Theory of Remainders (13 page)

“Thirty-two,” Philip muttered, lost in thought.

“That sounds about right.”

“Not about. Exactly.”

Roger took another gulp of wine. “Anyway, now that the father is dead, the door to the son is open. Theoretically, at least. So what do you think? Will he agree to meet?”

In his mind’s eye Philip saw Morin’s face as it was at seventeen, bug-eyed under his shocks of dark hair, nervous, his gaze skipping from side to side, his lips clamped in a grimace. The last thing Édouard Morin wanted back then was to meet anyone at all, and Philip saw no reason for this to have changed.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. There’s no possible benefit for him.”

Roger frowned. “But there’s also no risk,” he said. “I mean, he’s not going to get into any more trouble. Wouldn’t you think he’d want to clear the air after all these years? That he’d sympathize with your situation?”

“I don’t think compassion is an arrow he has in his quiver.”

Roger looked deflated. He contemplated his empty plate.

It was Philip who spoke first. “You know, back when the case was dismissed, what struck me most was the legal term.”

“What do you mean?”

“They called it a
non-lieu
. I understood the case was being dropped, but I wasn’t familiar with that word. French was such an annoyance then. You can’t imagine what it’s like not being able to follow the legal proceedings for your own daughter’s murder.
Non-lieu
. To me it just meant
no place
. As if they were saying that the murder itself had never occurred. Or that the case didn’t belong in the court. But most of all it described Sophie: it was she who had no place, wasn’t anywhere. Without her body, the whole process had been performed around a void, a vacuum. Nothing but a name.”

Roger nodded, draining the end of his wine. “That’s French law for you. We excel at taking the obvious and making it obscure. It’s a national pastime.”

The waiter came by with coffees, along with a snifter of Calvados. Roger swirled the golden liquid in the ball of his glass, lifted it to his nose and inhaled.

“Tell me,” Philip said. “Are you the one who left the flower on Sophie’s grave?”

The snifter paused beneath Roger’s nose. “Listen, I was already there for Mother’s funeral, so it was just a few steps away. Don’t start thinking I make daily pilgrimages.” He took a gulp of the digestif as if to wash the taste of sincerity from his mouth. He sighed. “You know I was supposed to have dinner with them that night, don’t you?” He closed his eyes. “If I hadn’t canceled, she’d never have gone off on her own. She’d still be alive today.”

“You don’t know that,” Philip murmured.

“And do you know why I canceled?” Now he turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Because of Élisabeth. An opportunity came up for an evening of romance, and because I always do whatever my prick tells me, I canceled on my niece.” He stared into his cup. “While Édouard Morin bludgeoned her with a stone, I was busy fondling Élisabeth’s tits.”

“No one expects you to be a monk, Roger.”

“Hah. No danger of that, I suspect.”

A sense of understanding settled on Philip: the rose on the grave, Roger’s keenness to help, perhaps even his difficulties with Élisabeth—a relationship damaged by the very tragedy whose occurrence it facilitated.

“What it comes down to is this,” Roger continued. “I’m sure I am far better suited to unclehood than to fatherhood, but if I did have a child—what I mean is that if I had had one—well, let’s just say that I’d have wanted her to be like Sophie.”

He raised his hand and called for the check.

It was night before Philip started the return drive to Yvetot. Occasional headlights flickered and grew, blinding him before vanishing. At intersections in dark-windowed hamlets he slowed to a crawl, craning to recognize his route.

While he drove, it was the image of Yvonne sobbing in Roger’s arms that stuck with him. At least she, too, had suffered after the divorce. For all these years he had wrapped himself in a cloak of grief lined with regret. But that mantle was cut wide enough to accommodate others in its folds.

The road dipped into a dark swale, woods rising up along the shoulders, ghostly trunks glowing in the headlights of the Smart Car before receding into black as he passed. Maybe here, he thought. Perhaps Édouard Morin had dumped Sophie’s body in these very woods, just a hundred yards to the right or the left. Why not? As well here as in a thousand other groves or gullies.

All the old imaginings. Every rise of earth turned into a potential grave.

Might there be a chance of finding something? If so, he’d have Roger to thank. Roger, who had kept him here, who was offering his support, but who himself needed help. There was a darkness in his brother-in-law he didn’t recognize from before. His impertinence had gone bitter. Irony had aged into sarcasm.

The steering wheel slid under his fingers as the road straightened, the beam of headlights returning to the painted lines. He passed through the village of Ypreville, following the main street as it veered through a labyrinth of buildings. At the town hall the road split in three directions, slips of signs bearing unpronounceable Norman names—Yébleron, Daubeuf, Sorquainville. He inched the car forward, scanning the stone walls for hints of his route. Finally the light swept across a battered metal arrow, nearly broken off its post, the point mashed: Yvetot.

In the dark lobby of the hotel Monsieur Bécot drew his room key from the pigeonhole behind the reception desk, along with a small sheet of paper.

“While you were out,” Bécot reported, practicing his English, “you had a telephonic call.” He handed Philip the page. Then, with distaste, he added, “From Rouen.”

Philip unfolded the sheet, his pulse quickening. It was from Suardet, the doctor Roger had contacted. A meeting with Édouard Morin was possible. Philip read the note twice, unsure if he should let himself believe it. There was no benefit for Morin in such an encounter, and yet here was his acceptance, transmitted by Suardet and recorded in Bécot’s unsteady hand. After nearly fifteen years, Philip would find himself face to face with the assassin of his happiness. Suardet even proposed a time, impossibly close: ten o’clock the day after next.

Bécot leaned forward over the oak counter. “It is all right that I ask a question, Monsieur Adler?”

“Certainly.”

“This Monsieur Morin,” he said. “It is not Édouard Morin?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

Bécot’s large head sagged. “Monsieur Adler,” he said. “This is not my business, I know. Maybe I should not say anything. I understand what you do here. Everyone in Yvetot can understand. But we have a proverb in France.
Ne réveillez pas le chat qui dort
. Do not wake the sleeping cat. The past is past.”

“Sometimes the cat wakes up on its own, Monsieur Bécot. Isn’t that what you told me about fields in Normandy, about all the remains from the war? That which is buried comes to the surface.”

Bécot shook his head.

“Personally,” Philip added, “the proverb I prefer is,
pour faire une omelette, il faut casser des oeufs.
To make an omelet, you have to be ready to break a few eggs.”

“A very fine analogy, Monsieur Adler,” Bécot said with a strained smile. “Very clever. But remember who said it: Robespierre, during the Revolution. Do you wish to end up like him?” He drew his index finger across his neck.

Seven

Stripped to his undershirt, Philip sat on the sagging bed in the room at La Cauchoise, the old phone pressed to his ear. Through the open window a rustle of roosting doves came from the gutters on the roof. It was closing in on midnight. He’d been talking to Melanie for over half an hour, and things weren’t going well.

“I
don’t
want to talk about it,” she was saying.

“Well, Melanie. No one’s forcing you.”

“
You’re
forcing me.”

He sighed. Overhead a moth threw itself against the fabric shade of the ceiling light, again and again. He knew how it felt. “So, how am I forcing you?” he said at last.

She snorted. “Right. As if you don’t know. You, like, tell my dad I’m not getting better. You tell him I’m not trying. And then he makes me do more sessions.”

“Melanie, I don’t tell your father what we talk about. You know that.”

“
Right
.”

Philip could picture her rolling her eyes, flicking back her hair. He wondered if she was in her full Melanie Patterson regalia, covered in black right down to the dots of polish on her fingernails. Maybe for a phone call she didn’t feel the need to don the whole Goth uniform of anguish.

It was time to nudge things in a new direction.

“What are you so angry about?” he asked her. “Are you mad at me for leaving?”

He heard a puff of indignation. “I don’t care
what
you do. You don’t have to ask me for permission. Nobody else does.”

He frowned. What was she referring to? Melanie’s father traveled a good deal for his new company, but Philip suspected she was talking about more than a feeling of abandonment. What else happened without her permission? He considered Neil Patterson—the controlling nature, the ego. The kind of attitude that led to inadmissible behaviors.

He ran his fingers through the nap of his beard. Yes, this seemed possible, entirely too possible. And what of Melanie’s mother? A cow-eyed, anxious woman, she’d been the one to push for treatment. Probably she’d had some inkling of the nature of this trouble. But no, Cindy Patterson couldn’t be counted on for much more.

He tried to bend the conversation in this direction.

“Do you trust me, Melanie?” he said into the phone.

“Trust you to take my dad’s money? Sure.”

“Now why would you say that?”

“Because I’ve seen what he pays you, you know. He told me. I guess he, like, wanted me to see how much I was costing.”

Philip winced. Patterson shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t wise—not unless you were trying to make a sixteen-year-old girl feel guilty, and then use that guilt to keep her under your control. In which case it was a very clever idea indeed. He wondered how long it would be before Melanie could speak about him.

Tick, tick went the moth above him, still seeking a breach in the light shade.

“Well, let’s talk about that,” he offered, trying to rescue what he could. “How did it make you feel to see what your father was paying me?”

“I don’t really give a
fuck
,” she said, wringing the word for all its juice.

“But it sounds like you do,” he said.

“That’s
bullshit
.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

There was a pause, and he could almost feel the phone shiver in his hand.

“I
hate
this,” she seethed.

“You hate what, exactly?”

“I hate
everything
.”

“What do you mean by everything, Melanie? Could you be more specific?”

“No,” she cried. “I can’t
be more specific
. Why can’t you just leave me alone!”

He tried to keep his voice level. “Because I want to hear what you hate.”

“I don’t fucking
care
what you want to hear. You want to know what I hate? I hate these goddamned sessions. I hate having to waste my time sitting here. I hate
you
, if you really want to know. That’s what I hate.”