They find a rhythm and work until the clock in Calvaire strikes noon. They drop the tools then, where they stand, and retire to the dark cave that is the farmhouse. Harry sits hesitantly; they have brought out an odd three-legged stool for him, even though there is an empty chair at the table. Is that, then, Marcellin’s seat? Is no one else permitted to sit there? They eat soup thickened with bread and wedges of sheep’s cheese, all of which is consumed in businesslike silence. Gabriel is the only one who tries to make conversation, but there is seemingly little enthusiasm for the words that he wants to share. Gabriel lets the dogs lick his fingers and smiles at their attentions. Only the dogs seem to be glad to have him home.

Harry thinks of his black-framed brothers and imagines an alternate reality in which they have all returned and are now placed around his mother’s kitchen table. He cannot picture what their expressions might be and what conversations would pass between them. There is only their photograph faces and an absence of words and Edie alone at that family table now surrounded by empty chairs. Is that where she is sitting at this moment, with blue irises and black crows as her background?

They return grudgingly to the fields. The sweat stings in Harry’s eyes. His throat burns and his hands are a weeping mess of blisters.

Gabriel picks a leaf from a walnut tree. “Here, to mark your book, so you will remember me when you go.” Gabriel’s hands, which are already all scars, do not blister.

“When I go?”

“You have to go on. You’re not there yet.”

“Could I ask you to take me to Saint-Christophe du Quercy next week?”

“Of course. If you wish it. I would have taken you yesterday if you wanted.”

“I wasn’t ready, but now I am.”

Chapter Fifty-Nine: Edie

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Edie

Lancashire, October 1921

SHE IS STANDING IN EXACTLY THE SAME SPOT. SHE IS SURE OF IT. FIVE months ago she had stood here and had finally found the courage to ask Harry.

“I want you to take a photograph of Francis’s grave.”

Standing here again, Edie wants both to take her words back and to ask them again with more urgency. More imperative. More uncertainty. As she had asked it, she hadn’t been sure that she wasn’t setting Harry an impossible quest. Five months on, Francis being in a grave feels all the more implausible. But what is the alternative?

“I want you to take a photograph of Francis.”

When she says it out loud she is not sure that it sounds any more convincing. She imagines Francis’s face, four years older, tracked down and finally caught by Harry’s camera.

“And then what happens next?” she asks herself.