“It is if you wantmyhelp getting it. I worked with Matthias. He was a friend. What everyone said happened always felt wrong. He wasn’t the type to have up and left his family like that.” Adrien pins Gaëlle with a furious glare. “Why is he buried here? What did you two do to him?”
“It was an accident . . .” Gaëlle’s voice is a near whisper.
Whoa.Did Gaëlle kill a man? I feel my eyebrows shoot up to the top of my forehead. I glance over at Cadence, but she’s steadfastly studying the snow at her feet.
“What did you do to him?” Adrien repeats, zero empathy in his voice.
Rainier barks, “Matthias was cursed,” as though this explains why Gaëlle offed her baby-daddy.
Adrien’s fury morphs into bafflement. “What? How?”
“He accidentally touched your mother’s piece of the Quatrefoil back when we were hunting it down.” Rainier grips the armrest of his pimped-up snowmobile so tightly his knuckles strain his leather gloves. “That’s the reason your mother took her life, Adrien. Didn’t you read her parting note? She couldn’t live with the guilt.”
Adrien’s mother committed suicide? Forget Dismalville; this town makes purgatory sound like a fun destination.
“Cursed, how?” Adrien mutters.
“He lost his mind. Hurt his own mother. Hurt Gaëlle. Even tried to hurt his own children.”
“He came at my belly with a knife. Said the twins were monsters. Said that he was told to kill them.” Gaëlle’s voice is as slight and light as the flurries of snow dancing around the unmarked grave.
Cadence gasps. “Oh, Gaëlle . . .”
“Neither Nolwenn nor Juda know that he’s dead, and we’d like keep it this way.” Rainier stares around the circle. “They’re old. They do not need to have their hearts broken. It was hard enough for them to see their son when he wasn’t himself.”
Cadence’s lips part again, or maybe they never quite closed.
I turn to Rainier. “And you chose to bury him on my landwhy?”
“Because it’s private property.” Rainier’s gaze slides to the thick mist rolling toward the dark evergreens. “Not to mention, uninhabited and out of the way.”
Gaëlle falls to her knees in the snow, tears dripping into her yellow scarf. “When his mind was clear, he was so kind. So caring.” She touches the wooden cross she laid out as though reaching through the layers of snow and earth toward her dead husband. “When he came at me with the knife, my maternal instinct took over. I didn’t think. I just swung. I was making pie, and the rolling pin was right there . . . and it . . .”
Wait.A rolling pin?
“It . . . it happened so fast. I didn’t mean to . . .”
Be quiet!A voice stabs my eardrums.
Gaëlle scrambles to her feet, eyes wild. “But it’s true, Matthias! I never meant—”
I said be quiet!A man materializes out of thin air, seemingly solid except for his wispy edges.
My bones bolt together, pain radiating from the ring. Holy shit. I’ve seen this dude before, in the art building. He’s the unkempt scholar who looked like he was living his worst life. Now that he’s right in front of me, I realize that he’s not just some pasty, shabby man, he’s seriously messed up. His skull’s caved in at one temple, one of his cheeks looks like cottage cheese, his lip is split and oozing blood, and his glazed eyes are saucers of hatred. Maybe in the past, he was borderline decent-looking, but with bloody stumps for teeth and skin the color of week-oldfoie gras, it’s hard to give a real assessment.
“He’s here, Papa,” Cadence whispers to Rainier.
Ah. That’s right. De Morel can’t see what we can. I tend to forget he’s not a descendent of thediwallerssince he speaks about them as though they were his people.
The already frigid, humid air takes a nosedive. Our breaths fog in front of us. Only Matthias doesn’t have a puff of white leaking from his lips.
“Remember, Gaëlle. Remember what to do.” Rainier’s gaze flits around, as though trying to glimpse the ghost standing by the ramshackle shed.
You hurt me. You sent me away.Matthias moves closer to Gaëlle. His voice is no longer sharp and serrated but soft and sad.Why, chaton? Why did you do this to me? To us?
“I’m so sorry.” Gaëlle’s normally dewy-brown face has turned ashen above her yellow scarf.
Matthias stands inches from her, his bruised and broken skull tilted to the side.You stole my child. My Romain. And the twins . . . I’ll never see them grow up.
