Just Fall (28 page)

“No. We had a witness statement that put her in the vicinity and then found in this room a piece of a fake nail that she had been reported as wearing. We haven’t confirmed that she was actually here, but it’s our best lead so far.”

“Mind if I look around anyway?”

“Be my guest.”

The American opens the night table drawer, peers under the bed. Stands on the bed and examines the blades of the ceiling fan. Runs his fingers along every inch of the green curtains. Lucien watches by the door. His cellphone rings. Agathe.

“I need to take this. Let me know when you’re done.”

Matt nods his assent. Lucien walks back to the lobby to take Agathe’s call. He wants to keep his business private. He glances at his watch. With each passing minute, the odds of finding his nephew alive diminish. He tugs at his collar, which is suddenly choking him.

Agathe is surprisingly calm, given her hot temperament, and Lucien realizes his wife is keeping it together for the sake of her sister, whom he hears keening in the background. Lucien’s heart aches as he thinks of the crumpled little boy stuffed into a refrigerator on Carter Williamson’s boat.

Calmly he explains they are doing everything they can. He is reassuring about Thomas’s well-being even though, deep inside, he is no longer optimistic the boy is still on the island or even alive. He is suffused with a kind of tender pain. He loves his wife, he loves his family. If Thomas is dead, he knows none of them will ever be the same again. He has seen violent death shred families too many times to believe his family will be any different.

He does not mention he has been pulled off the case. He does not say he is engaged in a desperate wild-goose chase on the basis of information provided by a stranger he has no reason to trust. He had vowed to protect his wife when they married. He will do so as long as he can.

Matt comes back into the lobby. He shrugs. Nothing. Lucien watches as the American wanders over to the empty parrot cage. The parrots are gone, but a curled, blood-red feather wavers atop the filthy newspaper at the bottom of the cage. Matt opens the cage door, idly plucks up the feather.

Lucien’s last slim clue is a bust and he is suddenly, irrationally angry with this American and his wild stories. Agathe’s voice rises in her distress, spilling rancid through Lucien’s phone and into the moist air. Lucien raises a finger to indicate he needs another moment on the call. Turns his back to Matt. Tries to soothe his wife, and feels only shame.

She supposed it was ridiculous, this hat perched on her head, festooned with ribbons, white ostrich feathers, and glittery letters that spelled out “Bride.” But her girlfriends had insisted. And several margaritas in, Ellie was enjoying it. Men at the bar were blatantly offering to take her for “one last spin”—she hadn’t paid for a drink all night. The flirting was outrageous, good-natured, flattering. She had wanted a girls’ night out, a bachelorette’s debauch rather than a shower, and her friends had delivered. Ellie was tipsy, happily rooted in ritual.

She knocked back the last of her current drink, and excused herself for the restroom, dancing her way to the back of the bar. There, she peed and flushed, washed her hands. She repaired her makeup in the mirror, a touch more lipstick, a fixed smudge of mascara.

She felt so blessed. Her bridesmaids were here: Tara, her best friend from childhood, and Collette from college—funny how they had gotten so much closer after. Six other girls she had met since moving to New York. They had a limo for the night and nowhere to be in the morning.

Ellie was sorry that Marcy, who had set her up with Rob in the first place, hadn’t made it. Still, Ellie understood. She couldn’t imagine living with the pain Marcy must be feeling now. Ellie sloughed off the thought; she would call Marcy tomorrow. Tonight she was going to party.

Lucien swallows but nothing dislodges the lump in his throat. He knows he has to join his family, he is on his way, but he is sick at heart and dreading seeing them. On leave, powerless and empty-handed, he can’t bear the sense of impotence and passivity that overwhelms him. If at least that peculiar American had brought him a useful clue with respect to the hotel murders, he could be back at the station, in the mix, hearing the latest on the search for Thomas.

Lucien wonders, and not for the first time, if a single thing the American has said is true. What a bizarre story! But at least the missing boys are back in the foreground. A cop’s nephew and suddenly the department is paying attention again. Lucien drums his fingers on the steering wheel, full of fury and despair.

As he turns the corner that will take him to his sister-in-law’s house, Lucien sees a sea of bodies standing in the street. What is this? But he realizes the crowd is peaceful: singing, swaying, holding flickering candles and photographs of the stolen boys.

Lucien can see his wife at the front of the crowd, dry-eyed and resolute, her arm wrapped protectively around her sister’s shoulders. Gabrielle’s husband and parents stand behind the two sisters. Baby Bertrand is cradled in his grandmother’s arms.

Lucien parks his car. Weaves through the crowd toward his family. He sees Olivier Cassiel’s mother, Yvette. She is slumped across her boyfriend, Rudy, their little girl hollow-eyed between them. Rudy strokes Yvette’s back, trying ineffectually to soothe her disconsolate sobs, and Lucien is relieved to see that grief has leached the violence from him. Lucien sees the parents of the still-missing boys: Sebastien’s scrawny, teenage single mother, comforted by her own mother; Jacob’s parents, solid and stalwart, surrounded by their four other children; Pierre’s petite mother with her milk-coffee skin and electric blue eyes, dwarfed by her darker-hued and burly husband.

Agathe meets his gaze as he nears them; she stretches out an imploring arm. The frank need in her eyes stops Lucien in his tracks. He has never felt so inadequate. He embraces his wife, lifts his sleeping son from his mother-in-law’s arms. Lucien buries his face in the crook of his son’s neck and inhales his powdery baby scent.

The night before their wedding, Ellie stayed alone at their apartment, while Rob took a room at the hotel hosting their reception. They had decided to spend the night apart, a nod to tradition, not superstition. But as Ellie wandered the apartment, unable to sleep, she wished Rob were there.

It really was their place now, as opposed to his, and would be even more so once they integrated the mounting piles of wedding presents—things that would be “theirs” rather than “hers” and “his.” Gift boxes filled the apartment, despite the fact that they had requested donations to the Matt Walsh Foundation instead of wedding presents. Ellie had convinced Rob that they should return most of them, but choose a few to keep as symbolic of their new life together.

She knew she should sleep, but her mind skittered about. She felt elated and not at all tired. She thought about how much she loved Rob, even as she worried about the distance he kept between them, the deft way he circumvented questions about his past.

He had embraced her friends, her parents, and her world with ease but hadn’t merged much of his life into hers—with no family to speak of, just one cousin who lived overseas, and few friends in New York, he seemed to exist as an island. And he teasingly deflected most of her questions about his upbringing. His rationale—that she was all he needed, that their life together was the only life he wanted to talk about—was simultaneously thrilling and a bit terrifying. He seemed to accept her dark secrets without her having to admit them, to be able to calm her anxieties without her naming them. Weren’t they bound by an intoxicating combination of affection, connection, lust and thrills, intellectual stimulation, and laughter? What was love, anyway? Who really knew? Why couldn’t she be happy with what she had?

Yet, as the night lengthened, her uneasiness built. What did love mean to her? Loss. Her sister, Jason, even Hugh…She remembered their final night together.

It had been a night of crossed purposes. Ellie had been steeling herself to tell Hugh she loved him. She hadn’t said this to a man since Jason, but after almost eight months with Hugh, she wanted to proclaim it. He had been a little odd lately, alternating between distant and very attentive. But then he had bought her a beautiful necklace for her birthday, intricately worked silver set with turquoise, moonstone, and carnelian. And as he had kissed the back of her neck with utter tenderness when he had fastened the clasp, Ellie decided the necklace was the declaration of his feelings. She was now ready to pronounce hers.

As always, the specter of Jason hung over Ellie. She was nervous, drank a little too much wine at dinner. So when the dessert was served and Hugh had clasped her hand in his and started to speak, she had shushed him and plunged on impulsively.

“I love you.”

“What? Ellie, listen to me—”

“You don’t have to say it back, I know you feel it.”

She fingered the silver necklace; she had worn it precisely for its affirmation.

“Ellie, you don’t understand.”

There was something of shredded steel in his voice; it was the only way she could think to describe it. Impervious, yet torn.

“What is it? Hugh? What don’t I understand?”

“I haven’t known how to tell you.”

A decision had been made; she suddenly felt it in her bones, a decision that was about her, about them. And she had not been a part of the process. She felt dizzy with fear. “Tell me what?”

“I’m being transferred. To London.”

Oh. Was that all it was? Okay. A long-distance thing. They could work it out. Hugh was extremely ambitious about his career; she liked that about him. She tried to keep her voice light.

“When do you leave?”

“Five days. But I’ve known for a month.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? This is terrific news, isn’t it?”

“It is terrific news. But it’s also really made me think about us, and if I wanted to, you know, continue on. Given the distance and all.”

Ellie felt her cheeks burn. She had just blurted out her confession of love. And now he was breaking up with her. Why couldn’t she have kept her stupid mouth shut? Why had she drunk so much?

“It’s not like you’re not a great girl—”

“Compliments through double negatives. Fantastic.”

“Come on, Ellie, don’t make this harder than it has to be. We’ve had fun—”

“Did you not hear me just tell you I love you?”

“Well, yes, I did. But I think we both rather wish you hadn’t, am I right? So why don’t we dial it back and just finish our dinner like the friends we are—”

Ellie scraped her chair back and rose, jerking on her sweater and fumbling for her handbag.

“Don’t be like that, Ellie.”

She hadn’t replied. She had left the restaurant and stalked home. The night was chilly, but she didn’t feel the cold. Her head was pounding. How stupid could she be? Why did she always get it so wrong? She wanted to be in love, to be loved, but she just couldn’t manage to read the signals correctly. What an idiot she was! What was wrong with her? How could she not have seen this coming? Could Hugh somehow see the black stain on her soul that was Jason?

Finally on her corner, she stopped. Without thinking, she reached up, unclasped the silver necklace, and tossed it into a trash can. She wanted no reminders: not of Hugh, not of her humiliation, not of her deepest belief—that she was fundamentally damaged. That she was—and always would be—unlovable. Unloved.