Her protest was weaker, and I knew the truth. Delphine barely lived paycheck to paycheck and often ended up at the local food bank long before the end of the month. With Christmas coming, I had no doubt she had sacrificed expenses to ensure Émeric got a few presents under the tree.
I checked the time on the dashboard. Five twenty-one. Fuck it. I’d shower before bed. “Hey, Del. Tell Ém I’ll be there in an hour.”
Instead of heading home, I swung a U-turn at the next corner and headed to the grocery store.
8
Dominique
How is the case?
Four simple words.
It would open a conversation. Break the ice.
Yet, I couldn’t type thembecausethey would open a conversation and break the ice.
Cosette’s slack body lay sprawled against my chest. Her cupid’s bow mouth formed anO, parted lips glistening with saliva as she slept. A tangle of chestnut brown ringlets stuck to her sweaty forehead and cheeks. A growing puddle of drool dotted my shirt.
She’d been woken by a bad dream earlier, so I’d brought her into the living room to calm her down. Admiring the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree usually worked, but not that time. She’d cried for fifteen minutes straight before falling back to sleep, nestled against my heart. It took another fifteen minutes for her hitching breaths to calm.
Semi-reclined and with my feet on the coffee table, I browsed files, no longer able to work properly with her weight pinning medown. I could have returned her to bed, but I wasn’t ready. Her comforting weight grounded me.
A stack of folders sat on the cushion to my left. To my right, the taunting cellphone, with Kobe’s number in the contact list, waiting for me to get brave.
How is the case?
That was all I needed to type, yet I couldn’t seem to do it. Part of it had to do with the child in my arms and the implications brought on by a conversation with the good-looking detective.
I hadn’t spoken to Kobe since late Wednesday evening. He texted to update me on his interview with Fatemeh Kordestani and the discovery of an inheritance.We’re looking into it, he’d said. He mentioned a will. We chatted about ways to identify perfume, and I told him I might have a contact back in Quebec who could help. We had quickly run out of things to say, and after too many awkward pauses, Kobe had signed off, claiming he needed to shower and sleep.
Since then, crickets.
Had I blown it?
Did I care?
It was my fault the conversation faltered. Apart from work-related topics, I struggled to know what to discuss. If I wanted to build anything with Kobe Haven, I needed to step up my game and stop being afraid.
I stared at the phone, then at Cosette, then at the open folder on my left. An image of Navid Kordestani stared back at me. Living, breathing Navid. The unsmiling photograph enhanced his grave features and corresponded with all Kobe had shared.A real asshole, the detective had claimed.A heartless bastard.
Who was I to disagree?
The rest of the images in the file had been taken at the lab after his death. Injuries and organs. I meticulously reviewed them, looking for oversights, before scanning the report I’d writtenalmost a week ago. I’d shared all I could with Kobe but was unable to shake the feeling that if I looked closer, I would see something I missed.
I set the folder aside and opened another, studying the living, breathing profile picture of another unlucky sod.
Cosette snorted and smacked her lips, turning her face against my chest and wiping more drool and snot onto my shirt. I pushed her hair off her face when it stuck to her lips. She was a hot sleeper, and two rosy circles burned high on her cheeks.
Careful not to wake her, I leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. She smelled like bumbleberry shampoo, something she’d picked out during a shopping trip a few weeks ago.
“I should put you to bed and find my own, ma belle. It’s late.”
The following day was Sunday, and I dreaded what it entailed.You don’t have to do this anymore, my conscience whispered.You can stop. She won’t know. She’s long gone from the world.
But I’d promised. I’d fallen to my knees with a newborn baby in my arms and swore on her grave that I would not forget.
The drive to CimetièreSaint-François de Sales in Gatineau took twenty minutes. Perched in her booster seat, Cosette babbled nursery rhymes and sang songs as she looked out the window. Her self-selected bouquet of chrysanthemums rested on her lap. Yellow again. Always yellow.
