Chương 5
Dr. Laurent looked from Mathilde to Ines.
“Mrs. Moreau, this is Claire Vasseur.”
Mathilde stood.
Claire’s eyes moved to Ines first.
Whatever she saw there drained the color from her face.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Then she covered her mouth.
Ines tightened her grip on Mathilde’s hand.
Claire lowered her hand again.
“I’m sorry.”
Mathilde had imagined the woman from the letter as someone composed enough to write devastating truths in clean sentences.
The person standing in front of her looked terrified.
Dr. Laurent spoke carefully.
“Claire asked to speak with you because there is information about Marc’s family history that may be medically relevant.”
Mathilde looked at the sealed folder.
Claire did not offer it to her.
Instead she asked, “Has Marc told you who Elise’s father was?”
Mathilde frowned.
“His father.”
Claire shook her head.
“No.”
The room seemed to become very small.
Claire’s fingers tightened around the folder.
“Marc’s father raised Elise.”
She looked directly at Mathilde.
“But biologically, Elise and Marc did not have the same father.”
Mathilde did not answer.
Claire seemed to understand that silence as permission to continue.
“Elise’s biological father was a man named Alain Perrin.”
Ines looked between the adults.
“Who is that?”
Claire’s expression shifted toward her.
“He was someone your grandmother knew before she married the man Marc called his father.”
Mathilde felt Ines’s fingers tighten around hers.
“Why does that matter medically?”
Claire glanced at Dr. Laurent.
He answered instead.
“It may matter because the condition we are investigating can appear in families, but family history is only useful if the biological relationships are accurate.”
Mathilde looked back at Claire.
“So Marc spent five weeks chasing the wrong branch of the family.”
Claire gave a faint nod.
“He thought Elise’s illness proved the risk came through his father.”
“Except it didn’t.”
“No.”
“Did he know?”
Claire looked down at the folder.
“Not at first.”
Something cold settled in Mathilde’s stomach.
“When did he find out?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Mathilde stared at her.
Three weeks.
That was two weeks after Ines’s first hospital visit.
Two weeks in which Marc had still done nothing.
“What did he do when you told him?”
Claire rubbed her thumb over the edge of the plastic folder.
“He asked me not to tell anyone.”
Ines made a quiet sound beside Mathilde, almost a laugh and not remotely amused.
“That’s his thing.”
Claire closed her eyes briefly.
Mathilde looked at her daughter.
Ines’s face had gone pale, but there was anger there now too.
It was the first anger Mathilde had seen from her since they arrived.
“Why did you listen to him?” Mathilde asked.
Claire absorbed the accusation without defending herself immediately.
“Because I had already broken one promise to him.”
“What promise?”
“To leave Elise alone.”
The answer made no sense.
Elise had been dead for decades.
Claire seemed to see the confusion.
“After she died, Marc asked me never to contact him again.”
“Why?”
Claire glanced at Ines.
Mathilde saw the hesitation.
“Ines can hear this.”
“Mom.”
“She is the reason we’re having the conversation.”
Claire nodded.
“When Elise was seventeen, she wrote letters.”
Ines looked at the folder.
“Those?”
“Copies of some of them.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
Claire’s voice softened.
“She was my closest friend.”
Mathilde remembered the sentence from the letter she had found.
Closest friend.
It had sounded simple.
Now something in Claire’s face made it complicated.
“She wrote about being sick?”
“Sometimes.”
Claire swallowed.
“She wrote mostly about being scared.”
Ines shifted against the pillow.
“Of dying?”
Claire looked at her.
“Of not being believed.”
The room became quiet.
Mathilde watched Ines lower her eyes.
Dr. Laurent moved toward the door.
“I’m going to give you some privacy.”
Claire stopped him.
“I may need you for the medical part.”
“I’ll be right outside.”
When he left, Claire finally sat in the chair opposite the bed.
She kept the folder on her lap.
“Marc found the letters after Elise died.”
“How?” Mathilde asked.
“I had given them to her mother.”
Claire took a slow breath.
“She wanted something of Elise’s that wasn’t hospital paperwork.”
“And Marc read them.”
“Yes.”
“What was in them?”
Claire looked toward Ines again.
“One of the letters said Elise had begged Marc to take her to a doctor.”
Mathilde felt Marc’s nineteen-year-old face return to her mind.
The bathroom floor.
The ambulance.
The father who said he was overreacting.
“He did take her eventually.”
“Eventually.”
Claire’s voice was not cruel.
That made it worse.
“She had asked him before.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“Claire.”
“I don’t.”
Her hands tightened.
“She wrote that Marc kept telling her their father would get angry if they went behind his back.”
Mathilde sat very still.
There it was.
Not inheritance.
Repetition.
Marc had not merely watched his father dismiss Elise.
He had participated in the machinery around it.
Ines whispered, “He knew.”
Mathilde looked at her.
Her daughter’s eyes filled, but no tears fell.
“He knew what it felt like.”
Claire’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
“And he did it to me anyway.”
“Ines,” Mathilde said.
“No.”
Her daughter pulled her hand away.
“No, don’t make it softer.”
“I’m not.”
“You always make things softer.”
The words hit with unexpected force.
Mathilde stared at her.
Ines rubbed both palms over her face.
“You say Dad is stressed.”
“Ines.”
“You say he doesn’t mean things the way they sound.”
Mathilde opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
Ines looked at Claire.
“Did he tell Elise she was dramatic too?”
Claire hesitated.
That hesitation answered first.
“Yes.”
Ines turned toward the window.
Mathilde saw her shoulders stiffen.
For months, perhaps years, Mathilde had thought she was balancing the house.
Marc was blunt.
Ines was sensitive.
Mathilde translated.
She softened.
She explained.
She gave both of them versions of each other that were easier to live with.
Now she wondered whether peace had been another name for making Ines absorb what Marc refused to change.
Claire touched the folder.
May you like
“There’s something else.”
Mathilde almost laughed from exhaustion.
