The Returned

by Seth Patrick

  That was why he was worried to see a police roadblock on the outskirts of town. If there was anything that could scare his supplier off, it was a roadblock.

  They would wave Pierre through, of course—he did his best to keep his hand in with the police—but curiosity got the better of him. He pulled over and parked, spotting a policeman he recognized, one who owed him a few favors.

  “Hi, Michael,” said Pierre. “Looking for someone?”

  “Hello, Monsieur Tissier. We were going to contact you about it, actually.”

  “How come?” It had to be about Simon, Pierre thought. He hadn’t come back to the Helping Hand the night before, and Pierre had wondered if the police had caught up with him. Not yet, it seemed, but they were certainly stepping up their efforts. When he saw Simon again, as he knew he would, he’d have to emphasize how important it was for him to stay safe.

  “The man you picked up from the station, the one we arrested from the diner? He may be implicated in another attack.”

  Pierre shook his head. He knew the suggestion was nonsense, simply a way to raise the stakes. The devil’s hand was at work here, he thought. “So he hasn’t reappeared?”

  “No. If you hear from him, let us know at once, OK?”

  Pierre smiled. “Of course. Captain Pellerin already made that perfectly clear.”

  Pierre’s cell phone rang. He excused himself and took the call.

  It was Claire. “I’m at the hospital,” she said. She sounded frightened. “Léna’s very sick. Can you come?”

  “What happened?”

  “Please, just come.”

  “Is Camille at home?”

  “No, Camille’s here with me.”

  That worried him. Why on earth wasn’t she indoors? “Where’s Jérôme?”

  “Jérôme’s at the police station. They came this morning—they wanted to question him.”

  “What about?” The idea of Jérôme having even the capacity to commit a crime struck Pierre as improbable. The man was simply too banal.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding frustrated. “Look, could you try to get a message to him and let him know where we are? He’s not answering his cell phone.”

  “I’ll have a word with the police, Claire. Don’t worry. I’ll be with you soon.” Pierre ended the call and walked back to the police officer he’d been talking to. “Michael,” he said. “Do you know Jérôme Séguret?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Apparently he’s at the station. Any idea why?”

  “No. But leave it with me. I’ll find out what I can. Least I can do for you, Pierre.”

  Pierre thanked him and headed back to his car. As he got in, the road started to tremble as truck after truck went by, all tankers of some sort. A dozen in all, Pierre counted. There was a sense of intent about them that was almost military.

  He could see the look of puzzlement on the faces of the police at the roadblock. He knew what was on their minds: What on earth is this? It’s so unusual.

  Unusual? Pierre thought. Get used to it. There’s much more of that just around the corner.

  He drove on to the hospital, thinking of how everything would be in place soon.

  • • •

  When Pierre found Léna’s hospital room, Claire and Camille were the only others present. Claire went over and embraced him. Camille scowled, and when Léna saw him, so did she.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Claire gestured to Léna’s exposed back. Pierre looked at the long, reddened wound. “What is it?” he asked. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not anymore,” said Léna.

  “They haven’t told us much yet,” said Claire. “They got her stabilized and gave her a painkiller, but their tests haven’t come back.”

  He took a closer look at the injury. It seemed infected to him. It certainly didn’t look like a fresh wound. “How long have you had this, Léna?”

  “Since I came back,” said Camille. He saw her and Léna share a look, one of mutual distrust. Claire seemed to ignore Camille’s words, but Pierre felt uneasy.

  He looked at Camille, then at Claire. “It’s dangerous,” he scolded. “Having her out of the house.”

  “I’m Alice,” said Camille, with a smug grin. “Léna’s cousin. Not so dangerous now?”

  Pierre shot her a harsh look. She thought this was a game. “It’s still dangerous.”

  “Do you think it’s related, Pierre?” said Claire. “The wound and…”

  Pierre realized it had been unfair of him to think Claire was just ignoring what Camille had said. She clearly thought as he did, that some connection to Camille’s return was possible. It was not a thought he wished to encourage, however. “Of course not.”

  “How can you be sure?” Camille demanded.

  “If it was, other people would have them too. Your mother, for a start.”

  “I’m her twin sister,” said Léna. “I’m closer to her than anyone. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before Mum gets something as well.”

  Camille turned to her sister, shock on her face. “You do think it’s my fault,” she said. Léna just glared back at Camille while Claire looked distraught.

  “Of course she doesn’t,” said Claire, but Camille was already storming out of the room. Claire moved to follow, but Pierre held her back.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me talk to her.”

  Camille was outside in the corridor, leaning against the wall and staring at her feet. Pierre studied her for a moment. Just an ordinary teenager to the passing eye. Angry and scared and bored.

  But not ordinary, not at all.

  “I know it’s not your fault,” he assured her.

  Defiant, Camille kept looking at her feet. “How would you know? What makes you such an expert? You act like you know everything, but you don’t. Not really.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know everything. But I have faith in God’s plan. Why bring you back, just to make your family suffer all over again? They suffered enough when they lost you the first time. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

  She looked at him sharply. “I don’t feel guilty!”

  He shook his head. “You do, Camille. You love your sister. You’re worried about her. But this is not your fault, and you shouldn’t think for a second that it is. You belong with us. You can start living your life once more.”

  “Ha!” she said, looking down again. “Tell that to Léna.”

  He could see how close to tears she was. “Deep down, Léna feels the same. You have to forgive her, Camille. Her reaction’s normal. She’s afraid.” He looked at her until she reluctantly brought her eyes up to meet his.

  Pierre was good at his job, working with those who had gone astray in life—sometimes through wrong choices or just having been handed a raw deal. He could see past the hardened shells of anger and defiance, see through to the real person within—lost, confused, and looking for a helping hand. One that he was happy to offer. Gazing at Camille, he wondered if earning the trust of this miraculous girl—here, now—could be one of the most important things he would ever do.

  “She’s afraid you won’t stay,” he said. “Once she understands—once she truly believes it—she’ll be as thrilled as the rest of us.”

  “And how do you know I’ll be allowed to stay?”

  He smiled gently at her. “Because God is good, Camille. He has brought you back, and we will learn your purpose soon enough. And it will be glorious.”

  For the briefest of moments, hope showed on her face. But then she scowled. “Hallelujah,” she said, mocking him. She strode back into the room.

  Even so, he knew she had listened. He knew that, just for an instant, she had believed what he was telling her.

  Hallelujah, thought Pierre. He smiled.

  36

 
Adèle was still in the attic with Simon when Chloé was dropped off after school that afternoon. She locked the attic door behind her and hurried down to let Chloé in. She was smiling too much, she thought—her good mood, almost manically cheerful, masked a deeper unease. She was sitting on a powder keg and grinning like an idiot.

  Adèle knew she couldn’t go on like this, not for long. That was why she was making the most of it. She knew there was a choice to be made. Both options called to her. Both options, for one reason or another, repelled.

  Before Simon’s death, she had often scolded herself for letting him trample over what she wanted. She had idolized him, constantly making excuses for the way he treated her. Yet here she was, doing the same once more, and happy. She knew that in many ways Thomas was the better option for her. He was caring, trustworthy, a wonderful father to Chloé—calm and patient, two traits that had never been Simon’s forte. But there was a fire in Simon, a passion, an urgent need about him that Thomas utterly lacked.

  Adèle opened the door and Chloé walked in, schoolbag on her shoulder. “Hi, Mum,” she said. “How was your day?” Adèle smiled again. Such a grown-up way to phrase things. Her daughter was getting bigger every day. She was the one thing in life that Adèle was certain of.

  “Not bad,” she said. She made a conscious effort to tone down her smile.

  “Did you find the mice in the attic?”

  “Yes,” she said, and she felt her smile grow again. “I sorted it all out. Do you want a snack?”

  She went to the kitchen to prepare food for them all. All three of them. Whatever was going to happen, they could have one meal under the same roof.

  • • •

  Chloé took her schoolbag to her room and was about to head back downstairs when she heard a thump above her. Mice? she thought. Rats, more like. She shivered.

  She stood for a moment, looking up at her ceiling, listening. More sounds came. There was definitely movement up there. She frowned. A whole nest of rats, to make such a racket. It was loudest over by her wardrobe, so she dragged her desk across the room, balanced her chair on top, and climbed up. Her mum, she knew, would have a fit if she saw her like this, perched so high up, but it meant she could hear better.

  The sounds had stopped, so she waited. But suddenly it wasn’t what she could hear that caught her attention. It was what she could see.

  She took a closer look, then called for her mum.

  • • •

  When Chloé pointed out the tiny camera, Adèle felt a cold anger creeping across her, and a fear—that the man she’d been living with all these years, the man she was about to marry, was the kind to…

  But he wasn’t like that. She knew that was what everyone in the same position would tell themselves, but she knew he wasn’t. Her thoughts took the next logical step, and Adèle put her hands over her mouth, shocked. She looked to the attic.

  She knew what Thomas was like. Protective. Extremely protective.

  And if there was a camera in Chloé’s room…

  She sent Chloé downstairs and ran to her own bedroom. It didn’t take her long to find, now that she knew what she was looking for. And there it was. Thomas’s camera, staring down at the bed where she and Simon… She shook her head, appalled at the thought.

  Fury coming from every pore, she hunted in the garage until she found a can of spray paint and a flashlight, then went around the house seeking out all the cameras and spraying the lenses.

  There was one in every room. Even in the bathroom, the best hidden of them all.

  She went up to tell Simon, and together they searched the attic, but they found no cameras up here, at least.

  “Do you think he saw us?” she said. “When we…”

  “He can’t have been watching,” said Simon, disgust on his face. “He’d be here already if he had. But even then, it’s only a matter of time. You don’t know what he might do. The moment he realizes what we’ve been up to…” His expression grew angry, and Adèle could read it: he was thinking what he would do in the same position. Another difference between Simon and Thomas.

  “He would never hurt us,” she said.

  “How do you know?” said Simon. “He’s sick. Spying on his wife? On her child?”

  She looked at him and knew he was right to be angry. They both were, but there was something about Simon’s reaction that made her think he was glad of it, because it left her with no choice. “You have to go, Simon. You can’t be here when Thomas comes back.”

  “Why not? You can’t stay with him if he betrays you like this! Why not face it now and tell him it’s over?”

  “What’s over?” asked a small voice. Chloé. She’d disobeyed and come up to see what was going on. She took one look at Simon and turned to her mum, concern on her face. “Is this our mouse?”

  Adèle nodded. She could feel Simon’s gaze burning into her, prompting her. It was the first time Chloé and her real father had been in the same room; the first time Chloé had laid eyes on him. The situation was far from ideal, but her daughter deserved to know the truth. “This is your dad, Chloé.”

  “But my dad’s dead,” said the girl, confused. She gave her mum a worried look.

  “He was dead,” said Adèle. “Now he’s come back.”

  “Is he an angel?”

  Adèle thought simplicity would be for the best. “In a way, yes,” she said.

  Chloé turned to her father and looked at him with open curiosity. “Scary. Were you in heaven?”

  Simon smiled at her. “Yes.”

  “What’s it like?”

  Simon looked at Adèle, unsure of how to respond, and she nodded. “It’s calm,” he said slowly. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Did you see God?”

  “No. He’s, uh, very busy. We don’t see much of him.”

  Chloé looked at her mum. “Is he going to live with us?” There was skepticism in her voice, wariness.

  “No,” said Adèle. “He can’t stay, but you’ll see him again, I promise. Until then, you can’t tell anyone that you saw him, OK? Not even Thomas.”

  “OK,” said Chloé, uncertain.

  Simon gathered what little he had and got ready to go. At the door, Adèle gave him one more kiss. His eyes had the same single-minded certainty that she loved and feared at the same time.

  “You should both come with me now,” he said.

  Adèle shook her head. Abandoning her home—Chloé’s home—was far too big a decision to be made in anger, but there was something else: Simon thought Thomas’s spying had left her no choice but to pick her old love instead of her new, but there were other choices open to her. “I want to talk to Thomas,” she said. “I owe him that.”

  Reluctant, Simon left. She watched him walk down the street until he had gone around the far corner, and then she despaired. She had wished for so long for the past to be rewritten, for Simon never to have died, for him, Chloé, and herself to have lived like a normal family. And now she was being given that opportunity. Be careful what you wish for, she thought. In the time she had spent with him now, she had been hoping for clarity, hoping that her deepest feelings would show her what path to take.

  But the moment Simon had left her sight, the thing she’d felt most strongly was relief.

  37

  It had been a long, long night for Thomas.

  He’d called Adèle as the evening drew on to let her know he was busy. And he was: busy watching over his town, scouring it for signs of Simon Delaître, while he also kept a close eye on his family in his own home, making sure they were safe.

  Chloé drawing in her room. Adèle watching television.

  Thomas vowed not to sleep until Delaître was in custody once more.

  Pascal had the entire town to search, but Thomas had limited himself to the areas he knew Adèle would have been during the day.

&
nbsp; And at last, he found it. Delaître, arriving at the library. Delaître, leaving with Adèle, walking side by side, not touching. Poor Adèle, he thought. She couldn’t be trusted, not with Simon. She had been in the man’s spell for so long, and his thrall over her had almost pulled her to the grave, stronger at times than her love for Thomas, even for her own daughter.

  Adèle had said nothing to Thomas about meeting with Simon, but he didn’t blame her. He knew she needed protecting, from herself as much as from the interloper.

  And then his heart split, wide and raw, at the sight on his screen. The live feed from the camera at the front of his house showed a man approach and stand at the window. Thomas saw Adèle rise. Saw her go to the door and let the man in.

  He watched as Simon Delaître kissed his fiancée. He watched her kiss him back with a passion and fervor she’d never shared with him. I see everything now, he thought. Everything.

  He feared the worst. Then, he had some hope: she took Delaître to the attic and came down again too soon for anything to have happened between them.

  He willed her on, willed her to make the right decisions, but he would not interfere. He had to know what she would do when she thought nobody would find out. Surely that was the only thing worth knowing about a person?

  Yet he knew there was more to his inaction. He feared that confronting Adèle with Simon there could play out in only one way: with Adèle rejecting Thomas, leaving with the triumphant Simon, and Chloé going with her mother.

  He locked his office door from the inside and closed the blinds. He kept looking at the images of his home, as Adèle went to bed, as the lights went out. Watching, in case Delaître left his hiding place to tempt her again.

  He cried as he watched. Eventually, exhaustion took him and he slept uneasily at his desk.

  He was woken by Bruno knocking hard on the door in the cruel, bright light of morning. There was no time to check on the house, though; he would have to wait until he got back and look through the recorded footage. The case that had come in was simply too serious for him not to attend personally. Another attack, fatal this time, on a woman in her own apartment. Thomas berated every officer in shouting distance about the release of their only suspect, using it as an opportunity to vent his anger even though he knew exactly where Simon Delaître was hiding.