by Nell Goddin
She was feeling so verklempt that even the stolid tone of Wesley Addison on the terrace as he lectured Ned about diphthongs made her smile with fondness.
Which is not to say that Molly had forgotten about Valerie. Once she was on a case, it was on her mind a hundred percent of the time, even if those thoughts were running quietly in the background. But that night, she felt as though the best thing any of them could be doing was to be together like this, laughing and talking about each other’s shoes. It made facing the horror of what humans will do to one another more bearable.
It was the whole point of everything, really.
17
All week, Achille had been looking forward to Monday when the Salliac market took place. Yet here it was, Monday morning, late enough that he knew the vendors had set up and opened for business, and yet he kept finding reasons to delay.
It is possible, he was saying to himself, that Aimée would not do. She might be too young. She might want to talk about teenage things he knew nothing about. They might not be able to find enough in common. But then he thought of how lively she had been, talking to her friend on the phone, how she had tossed her head like a little filly, how her green eyes had lit up when he offered her a cannelé.
He wanted that liveliness near him. Wanted her to talk to him excitedly as he had overheard her doing with her friends. And yet, though it was true that Aimée’s smiling and laughing attracted him, what made him feel connected to her was something very different. There was a shadow over the girl. A sense that she was wounded somehow, that something was wrong at home, maybe even terribly wrong.
Achille did not think about this directly. It was more of a vague feeling than anything else, though he had noted to himself her wrinkled clothes, the fact that she was at the market instead of school, and even that Aimée would accept a cannelé from a strange man. All of these impressions led him to believe that she needed him.
That there was something in her he understood.
Farm chores long since finished, Achille spent some moments in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink, trying to improve his appearance. Bourbon watched him closely, pacing back and forth behind him. He didn’t have a toothbrush but he picked his teeth with some thin willow sticks he had cut by the stream. He combed his hair, making sure to work out all the knots. He grimaced at his reflection, wondering how he had turned into a man when he still felt so much like a boy inside.
The tractor was old but sturdy, and he maintained it well. So it felt like a betrayal when he climbed up and turned the key, and the engine caught and sputtered out. Nervously he turned the key again, careful with the pressure on the clutch in case he had let up too soon the first time. The engine did the same thing—seemed to come alive, but then gasped and died.
Achille jumped down, a knot in his stomach. The market in Salliac was that day, and only in the morning. He was not in control of when he might see Aimée: this was his chance, right now, and if he didn’t get there in time, all could be lost.
Spittle collected in the corners of his mouth as he checked the hoses and the oil. He could find nothing out of order.
All right, he told himself, calm down. Calm down. The tractor is going to start this time. It is.
He climbed back up and turned the key. And it did start. Moving quickly from relief to overexcitement, he backed up and then gunned the accelerator, shot down the short driveway to the road, and turned left on the road towards Salliac.
He did not think about Valerie even once.
Now that the weather was sunny and warm again, many more people crowded the square in the center of the small village. He saw the woman who sold imported vegetables, a tall man selling organic spinach and lettuces, and another man selling pots and pans. On one side of the square a crêperie truck and a pizza truck were doing good business. Then, squeezed in between a fishmonger and two young women selling cheese, Achille spotted the old woman sitting at a table with her meager display of cannelés.
“Bonjour Madame,” said Achille, his voice sounding a little quavery. “May I have six?”
She smiled at him. “Oui, Monsieur Labiche,” and slowly put six of the dark golden treats into a bag. He startled at the sound of his name, but the woman did look familiar and he figured she had probably been a friend of his parents. Everyone knows everyone around here, he thought, with a shiver.
Achille had told himself he was not allowed to look for Aimée until he had the bag of cannelés ready. With devious insight, he understood perfectly that without the cannelés, the girl would have no interest in him. He couldn’t just capture her like a baby frog—she had to be gentled first, and then lured.
Achille had practiced on a lot of girls over the years, even bringing them to point when he could have taken them, and decided not to at the last minute. He liked every part of it—looking for prospects, trying to see what they responded to, keeping an eye out so that he could disappear if anyone else appeared to notice him. Many weeks, even months, he had not been able to come to the Salliac market, or any market, because the presence of so many people was just too overwhelming. But once he had a prospect in mind, the other people did not really exist. He was focused on her.
And many of them liked the attention, even craved it. Valerie however—she was different, and had been since the first moment he saw her. She was the most animated person he had ever seen, positively bursting with energy, a happy imp that never stopped moving. Valerie had mesmerized him. And back then, he had not developed any of the methods he was trying to employ with the girl at the Salliac market; he suspected, looking back, that they wouldn’t have worked on Valerie anyway.
Because she didn’t need attention from anybody: she had no streak of sadness that Achille could spot a mile away, no vulnerability that he could exploit. He had stalked her, grabbing her one night as she came out of a friend’s house on her way home. Not gentling and luring her, but taking her by brute force. It was a terrible risk, tying and gagging her right there on a street in Castillac, and bringing her home on the tractor, sitting between his legs—anyone could have seen, and he understood the trouble he’d have been in had he been caught. She almost made it impossible for him to drive with her thrashing, but he had gotten her back to the farm without a soul seeing what he had done.
He had worried that the necessity for force might make the kind of connection he was looking for impossible to have, that she would be angry and shout at him and continue on like that without ever stopping. But it hadn’t happened exactly that way. She had been angry, but eventually the anger fizzled out. And Valerie had been his for seven whole years.
It was certainly regrettable that it was going stale. But not in his control.
He walked through the market with his back straight, fearful but able to hide it, looking for the girl. The thought of Aimée gave him strength and purpose.
Loved.
* * *
It had not been easy and several times Gilbert had thought she would never allow it, but at long last Maman had said he could forage by himself for nettles and other spring greens, and if he found enough, they could go to the Castillac market on Saturday to sell them. Gilbert had first had this idea back in the fall, during mushroom season, and had since been relentlessly trying to talk her into letting him, hoping that he could make enough money to buy a remote-controlled helicopter he had his eye on.
Maman said he was too young, that he would never be able to stick to the job long enough to make it worth it, that he was too lost in his own dreamworld to pay attention out in the fields. He would only disappoint himself. But Gilbert had finally worn her down.
Now the helicopter was forgotten, and instead he was desperate for a way to get back into the village so as to leave another note for the gendarmes, this time not forgetting the crucial information of Valerie’s whereabouts.
After several days of chastising himself, he had gotten used to his mistake and no longer felt so guilty. Surely even the most famous detectives, Maigret an
d Poirot, made mistakes occasionally. Possibly even James Bond had made a mistake somewhere along the way, not that Maman had ever let him see a Bond movie. Looking ahead, he figured that by Saturday morning he would have managed to find the materials to make a second note; once in Castillac, he would tell Maman he had to go to the bathroom, and tape the note on the station door just like last time.
If only they don’t think it’s a dumb prank, he thought with a pang of prescience. But there’s nothing I can do about that.
He and Maman had foraged for mushrooms and greens since he was a little boy, and he had no difficulty identifying the ones he wanted. He knew where the nettles grew and how to collect them without getting stung. He knew to pick young dandelion leaves, yarrow, and chickweed, and that older watercress leaves had more flavor.
It was true: he was daydreaming as he left the house and took off across the field behind the house. He was imagining nice rich ladies paying him handfuls of euros for his fresh spring greens. Maybe he could save Valerie Boutillier and get that helicopter!
It was no longer raining. The air was cool and the ground wet. He put on a pair of his mother’s gardening gloves and harvested half a basket of nettles in just a few minutes. He wondered if Valerie was hungry. Did Labiche give her anything besides milk? He walked into the woods towards Labiche’s farm, wanting just to check and see if she was outside.
As over-protective as Maman was, she had always allowed him to wander the farm and play in the woods alone as much as he liked, and he thought of the fields and woods as his territory, knowing the individual trees and the gentle slopes, the stream and the mossy banks, all the detail of the land with an easy intimacy. But now that he had seen Valerie, the long-lost girl, and realized that she had been stolen from the world and hidden away all this time—by his neighbor—now the woods no longer seemed as friendly as they had before.
Gilbert startled when a twig snapped behind him. He kept looking quickly around as if to catch someone spying on him. His fears were not centered on Labiche, although he dreaded seeing him; it was as though once the veil of safety and security was torn, everything turned scary, and suspect. The thick trunks of oaks were perfect for hiding behind and he imagined someone was there, getting ready to grab him.
At first all of his concentration had been on finding enough to justify the trip to the market the next day. But before long he was worrying about Labiche creeping through the woods and spying on him. And if his neighbor, who seemed so placid, a man more interested in cows than anything else—if he could turn out to be a sick criminal, who knows who else might be plotting something equally evil?
Gilbert turned around. The shadows of the wood made him jumpy. Maybe he should just forget this plan and go home, think of some other way.
Wait a minute.
He was not going to be like his mother, afraid of a million things that hadn’t even happened. Labiche had been keeping Valerie prisoner for seven whole years, and not once had he made any move to add Gilbert to his prison. And also he had never seen Labiche in the woods, not ever. All Labiche ever did was walk in the fields with his dog and talk out loud to his cows.
The woods were Gilbert’s home. He was safe there.
Wasn’t he?
18
Achille had finished the evening milking, eaten his dinner, and washed up. The old television had broken months ago, and he was not fond of reading. There was nothing to do and he felt agitated.
He had been feeling ill-tempered since the Monday market in Salliac. He had gotten himself to the small village at long last, bought the cannelés, watched and waited…but the girl had not appeared. He was tormented with the thought that she had been there earlier and he had missed her. Maybe she had even looked for him, maybe she was hoping he would be there with his bag of fresh cannelés, and he had failed her. Disappointed her. And for what? He didn’t even have a reason. He had come late to the Monday market because he had wasted time looking at a newspaper and then the tractor wouldn’t start.
He had delayed because the market meant a crowd of people, even in a small village such as Salliac, and forcing himself to join them took time and effort.
Or maybe she hadn’t come at all. Didn’t even remember him.
To escape these agonizing thoughts he went to the root cellar. He stood outside the door, listening. Valerie was quiet. The door was padlocked and he took out the only key, which was on a little chain attached to his belt. He hesitated.
It had gotten stale. Stale because Valerie was so different now, talking nonsense half the time, and not listening to him the way she used to do. She wasn’t like she was when he took her, so lively and vital.
Put simply—he was tired of her.
But he opened the door, hoping maybe she had changed back like she used to be and they could have a night together like they used to have, talking about everything under the sun, and he would leave her and go back to his house and his bed feeling the warmth of companionship, of taking care of her, same as he did his girls and his dog.
That was all he was after. All he wanted was someone there to talk to, someone to take care of. Someone who wouldn’t go anywhere. Wouldn’t leave him.
He knew there were other men in his situation who took terrible advantage of the women they kept—he had read such an account in the newspaper years ago and that had given him the idea to build the bunker—but Achille was not like that and he despised the men who behaved that way.
“Bonsoir, Valerie,” he said gently, coming in and closing the door behind him. He had brought a candle in a porcelain holder and he struck a match and lit the wick.
“Lala lali lo,” said Valerie, not looking at him.
“It’s going to be that again?” said Achille. “I’m not really one for music. We never had any music in the house when my parents were alive. I’m not used to it.”
“Leeeeelaaaaaa—“
“Stop that!” Achille clapped his hands over his ears.
“I’m your Valerie,” she said. She was huddled on her mattress, up in the corner of the root cellar. It was four paces long and three paces wide. In the early years of her confinement, she used to walk for hours, never able to take more than four steps in one direction.
“Yes,” said Achille, feeling a momentary spark of tenderness for her. He reached out and stroked her hollow cheek. “It’s just…I don’t know what to do with you now.”
“Do do do,” said Valerie. She lay on her back and put her feet up on the ceiling. She was wearing a pair of jeans that Achille had bought at a store in Bergerac four years ago. It was always exciting, buying her clothes. He felt like he was practically telling the world that he had Valerie living with him, like he was giving a big hint to the world that he had a female, someone he was so close to that he bought her clothes. But no one ever seemed to pay any attention.
“I went to the market in Salliac today,” he said, sitting on the corner of her bed.
Valerie said nothing.
“I’m just going to tell you outright. I went because I met a girl there last week. She has a brown ponytail. She reminds me a little of you, like a younger version of you.”
Valerie said nothing. She pressed her feet on the ceiling and some bits of dirt fell down onto the mattress.
“Would you like some company?” Achille asked. “I mean, apart from me? Would you like it if I brought her here to live with you?”
Valerie lifted her head and stared at him. “I’m your Valerie,” she said.
“Of course. Nothing can ever change that,” he said, and meant it. “But I have so much work to do, I can’t visit with you as often as we’d both like. So maybe you would like it if you had some company. I think the cellar is big enough for two, don’t you?”
“La li la,” said Valerie.
Achille felt a surge of anger. Why would she keep up that meaningless nonsense when she knew how it irritated him? Why had she broken their connection that he had worked so hard for and risked so much to build?
Valerie pulled her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, and rocked on the mattress, back and forth, back and forth.
Suddenly everything about the root cellar became intolerable to Achille: the smell, her singing, the blankness where she used to be, the darkness.
“All right, that’s it then,” he said, standing up. He took her dirty plate and bowl in one hand, and the slop bucket in the other, and said goodnight. Valerie did not answer but kept rocking.
Achille emptied the bucket into a deep hole he had dug, and tossed a handful of lime on top of it. He rinsed the bucket out carefully, unlocked the door again, and set the bucket back inside the bunker without a word.
This had been his nightly routine for seven years. Always when he returned the rinsed bucket he had said something affectionate, even just “goodnight, chérie,” but that night he silently closed the door and locked it, and trudged back to the house, his heart heavy.
He was tired of her, and worse, in the moment he no longer even liked her. So now what was he supposed to do with her?
* * *
The next morning, Molly came out to the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers to make coffee, but stopped in her tracks when she faced the destruction left from the night before. Lawrence had very kindly helped her load the dishwasher before he left, and Adèle had helped put away the food, but dirty glasses seemed to have sprouted up all over the place, crumbs carpeted the floor, and Bobo was standing in the corner looking very guilty about something.
“I’m sure you ate something you weren’t supposed to,” said Molly, scratching under her ears. “But hey, you should be able to live it up too once in a while. Just don’t get sick, I beg you. I’m so not in the mood to deal with throw-up right now.”
Bobo licked her chops and pushed her head against Molly’s hand.
Just one cup of coffee, then I’ll head to the market to get fresh croissants for everyone. I’ll clean up when I get back.