An overgrown child of thirty-nine. Who was dreaming just the way his four-year-old son did. Sébastien dreamed a lot, enough to worry his father who, encouraged by guilt, was sometimes sure that the boy was restless at night because he was unhappy. Did Sébastien—a child of divorce, separated from his father very young—re-live in his sleep the hideous hours of his early childhood when rage, ­violence, even brutality had exploded in their lives, ugly, irreparable and destructive? Sébastien slept on the living room sofa with Mathieu when he came to visit his father and grandmother. Bedtime was always accompanied by the joy of kisses and tickling and stories told in hushed tones, by secrets that ended with great declarations of love. But often, just as Mathieu was stretching out beside his son to go to sleep, little whimpers would emerge from the mouth of Sébastien, who seemed to be protesting some terrible injustice. Rose maintained that it was because the child was used to sleeping alone and that his father’s presence ­disturbed him, but Mathieu saw it as a reproach, almost an accusation. Or worse, a rejection. When it happened he would gently waken Sébastien, tell him he loved him, then put him back to sleep as tenderly as he could. Most of the time it worked and gave Mathieu a tremendous sense of deliverance.

He tried to waken Jean-Marc, who merely muttered and turned his back. Then Mathieu reached out his arm and pressed his hand against Jean-Marc’s neck, where an artery was beating softly.

This fight, their first, had upset him a lot. He’d promised himself for years, since he and Louise had separated, in fact, that he wasn’t going to put up with any more of those pitiful, ­searing domestic squabbles that always leave a scar, even when you think the problems are solved, those endless, exhausting analyses the mere memory of which was enough to keep him from making a commitment to someone when he wanted to, or even felt he was in danger of doing so. He’d had plenty of affairs, sometimes exalting, sometimes depressing, too often run-of-the-mill, but until now he’d always managed to pull back in time, even at the risk of seeming like a bastard if the break was too abrupt, or shallow if there was no logical reason for it. He never caused gratuitous pain to anyone. But when a relationship seemed not to be just dragging on—if he enjoyed seeing the same guy for a long time—but becoming official, something in him resisted, he’d feel out of his depth, and he’d start seeking a way out. And take it, despite whatever ­tenderness or consideration he’d been feeling for the other man, whom he generally left feeling stunned and wounded, not knowing what had hit him, or how, or, above all, why.