Chương 4
Ines.
Mathilde answered immediately.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
“Are you coming back?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find Rabbit?”
Mathilde looked toward the hallway.
“I’m getting him now.”
“And socks.”
“I packed socks.”
“The fuzzy ones.”
“Of course.”
There was a pause.
“Is Dad there?”
Mathilde looked at Marc.
He stood completely still.
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You don’t have to.”
Marc’s face tightened.
Ines whispered, “Okay.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let him throw away my bag.”
Mathilde’s grip tightened around the phone.
“He won’t.”
“The hospital has it.”
“I know.”
“He told me before that it was trash.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
Mathilde closed her eyes.
“I thought you said you found it under the seat.”
“I did.”
Her daughter sounded embarrassed now.
“He saw me pick it up and told me to leave it.”
“And you took it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Mathilde did.
Fifteen-year-old girls were allowed impulses too.
Sometimes disobedience was nothing more sophisticated than wanting to know why an adult sounded scared.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Ines breathed quietly into the phone.
Then she said, “Mom, did I make everything worse?”
Mathilde turned away from Marc.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
This time she did not soften the answer.
“You did not make this worse.”
After they hung up, Marc spoke first.
“I never told her it was trash.”
Mathilde turned around.
“She just said you did.”
“I said it was medical waste.”
“That distinction is very important to you right now?”
“It matters.”
“No, Marc.”
“It was sealed material.”
“No.”
“She shouldn’t have taken it.”
“No.”
“She could have contaminated—”
“Stop.”
He did.
Mathilde crossed the room and pulled Ines’s stuffed rabbit from the hall closet, where it had apparently been thrown during an earlier cleaning spree.
One ear was bent permanently forward.
She tucked it under her arm.
Marc watched her.
“What are you going to tell her?”
“The truth.”
“All of it?”
Mathilde stopped.
There it was.
The first genuinely difficult question he had asked.
Ines deserved the truth, but truth was not a weapon to dump into a hospital bed because Mathilde was furious with her husband.
She looked at the rabbit’s worn fabric.
“I’m going to tell her what she needs to understand why she has to trust her own pain.”
Marc sat back down.
“And Elise?”
“When it’s useful to her, not when it’s useful to you.”
His face twisted.
Mathilde had seen Marc cry only three times in eighteen years.
At their wedding, when Ines was born, and once in a parking garage after learning that a close friend had died in a motorcycle accident.
Now his eyes reddened, but no tears fell.
“I became him.”
Mathilde did not answer quickly.
The easiest thing would have been yes.
The most satisfying thing would have been yes.
Instead she placed the rabbit on the table.
“You made choices that looked like his choices.”
Marc stared at her.
“That isn’t the same thing?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The uncertainty frightened him more than condemnation would have.
Mathilde could see it.
“What happens now?”
“You don’t come to the hospital tonight.”
“Mathilde.”
“You don’t contact Ines unless she contacts you first.”
“I’m her father.”
“And she just said she doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“That can’t be entirely her decision.”
Mathilde’s anger returned so cleanly that it almost steadied her.
“She is fifteen, not five.”
“She’s sick.”
“Yes.”
“That’s exactly why I should be there.”
“That sentence would have mattered five weeks ago.”
Marc stood again.
“I am not agreeing to be shut out of my daughter’s medical care.”
“You already shut yourself out.”
“You don’t get to decide that alone.”
“No, maybe I don’t.”
Mathilde reached for her coat.
“But tonight I get to decide who walks into that room while she is scared.”
Marc stepped into her path, not touching her, but close enough that she had to stop.
For one second, something old and ugly entered the room.
Not violence.
Not quite.
Power.
The expectation that his body, his certainty, his refusal would force the next outcome.
Mathilde looked at him.
“Move.”
Marc hesitated.
Then he stepped aside.
She picked up the rabbit and left.
At the hospital, Ines was awake despite the late hour, watching a cooking competition on mute.
She smiled when she saw the rabbit.
“I knew you’d find him.”
“He was hiding behind a vacuum cleaner.”
“He hates cleaning.”
“Runs in the family.”
Ines almost laughed.
Mathilde sat beside the bed.
For a few minutes they watched a contestant ruin a chocolate glaze in total silence.
Then Ines asked, “Did Dad lie to you?”
Mathilde looked at her daughter’s profile.
“Yes.”
Ines nodded as though she had expected that.
“About me?”
“About some things that affect you.”
“Is he having an affair?”
Mathilde blinked.
“What?”
“The bag belongs to another woman.”
Even frightened, Ines had built the same obvious explanation.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Ines picked at the blanket.
“Is that good?”
Mathilde looked toward the dark television reflection in the window.
“I don’t know.”
Ines turned to her.
“That’s a weird answer.”
“It’s been a weird day.”
For the first time since the hospital visit began, Ines smiled without forcing it.
Then her smile disappeared.
“Am I really sick?”
Mathilde reached for her hand.
“You have something that needs treatment.”
“That means yes.”
“It means the doctors know more tonight than they did yesterday.”
Ines squeezed her fingers.
“Dad said finding things makes them real.”
Mathilde felt her chest tighten.
“No.”
She moved closer.
“Finding things gives you a chance to do something about them.”
Ines looked at her for a long moment.
Then she whispered, “He said almost the opposite.”
Mathilde touched the back of her daughter’s hand.
“I know.”
Outside the room, footsteps approached.
Mathilde glanced toward the door, expecting a nurse.
May you like
Instead, Dr. Laurent appeared with a woman Mathilde had never seen before.
The woman was in her late forties, wearing a raincoat over hospital scrubs, and she held a sealed plastic folder against her chest.
