Until he realized that Vinca really was breathing.
How was that possible? Annabelle had hit her on the head with a cast-iron statue. The girl had a bellyful of booze and pills. Obviously, tranquilizers slow the heart rate, but he had checked earlier and had felt no pulse. He put his ear to girl’s chest and heard her heart pounding. And it was the most beautiful music he had ever heard.
Francis did not hesitate. He was not about to pick up his shovel and finish the job. He simply could not do that. He carried Vinca to his truck and laid her on the back seat. Then he drove toward Mercantour National Park, where he owned a hunting lodge, a small cottage where he sometimes spent the night when hunting chamois goats near Entraunes. Usually it was a two-hour drive, but traffic conditions then meant that it took him twice as long. By the time he reached the border of the Département Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, dawn was breaking. He laid Vinca on a sofa in the hunting lodge, lit a fire in the hearth, brought in firewood, and boiled some water.
He had been thinking long and hard while he drove, and he had come to a decision. If the girl woke up, he would help her disappear so she could start over. Another country, another identity, another life. Like a witness-protection program. Except that he was not about to ask the police for help. He would ask the Calabrian Mafia. They had been sniffing around him for some time, asking him to launder money. He would ask them to smuggle Vinca out of the country. By doing so, he knew he would be making a deal with the devil, but he liked the notion that life never metes out more than you can bear. Good leads to evil and evil leads to good. The story of his life.
Francis made himself a large pot of coffee, sat in an armchair, and waited. And Vinca woke up.
Then the days, the months, the years passed. Somewhere, a young woman who had left behind a blackened land was coming back into existence, as though reborn.
* * *
This meant that somewhere, Vinca was alive.
* * *
That is my version of the story. It is based on all the evidence, all the clues that I found during my investigation—the suspected ties between Francis and the Calabrian Mafia, the money transferred to New York accounts, my accidental sighting of Vinca in Manhattan.
I like to think that this story is true, even if the chances that it happened this way are one in a thousand. Given the current state of the investigation, no one could completely refute my version. It is my contribution as a novelist to the Vinca Rockwell case.
I finished writing my speech, packed up my things, and left the library. Outside, whipped up by the mistral, yellow leaves fluttered in the autumn sun. I felt good. Life does not scare me as much now. You can attack me, judge me, destroy me, but I will always have an old chewed Bic and a crumpled notebook within reach. My only weapons. As preposterous as they are powerful.
The only ones I have always been able to count on to get me through the night.
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Author’s Note
For several years now, I have wanted to write a story set on the Côte d’Azur, where I spent my childhood, and in particular around the city of Antibes, of which I have so many memories.
But wanting to do something is not enough. Writing a novel is a fragile, complex, and uncertain process. When I began to write about the school campus buried beneath a mantle of snow, about adults paralyzed by the young people they had once been, I knew that the time had come. This is how The Reunion came to be set in the south of France. It was an enormous pleasure for me to describe these places as they were and as they are now.
Nevertheless, this is not a true story. The narrator is not the writer—the events that befall Thomas are his alone. Although the chemin de la Suquette, Nice-Matin, the Café Les Arcades, and La Fontonne Hospital exist, they are here transfigured by fiction. The school that Thomas attends, his teachers, his classmates, and his friends are inventions or very different from my own childhood memories. Last, I would like to make it clear that I have never yet walled up a body in a gym.
About the Author
Guillaume Musso is the number-one bestselling author in France. He has written fifteen previous novels, including the thriller Afterwards, which was made into a feature film starring John Malkovich and Evangeline Lilly. He lives in Paris.
Also by Guillaume Musso
The Girl on Paper
Where Would I Be Without You?
Will You Be There?
The Reunion Page 24
