And immediately I feel him—for one, two, three, four, five seconds. I sense his presence diagonally to my left, on the same side as my heart. I couldn’t care less if I’m imagining it or if the impossible has happened.

“Sam,” I say calmly, “do you have your smartphone here?”

The boy gets up from his position leaning over his father. His face has twisted into a grimace. He nods.

“Please give me your phone. I want to check if there’s a Saint Samson chapel on the coast of Brittany.”

DAY FORTY-FIVE

Evening

Eddie

I feel like a bride. I’m trembling with panic and anticipation. I scan my mind and my body for the least doubt that might stop me from saying yes. I have many, the same ones as before, but none of them are loud enough to urge me to say no.

I’m lying between the crisp white hospital sheets of my bed in the sparsely decorated family suite, ready to dream. But I can’t dream, now of all times. I’ve been running around for the past seven weeks in a state of constant exhaustion, but now, when my only goal is to sleep, I can’t.

That dream of being with Henri at the church. It was more than a dream; it was . . . I don’t know what you’d call that kind of experience. It was inexplicable.

The chapel dedicated to Saint Samson really does exist. It’s a small stone church by the sea, with a red door and two small stained-glass windows, on the D127 to Trémazan, near the Saint Laurent peninsula, a promontory dotted with giant rocks and wild horses at the entrance to the Chenal du Four, the most dangerous stretch of sea in the entire world. The chapel lies in the parish of Landunvez on the shores of the Iroise Sea, between Porspoder and Portsall in an area known as Pays de Léon, the Land of the Lion. Henri’s homeland.

I used first Sam’s smartphone and then my laptop to travel through the area where Henri grew up. The images, maps, and blogs reveal a wild land, and I would love to visit it one day and explore it with him.

The cliffs are fringed with yellow gorse bushes, and to the south the Saint Mathieu lighthouse guards the entrance to the roadstead of Brest. Bright waves thunder against the cliffs, as translucent as fine bottle glass and a magnificent shade of emerald green. They are magical, hypnotic, and so alluring that people vanish into them.