The Returned

by Seth Patrick

  Dark, curly hair. Looking the same. Looking exactly the same. Simon. She wondered what he wanted with Adèle Werther.

  She went back to Frédéric, dazed. He could see something was up. “You want to go?” he asked.

  “Can people come back from the dead?” she said.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “In films. Not in real life. Just as well, or we’d all be fucked.”

  She glared at him. “Forget it.” She started to walk away.

  “Wait,” Frédéric said. “I’m sorry. Léna, what is it?”

  She ignored him and kept on walking, leaving the pub. Frédéric took the hint and let her go. This wasn’t something anyone else could help with. The only person who might have the answers was Camille, and she either didn’t know or wasn’t letting on.

  She took the long route home, liking the solitude. When she got there, her parents were both at the door before she’d even closed it behind her.

  “Why was your phone off?” her mum asked, her voice sharp, something usually reserved for when Léna came in at two in the morning.

  Léna looked to her dad for an explanation.

  “Camille,” he said. He looked exhausted. “She slipped out. She’s been gone for an hour, at least.”

  “Why did you let her do that?” said Léna.

  “I thought she was sleeping,” snapped her mum. “She’ll come back, won’t she?” Her face went pale. “What if she doesn’t? What if that was all the time we were allowed? What if you two rejected her, and now she’s gone away?”

  “She’ll come back any minute, Claire,” said her dad.

  “I couldn’t bear to lose her. Not again.”

  Léna offered to go out to try to find her, but her mum gave her a fiery look. “Don’t even think about leaving this house,” she said.

  The three of them sat in the living room, in complete silence. Half an hour later the front door opened, and they all hurried over.

  Claire grabbed Camille in a hug, palpably relieved. “Sweetheart, where were you?” she said. “You mustn’t leave like that. I was so worried.”

  Camille looked as if she’d been crying. “What could even happen?” she said, sounding wretched. “I’m already dead.”

  “Where were you?” asked her father.

  “The Lake Pub. I wanted to see Frédéric.”

  Too quickly, Léna asked, “And did you?”

  The more she spoke, the closer Camille came to tears. “I watched through a window. I saw him and Lucho playing pool. Marc was there too. I wanted to talk to Frédéric, but I didn’t know what would happen. Then Marc came outside. He spoke to me.”

  Her dad’s face darkened. “He recognized you?” Léna felt it too: the fear of discovery, the complications it would bring. She felt nauseous at the thought.

  “No,” said Camille miserably. “He didn’t. He looked at me for a moment and I thought he’d recognized me, but then he asked if I was new in town. So I ran.” She started to cry. “How could he not know who I was?” Her mum stepped forward and comforted her.

  Léna turned to her dad, whispering, “Why wouldn’t he recognize her?” Marc hadn’t really known them well before the crash, but surely…

  “I don’t know,” said her dad.

  “But if it’s really her,” said Léna, “I can’t see how—”

  Her mother interrupted. “If it’s really her? You expect someone to recognize Camille when you and your father both deny it?”

  “Claire, I—” said her father, but her mum cut in.

  “Look at her. Look at her. Whatever you choose to believe, at least believe your eyes.”

  Camille was watching both of them, and Léna knew she could see their lingering doubt. Camille ran up the stairs, sobbing. Claire gave them both a disapproving look before going after her.

  Léna looked at her father and shook her head. “Do other people even see what we see?”

  Jérôme sighed. “The moment I saw her, every part of my mind was telling me it was impossible, that it couldn’t be her. Perhaps that’s all it is—people see someone who looks very like Camille, but their minds don’t allow them to consider that it is her.”

  “But it can’t be her,” said Léna, her voice almost a whisper.

  “Léna, your mother’s right. I don’t understand what it means or what the future holds. You say it can’t be her. But tell me, and tell me honestly—seeing Camille run from us just now, didn’t you feel ashamed?”

  He watched for her reaction. She looked away. Yes, she’d felt ashamed; because however impossible the situation was, seeing Camille in tears had caused her real pain. Her denial was rooted in desperation, not in what she truly felt. When she looked back at him, he had a weary smile. “You too?” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  Léna nodded. “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “Of course it’s not,” he said.

  Léna slowly went up to Camille’s room and pushed the door ajar. Camille was sitting on her bed, her mum beside her, holding her. They both looked up at Léna.

  “Can I have a minute?” said Léna. “Alone?”

  “Who with?” asked her mum, defensive.

  “With my sister.”

  Claire’s tired face broke into a cautious smile. She stood from the bed and gave Léna a brief hug before she left.

  Camille looked at Léna warily. “I’m your sister now?”

  Léna sighed and sat down beside her. “I’m trying. It’s not easy for any of us. But I’m sorry. I let you down.”

  Camille sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I guess that’s a start.”

  Léna looked at her, uncertain whether she should tell Camille what she’d seen at the pub. But if it could help her sister, she supposed she had no choice. “There was something else,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “At the Lake Pub, I saw someone. I think he’s like you.”

  “Like me how?” said Camille.

  “Dead,” said Léna. “I think he’s dead.”

  17

  Adèle was cleaning part of the children’s section in the library when she had another vision of Simon. The area was quiet, deserted; she had a window of opportunity to clean up before another group of children was due to arrive. There was only the young man wearing his crumpled wedding suit, looking, turning, seeing her. She watched him for a while before walking toward him, mindful of what Father Jean-François had said.

  Make peace with your ghosts.

  God, he looked so real. So solid. In the years since his death, whenever she’d thought she’d seen him, it had been fleeting, or late and in the darkness of her bedroom. Never so much detail, not before. He looked exactly as he had the last time she’d seen him alive. Her vision blurred as the tears came.

  “You were always so handsome,” she said gently. “Just because I’m marrying Thomas, it doesn’t mean I’ll forget you. I won’t. You’re part of my life, then and always.” He was watching her with the half smile she had loved. She hadn’t always known what he was thinking, what mood he was in. Hadn’t always been sure which Simon she was with. But that smile, like a shy little boy’s, was a sign.

  She was with the Simon who loved her unconditionally. Not the dark, angry man he sometimes became.

  “I won’t forget you,” she said. “For a time, I tried. I was falling apart, and I had no choice. I wanted it to be like I’d never met you. But I couldn’t do it.” Her eyes roamed over his face and she smiled, joyful at how rich her memories must still be to conjure such a vision. “I know you’re a ghost. I know you don’t really exist. It doesn’t scare me to see you. Not anymore. I won’t ask you to leave again. It’s wonderful for you to be back.” She reached up with her hand, up to his face, his hair, her mind allowing her to feel the touch of him. She closed her eyes and smiled. “Even if it’s only in my hea
d.”

  A group of kids charged in through the far stairwell, the noise startling her. Her hand was suddenly just touching air. She opened her eyes.

  Simon was gone.

  • • •

  Laure came through to the captain’s office, knowing she wasn’t bringing the news he wanted.

  “The assailant from the diner has turned up, sir,” she told him. “CCTV spotted him leaving the library building. A patrol was sent and he was apprehended a few minutes ago.”

  Thomas’s face lit up with expectation. “And? Anything linking him to the Clarsen assault?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. He’s a little disheveled. Looks like he spent all night in what he’s wearing. They’re checking his jacket at the moment, but I don’t get the feeling he’s our man.”

  “Don’t discount him so quickly, Inspector,” said Thomas. “Any idea who he is?”

  “Well, there’s the thing. He didn’t tell us, but we checked his fingerprints. Those prints are on our files from an assault charge a dozen years back, but for a man who died ten years ago. The dead man’s name is Simon Delaître.”

  For a moment Thomas stared at her, his face turning pale under the fluorescent lighting. “Simon Delaître?”

  “Yes,” said Laure. “You know the name?” The captain said nothing, just kept staring. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

  Thomas seemed to focus again. “Anything like what?”

  “He must have given a false name,” said Laure. “But tricking the system shouldn’t be that easy. Someone must have slipped up.”

  Thomas stood. “Come with me,” he said. “We’ll talk to him.”

  • • •

  They both entered the room where the man sat in handcuffs. He looked up, his expression one every police officer knew well: surly indifference. Disturbing the peace twelve years back, the diner assault this morning—Laure would be surprised if there wasn’t a string of other offenses, convicted or otherwise.

  She caught the look in her captain’s eyes when he first saw the man sitting there—extremely wary, shocked almost—then he snapped out of it and nodded to Laure to throw the first question.

  “We have a small problem,” said Laure. “According to our files, you’re dead. How do you explain that?”

  “That’s your job,” said the man.

  “Your name is Simon Delaître. Is that right?” He nodded. Laure held up a print from the diner’s CCTV footage, the man clearly identifiable. “Do you deny that this is you?” The man shook his head.

  Before she could ask her next question, Thomas cut in: “Do you know Adèle Werther?”

  “Yes,” said the man. “Why do you ask that?”

  “That means you must have known Simon Delaître. They used to live together.” Thomas looked at Laure. She knew the surprise was written across her face. Laure’s house was next door to Thomas’s. She knew Adèle a little, knew that her fiancé had died a decade ago. She hadn’t known the details, nor the man’s name, but it explained her captain’s earlier reaction.

  “So,” said Thomas, “you must know Simon Delaître is dead.”

  The man’s expression of indifference didn’t change.

  “Simon Delaître is dead,” said Thomas. “What happened? Did you pretend to be him when you had to give your fingerprints?”

  The man glared at Thomas, ignoring the question. “Who is Adèle to you?”

  The captain stood, tired of it. “Put him back in a cell, Inspector. We’re keeping him in custody until we work out who the hell he is.”

  18

  Julie went to the police station that afternoon, reluctant and wary. The nagging certainty that the boy’s parents would be going through hell made her do it, but she was cautious. She left Victor alone in her apartment—she wanted to find out what she could, not simply hand him over, and bringing him along would have risked that decision being taken out of her hands. Especially if Laure saw her with him.

  But even without the boy, she didn’t want to bump into Laure.

  Old wounds.

  When she arrived, she felt conspicuous. The lights in the station were overly bright, as if they wanted to illuminate any dark recesses in the minds of those who came through the doors. Julie always preferred to stay in the background, out of sight, but there was nowhere here that allowed that comfort. She felt eyes watching her.

  She scoured the notice boards in the reception area, just in case it was that simple; surely if Victor was a local child, something might be there. She found a missing persons poster. There were no children on it, but as she looked at the poster, at the array of lost faces, she felt a kind of kinship. It was why she felt such a connection with Victor, she supposed. They were both lost.

  “Hello, can I help you?”

  She turned to the police officer, caught off guard. “I, uh, just wanted to know if you had a missing persons report for a young boy, brown eyes, brown hair, about nine, maybe younger.”

  “Why?”

  Julie thought quickly, stumbling over her words. “Well, because as I, uh, was going home yesterday, I saw a little boy. It was late, he looked lost… I just wondered.”

  “Didn’t you ask him if he was lost?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  She paused, suddenly aware of what she was saying, scared of giving herself away. “No, because I was on a bus. He was by the side of the road. So all I did was see him as we passed. Look, it doesn’t matter.” This had been a mistake, she thought. Time to go.

  “Wait. You saw his eye color from the bus?”

  She nodded, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. “Yes.”

  “You could have reported it sooner,” said the officer, with a sigh. “Come with me. I’ll take your statement.”

  “I have to give a statement?”

  “Of course.”

  He led her off to a small room. It didn’t really take long, but it felt much longer, sitting there answering questions, trying to avoid too much detail that might contradict itself. She kept it vague, but by the end she knew what she needed to know. They had no reports of a missing child locally; nationally, none fit the description. It made her more certain that her fear for Victor was justified, that he was running from something too difficult for him to talk about. What else could prevent parents from reporting a lost child?

  A nagging voice was telling her that she should hand Victor over to the police anyway and let them deal with it—that she’d done her part, and it was time for him to move on. But the police failed people all the time, and until she knew Victor’s story, she wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She made one detour before she went home, to buy something for Victor.

  Outside her door, she hunted in her bag for the keys. Her heart sank as she heard the sound of her neighbor’s door opening.

  “Hello, Julie!” said Nathalie Payet. The woman’s voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  Julie sighed inwardly and kept looking for her keys. She found them and made a mental note always to have them in her hand in future by the time she reached her door. “Hello, Mademoiselle Payet.”

  The woman made a show of looking around. “Your young friend went back home?”

  If she thought she could have gotten away with it, Julie would have lied. “No,” she said. “He’s inside.”

  Her neighbor looked scandalized. “Really? But you went out. Isn’t he a little young to be at home by himself?”

  “He’s a good boy,” said Julie. “I had, um, an urgent appointment. I wasn’t long.”

  “Mmm. OK. So, is he family?”

  Julie looked her steadily in the eye. “Yes.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow but dropped the topic. A sudden gleeful eagerness spread across her face. “Have you heard about Michel Costa, the old
teacher?”

  “No.” Julie tensed.

  “You haven’t? This morning, he…” She made a slitting motion across her throat, and Julie felt the floor shift under her.

  “What?”

  “He jumped from the top of the dam.” The woman smiled, as if it was some crass titillation she was passing on, not the death of an old man. “Without a bungee rope!” She let her words settle for a moment, watching Julie’s reaction, then her smile suddenly vanished and she feigned sympathy. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Not really,” said Julie. “A little.” She felt sick. She could have been the last person to see the man alive. Worse, she might be partly to blame. She’d spotted something wrong. Nothing urgent, nothing that would have indicated anything like this, but still. She knew that she had let the old man down.

  She wondered if she should talk to the police about it; it was certainly possible that they would discover she was one of the last people to have seen him, and come to question her. Well, she thought, if that happens, so be it. But if not, she wanted nothing more to do with the police.

  “Poor Monsieur Costa,” said her neighbor, turning on an air of melancholy. “He burned his house down before he did it, you know. He was nearly seventy-five, wasn’t he? He didn’t have long to wait. Must have been desperate to end it all like that. He’s to be buried in the old chapel graveyard, by his wife’s grave. The funeral will be tomorrow, I heard.”

  “So soon?” said Julie.

  The woman lowered her voice and looked around, as if she was imparting a great secret. “Isn’t it? I suppose there are no relatives to summon, and they’ll certainly not want an open coffin…” She pulled a face. “But they obviously want it out of the way as quickly as possible. I imagine burying a suicide victim in consecrated ground might stir up some resentment if they let it fester.”

  “Don’t people know what century we live in?” said Julie, genuinely angry that anyone might take it on themselves to object.

  The woman simply shrugged. “It’s the worst of sins, don’t they say?”