among a lot of other books? She looked along the shelves, then pushed Gérard’s file folder between two hardcover novels.
