I got out of the car, and when I’d taken a few steps, I heard a click and the gate swung open. The unfamiliar key on the ring was obviously an electronic smart key. As I walked up the flagstone driveway, I heard rushing water. It was not a distant murmur; it sounded as though the river was flowing beneath my feet. I flicked the outdoor switch, and the garden and terraces were instantly flooded with light. Walking around the house, I realized that, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece Fallingwater, the villa was built over a river.
A slick, contemporary building with no trace of Provence or the Mediterranean, it reminded me of mid-century American architecture. Two cantilevered stories of glass, pale limestone, and reinforced concrete, it was perfectly in harmony with the vegetation and the rocky outcropping on which it was built.
The digital lock opened as I came to the door. I was worried about setting off the alarm system—there was a sign on the wall outside—but nothing happened. As in the garden, there was a single button to activate all the lights. I pushed it and discovered an interior as elegant as it was spectacular.
The ground floor comprised a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. The style was Japanese, everything open plan, with various living areas separated only by lattice screens that allowed light to stream through.
I stepped into the space and gazed around. I had never imagined Francis’s bachelor pad would look like this. Everything was warm and sophisticated—the vast limestone hearth, the pale oak beams, the smooth curves of the walnut furniture. A half-finished bottle of Corona stood on the cocktail bar, indicating that someone had been here recently. Next to the beer lay a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with a carved lacquer case.
Maxime’s Zippo.
Of course. He had come straight here after our conversation at my mother’s house, and what he had discovered had been so upsetting that he had rushed out, leaving his cigarettes and his lighter.
Standing next to the large sliding glass doors, I realized that it was the spot where Francis had been murdered. He had been tortured next to the fireplace and left for dead but had managed to drag himself across the parquet floor to the wall of glass overlooking the river. It was from here that he had phoned my mother. But I didn’t know whether she had answered that call.
3.
My mother…
I could feel her presence everywhere in this house. I sensed her guiding hand behind every piece of furniture, every element of the design. This was her home too. Startled by a creaking floorboard, I spun around and found myself face-to-face with my mother.
Or rather, her portrait, which was hanging on the far wall of the room. Slowly, I wandered over toward the living-room area lined with bookshelves. There were other photographs. The closer I came, the more I understood what, until now, had been a mystery. Fifteen photographs sketched out a retrospective of the parallel life that Francis and Annabelle had shared for years. They had been all around the world together. I recognized iconic places: the Sahara Desert, Vienna shrouded in snow, a tram in Lisbon, the roaring Gullfoss waterfall in Iceland, the cypresses of the Tuscan countryside, Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland, New York before the fall of the Twin Towers.
More than the places, it was the smiles, the serenity on their faces, that gave me goose bumps. My mother and Francis had been in love. For decades, they had shared an idyllic, illicit love affair, a long-term relationship that no one suspected.
But why? Why had they not simply made their relationship official?
Deep down, I knew the answer. It was complicated and owed much to their remarkable personalities. Both Annabelle and Francis were tough, no-nonsense individuals who would have found it comforting to build a world that was theirs alone. They had always carved out their lives against the world, against the mediocrity, against the hell that was other people and from which they longed to be free. Beauty and the Beast. Two extraordinary people who scorned respectability, propriety, marriage.
I became aware that I was crying. Probably because in the photographs, my mother was smiling, and because I had rediscovered the person I had known as a child, the woman whose gentleness would sometimes appear from beneath the icy mask of the Austrian. I wasn’t crazy. I hadn’t dreamed it. This other woman existed—the proof was right there before my eyes.
I wiped away my tears, but still they flowed. I found this double life, this unique love story, profoundly moving. Surely, at heart, true love paid no heed to convention. Francis and my mother had experienced that purity, that chemistry, while I had merely dreamed it or experienced it vicariously in novels.
One last picture caught my eye. It was a small sepia print, a class photo taken on a village square. It was inscribed in pen: Montaldicio, October 12, 1954. In it were three rows of children, about ten years old, all of them with raven-black hair except for one little girl standing off to the side who had blond hair and pale eyes. All the children were looking straight at the lens except for one little boy with a chubby, expressionless face. As the photographer clicked the shutter, Francis only had eyes for the Austrian. The prettiest girl in the school. Their story was foretold in this photo. Everything had started here, when they were children, in the little Italian village where they had grown up.
4.
A floating hardwood staircase led to the upper floor. At a glance, I took in the layout: a huge master suite with an adjoining study, a dressing room, and a built-in sauna. Even more than on the ground floor, the glass walls blurred the boundaries between inside and out. The setting was exceptional. You could feel the surrounding forest, hear the babble of the river mingling with the patter of the rain. A covered terrace led to a swimming pool that opened onto the sky and a hanging garden planted with wisteria, mimosa, and Japanese cherry.
For a moment, I almost turned back for fear of what I was about to discover. But now was not the time for stalling. I pushed open the door to the other room and discovered something even more intimate. There were more photographs, but here they were all of me and spanned my life from earliest childhood. I remembered the impression that had struck me earlier, one that had grown more forceful as my investigation progressed: in my search for Vinca, I was also, perhaps especially, looking for myself.
The oldest of the photographs was a black-and-white snapshot: Birth of T., Jeanne-d’Arc Maternity Ward, October 8, 1974. An early example of a selfie. Francis is holding the camera and has his arm around my mother, who is cradling a newborn. And the baby is me.
It was both shocking and obvious. The truth was staring me in the face. I felt a wave of emotion crash over me, and as it ebbed, the catharsis left me dazed. Suddenly, everything was clear—all the pieces fit together—but the realization was tempered with grief. I kept staring at the photo. I looked at Francis and it was like looking in the mirror. How could I have been so blind? I finally understood everything, why I had never truly felt like Richard’s son, why I had thought of Maxime as a brother, why some instinct prompted me to spring into action whenever Francis was attacked.
Not quite knowing what to feel, I sat on the edge of the bed and wiped away my tears. Knowing that I was Francis’s son felt like a burden being lifted from me, but knowing that I would never be able to talk to him left me filled with regrets. One question nagged at me—did Richard know about the family secret, about his wife’s double life? Probably, but I could not be sure. Maybe he had simply buried his head in the sand all these years, oblivious to the reason Annabelle tolerated his countless infidelities.
I got up to leave the room, then immediately turned back to take the maternity-ward photo. I needed it as proof of where I came from. As I picked up the frame, I noticed a small wall safe. The keypad required a six-digit code. My date of birth? I didn’t believe it could be so simple, but it was worth a shot. Sometimes the simplest solution…
With a click, the safe door swung open. It was not very deep. I put my hand inside and took out a pistol. The famous gun Francis hadn’t had time to use the night he was attacked. In a small burlap bag, I
found a dozen .38-caliber cartridges. I’d never been fascinated by guns. As a rule, I found them repellent. But I’d had to do some research while writing my novels. I felt the weight of it. It was heavy and compact and looked like an old Smith and Wesson Model 36, the famous Chief’s Special, with its rosewood grip and nickel-plated body.
I slipped five cartridges into the cylinder and tucked it into my belt. I wasn’t sure that I knew how to use it, but I was sure that danger was everywhere. Someone had decided to eliminate all those involved in Vinca’s death. And I was probably next on the list.
As I went back down the stairs, my phone rang. I hesitated. When you get a call at three in the morning and the screen says Private number, it’s never a good thing. Eventually, I picked up.
It was the police. Chief Vincent Debruyne was calling me from the Antibes police station to say that my mother had been found dead and my father was claiming to have killed her.
Annabelle
Antibes, Saturday, May 13, 2017
My name is Annabelle Degalais. I was born in Italy, in a little village in Piedmont, in the mid-1940s. And the following minutes may well be my last.
On December 25 last year, when Francis called me in the dead of night shortly before he died, he had time to say only one thing: Protect Thomas and Maxime.
That night, I realized that the past had come back to haunt us, trailing threats of danger and death. Later, when I read the newspaper account of how Francis had suffered before he died, I knew that this story would end as it had begun—in blood and fear.
For twenty-five years, we had managed to keep the past at bay. To protect our children, we had double-locked every door, ensuring that we had left no trace. Vigilance became second nature, though, over time, the constant suspicion ceases to feel morbid. There were days when the fear that had been gnawing at me for years seemed to fade, and so I lowered my guard. This was a mistake.
Francis’s death almost destroyed me. My heart exploded. I thought I was dying. As I rode in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital, part of me wanted to let go, to be with Francis, but some unknown force kept me clinging to life.
I had to fight to protect my son. I might have lost Francis, but I was determined not to lose Thomas.
I would have to finish the job, and I knew this meant I would have to kill whoever was threatening my son’s future. And make that person pay for murdering the only man I had ever loved.
When I was discharged from the hospital, I combed through my memories. I carried out my own investigation, determined to find out who had come looking for revenge after all these years. A revenge that was brutal, ruthless, and terrifying. Although I’m not a young woman anymore, I still have my wits about me. But even though I devoted all my time to searching for answers, I could not find the slightest lead. All the people who might have wanted revenge were old or dead. Something was disrupting the peaceful running of our lives and threatening to derail them. It was clear that Vinca had taken a secret to her grave. And now a secret we did not even know existed had suddenly resurfaced, trailing death in its wake.
I conducted exhaustive searches but found nothing. Until, earlier today, when Thomas dragged all his old things up from the basement and spread them out on the kitchen table. Suddenly, it was staring me in the face. I felt like sobbing with rage. The truth had been right there in front of our eyes all the time, shrouded by a single detail that none of us had been able to understand.
A detail that changed everything.
* * *
It is still light as I arrive at Cap d’Antibes. I pull up in front of a house overlooking the boulevard de Bacon, a house whose whitewashed façade gives little sense of the sheer size of the residence. I leave the car double-parked and press the entry-phone button. A gardener trimming hedges tells me that the person I am looking for has taken the dogs for a walk along the sentier de Tire-Poil.
I drive a few kilometers farther, to the parking lot at Keller Beach. The place is utterly deserted. I open the trunk and take out the rifle I “borrowed” from Richard.
To steel myself, I think back to the Sunday-morning hunting trips I used to take with my adoptive father. I loved going with him, even though we didn’t talk much; those shared moments meant much more than long conversations. I think fondly of Butch, our Irish setter, always snuffling for partridges, woodcocks, and hares. There was no hunting dog like him for flushing out game so that we could shoot.
I test the weight of the rifle, then stroke the oiled walnut stock, linger for a moment on the intricate tracery on the barrel. With a click, I open the break-action and load two cartridges. Then I set off down the narrow coastal path.
Some fifty meters along, I come to a barrier with a sign: DANGER—NO ENTRY. The heavy tide last Wednesday must have triggered a rockslide. I duck around the barrier and clamber over the boulders.
The sea air is exhilarating, and the dazzling view that stretches all the way to the Alps reminds me of where I came from. As I scale a steep escarpment, I see the tall, slender figure of Francis’s killer, surrounded by three huge hounds that begin to pad toward me.
I raise the rifle, point the barrel toward my target, peer through the sight. I know I will not get a second chance.
I hear the shot, clear, short, and swift, and suddenly my entire life hits me in the face.
Montaldicio, the rolling hills of Italy, the little school, the village square, the insults, the brutality, the blood, the pride of standing firm, Thomas’s winning grin when he was three years old, the lifetime spent loving someone who was different from other men.
Everything that ever mattered in my life…
16
The Night Still Waits for You
1.
In the raging storm, the streets of Antibes looked as though they had been splattered by some thick, viscous substance a clumsy painter had poured onto his canvas.
It was four a.m. and still raining. I was pacing up and down outside the police station on the avenue des Frères-Olivier. My hair was soaked and rain was seeping under my shirt collar. Cell phone pressed to my ear, I was trying to persuade one of the most prominent lawyers in Nice to represent my father if he was kept in custody.
I felt as though I were drowning in a torrent of catastrophes. Barely an hour earlier, when I left Aurelia Park, I had been stopped by the police for speeding. Frantic and distraught, I had been doing a hundred and eighty kilometers an hour on the highway. The cops insisted that I take a Breathalyzer, and the cocktails and vodka shots I had drunk earlier that evening meant that they immediately suspended my license. If I was to get anywhere, I had no choice but to call Stéphane Pianelli. He had already heard the news about my mother’s death and said he would drive right over. He picked me up in his Dacia SUV with little Ernesto fast asleep in the back seat. The car smelled of gingerbread and had never seen a car wash in its life. As we drove to the police station, he briefed me, filling me in on the details I had not yet heard from Chief Debruyne. My mother’s body had been found in Cap d’Antibes, on a rocky coastal path. It had been the police, called to the scene by local residents worried that they had heard gunshots, who pronounced her dead.
“I’m really sorry to have to tell you, Thomas, but the circumstances of her death are truly horrible. I’ve never seen the likes of it around here.”
The dome light of the Dacia was still on. I could see that Pianelli was shaking. After all, he knew my parents. I was completely numb. Beyond exhaustion, beyond grief, beyond pain.
“There was a rifle near the crime scene, but Annabelle did not die of a gunshot wound.”
He was reluctant to tell me exactly what had happened. I’d had to insist in order to get the truth.
And this was what I was now trying to explain to the lawyer as I paced up and down outside the precinct: My mother’s face had been beaten to a bloody pulp with a rifle butt. It was clear that my father had not done it. Richard had gone there only because I’d given him the address, and Annabelle had bee
n dead when he arrived. He had broken down in tears on the rocky terrain; his mistake, as he stared at the dead body of his wife, was to sob: “This is my fault!” He had not meant it literally, I explained to the lawyer. It was simply a way of saying that he hadn’t been able to protect her, that he felt responsible. The lawyer accepted this without question and agreed to help us.
It was still raining when I hung up. I huddled under a deserted bus shelter on the place du Général-de-Gaulle while I made two agonizing phone calls, first to my brother and then to my sister, to tell them that our mother was dead. True to form, Jérôme remained stoic, though was clearly deeply upset. The conversation with my sister, however, was surreal. While I had assumed she was in bed with her husband in Paris, she was actually on a weekend trip to Stockholm with her new boyfriend. I didn’t know it, but she had gotten divorced more than a year ago. She told me a little about the divorce and then I told her about the tragedy, though I was vague about the circumstances.
She burst into hysterical sobs and there was nothing that I or the guy in bed next to her could do to calm her.
Afterward, I spent a long time wandering aimlessly around the square while the storm raged. The square was flooded. A pipe had burst and water was gushing up through a hole in the pavement. The floodlit fountains sprayed long golden jets into the darkness, where they mingled with rain to form a mist.
I was soaked to the skin; my heart was broken, my brain fried, my body shattered. It felt as though the thick fog that drowned my footsteps and blotted out the square, the curbs, and the road markings had washed away my moral compass, my every point of reference. I no longer understood my role in this story that had haunted me for so many years. This never-ending fall. This film noir in which I was more victim than hero.
The Reunion Page 20