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Back The Martins Save as PDF
Contents ( 99)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. EPILOGUE
  94. 1
  95. 2
  96. 3
  97. 4
  98. 5
  99. 6

Why had my thoughts once again taken a morbid turn, towards the worst possible version of the future? I was sitting opposite a woman filled with hope who was repeating what she’d told me the day before: ‘I want to find Yves. I don’t know how long I have left to live, but I can’t go without seeing him one last time. Seeing him and holding him in my arms. I need to ask him why he left. Ask him if he ever thought about me during all those years. I want to see him, even for just a minute …’ She spoke these words as if she’d memorised them. He lived in Los Angeles, so she would fly there as soon as possible. I could tell she was determined. The hesitant woman who’d struggled to find the right words no longer existed. I could already imagine her on that slightly crazy journey. Just then, I asked her why she’d come to see me. She replied simply: ‘Since this is all your fault, I want you to come with me.’

  1. 10. Need to think about this phrase later.

36

I had approached a woman randomly, and two days later she wanted to travel with me to the other side of the world to track down her first love. I could hardly have hoped for a better start to my story, except maybe the confession of a crime that had haunted her conscience for decades. I was very excited by the idea of being a witness to this love story, of having a front-row seat at their reunion. I was already thinking how I would describe their faces. Perhaps all the meaning in my book would be distilled into that particular scene.

Of course, all this remained hypothetical for now. I’d still not heard back from Yves. If he didn’t accept my friend request, I would go ahead and send him a message anyway. But if that happened, there was a chance he wouldn’t read it. I lost myself in these modern misgivings, without being sure that I truly understood them. I had never been a big fan of technology, and I had generally kept my distance from social media, afraid that it would eat up my time. For a curiosity junkie, social media was a bottomless pit of temptation. I didn’t mind having a Facebook account, because its popularity was declining as Instagram rose. I had also looked Yves Grimbert up on Google, but had found nothing. It struck me as surprising that anyone could slip through the (inter)net without a trace. I’d found a few people with the same name, but none in Los Angeles.

Although I wasn’t sure it would come to anything, I had to talk to Valérie about her mother’s plan. No doubt she would be opposed to Madeleine making such a trip. A time comes when the children become their parents’ parents, when they start to decide what is acceptable or not in their elders’ lives. But Madeleine, I felt sure, would go with or without her daughter’s blessing. I could sense a new certainty within her, driving her forward.