Among the other treasures in the boxes were our senior-year class photographs and a series of mixtapes I’d painstakingly made for Vinca but never dared give her. I opened a cassette box at random and perused the song titles that were the soundtrack to my life. The Thomas Degalais I had been back then was utterly consumed by words and music. This was the soundtrack of someone who was still “different from other boys,” gentle, a little unconventional, oblivious to fashion, in touch with his emotions: Samson François playing Chopin, Jean Ferrat singing “Les yeux d’Elsa,” and Léo Ferré reciting “A Season in Hell,” but also Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and Freddie Mercury’s “Love Kills.” Almost a premonition…

There were books too. Old yellowing paperbacks of the titles I still quoted in every interview when I said that “books taught me at a young age that I would never be truly alone.”

If only it were that simple.

One of the books here was not mine, the collection of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems signed by Alexis that I’d taken from Vinca’s room the day after the murder.

For Vinca,

I wish I were an incorporeal soul

that I might never leave you.

To love you is to live.

Alexis

I gave an ugly laugh. At the time, I had been moved by this dedication. Now I knew the jerk had stolen the line from a letter by Victor Hugo to Juliette Drouet. A charlatan to the end.

“So tell me, Thomas, what the hell are you doing here?”

I spun around. My father had just stepped into the kitchen holding a pair of pruning shears.

3.

Despite not being particularly affectionate, my father was demonstrative and usually hugged me when he saw me, though this time I was the one who felt like taking a step back.

“How’s things in New York?” he said as he carefully washed his hands in the sink.

“Can we go into your office?” I said, ignoring his question, “There something I want to show you.”

My mother was prowling around somewhere and I did not want her sticking her nose in just now.

Richard dried his hands, grumbling about my showing up out of the blue and being mysterious. Then he led me up to his den, a study cum library decorated like an English gentlemen’s club with a chesterfield sofa, African statues, and a collection of antique hunting rifles. Two huge picture windows bathed the room in light and offered the finest view from the villa.

I immediately handed him my phone. On the screen was the Nice-Matin article about students finding a bag of cash. “Have you seen this story?”

He picked up his glasses but did not bother to put them on. He merely glanced at the screen, then set his glasses down again.