Markie’s head snapped back. Simone came to forgive Angeline? “Wait,” she started. “That’s not what she—”
But Simone reached for Markie’s hand, squeezed it, and continued. “It is a blessing, I feel. Who knows when I might have come, if ever, if Frédéric had not called to tell me about her heart and how it had gotten so much worse. That they were not sure if the new medication would help, and they could not guarantee how long . . .” She let her sentence trail off as she dropped Markie’s hand, reached into the cuff of her sweater sleeve for a tissue, and pressed it to her eyes.
Markie turned away, pretending to wipe the counter another time. Mrs. Saint had a heart condition, and it had gotten much worse? New medication? Things were so dire—“no guarantee”—that he had called her estranged sister? And meanwhile, Mrs. Saint had merely said, “Oh, it’s only old age. The doctors are being dramatic. Frédéric’s worrying about nothing.”
“I have upset you,” Simone said.
Markie turned back to her. “I just . . . I have a lot of questions. I think I’ve been told a lot of . . . untruths. And I guess it’s fine. None of it was ever any of my business, but—”
“Such as?” Simone asked.
“For one,” Markie said, “you said you came here to forgive her. But she told me you came to ask her to forgive you.”
Simone sighed as she tucked the tissue back into her sleeve. “This was my sister.”
It wasn’t really an answer. But then again, Markie decided, it sort of was.
“She also told me she didn’t believe in human forgiveness,” Markie said. “That it was too easy. She said it’s up to God to forgive.”
Simone took a deep breath in through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth. “La pauvre. She has been too hard on herself.”
Markie wanted to ask what that meant, but Simone was weeping now. She pulled the tissue out of her sleeve again, but it was crumpled and damp. Frowning, she tucked it back in her sweater. Markie went to the family room to find a box, and Frédéric, noticing, leaped up and raced to the kitchen.
“Simone,” he said, and she turned to him and fell against his chest. Their arms went around each other, and they clutched each other, crying, while Markie stood dumbly, holding the tissue box out into space.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Late in the day, Frédéric received the all clear from the fire department to go inside Mrs. Saint’s house. He blinked, said nothing, and handed the phone to Patty, who jumped into action, taking a seat at Markie’s kitchen counter and making notes on the back of one of Lola’s coloring pages. Ronda had spoken to Mrs. Saint’s insurance company earlier about arranging for a smoke-damage restoration company to come, and now Patty called the insurance agent to put that plan in motion and to make arrangements to meet the agent at the house to discuss further repairs.
Bruce, meanwhile, quietly let himself out of the bungalow, returning later with a small metal box, which he handed to Frédéric, and Simone’s two suitcases, which he left outside on the patio to keep the smell of smoke out of the bungalow.
“I wanted to bring you some clothes,” he told Frédéric, “but I checked your closet, and the smoke . . .” He shook his head. “Sorry.”
Simone’s things weren’t wearable, either, despite having been zipped inside the larger of her two suitcases. She asked Bruce to set that case in Markie’s garage—she would go through it the next morning and decide if anything was salvageable—while she carried the smaller one to a corner of the patio and looked through it. Markie and Ronda went out to see her, Markie carrying a spare tote bag she thought Simone might want to transfer the contents of the case into and offering, along with Ronda, to help her sort through her things. Simone accepted the bag, but she asked Markie to leave it outside the door and waved them off before they could get close enough to see inside the case.
“I couldn’t possibly impose,” Simone told Markie, as though helping to sort through a hatbox-size suitcase was a real chore for a woman who was now hosting, indefinitely, four people from Mrs. Saint’s house in addition to the two she had already taken in. Ronda and Markie exchanged puzzled looks and went back inside.
By around ten that night, the bungalow’s first floor was mostly cleared out. Bruce and Ronda had left together for the bus stop, Jesse and Angel had retired to the basement, and Patty had taken Lola up to bed. Markie carried an armload of sheets and blankets down from the linen closet and delivered one set on the living room love seat before continuing through the archway to the family room to give the others to Frédéric.
When she reached the kitchen, she stopped midstep, her jaw dropping, the linens almost falling to the floor. Frédéric and Simone sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch, her head resting against his, his arm tight around her. From the back, it seemed as though she had walked in on an intimate moment between Frédéric and Mrs. Saint, and for a split second, Markie was elated for the old man to finally have a chance to hold his beloved Angeline closely like this.
The moment passed, though, and her elation turned to dismay. His beloved Angeline was dead. What was he doing, sitting so familiarly with her sister? Why was Simone, a married woman, cuddling like sweethearts with the man who had been living with her twin? Markie felt heat rise to her face with indignation on behalf of her former neighbor.
She forced her body to relax, though, and told herself not to jump to conclusions. Surely this was nothing more than platonic commiseration between two people who had lost a common loved one. There was no reason for her to be upset. But when she cleared her throat and they both jumped up, Simone taking two large steps in one direction, Frédéric in the other, Markie wasn’t so sure. Why, if they were innocent, were they acting so guilty?
Frédéric bent quickly to close the lid of his metal box, which, Markie now noticed, sat open on the floor near the couch. Then he reached for the throw blanket, which he tossed over a pile of papers stacked on one of the couch cushions. Markie caught a brief glimpse of the stack before the blanket descended upon it. It appeared to be nothing more than a collection of black-and-white photographs. Why, then, was Frédéric acting like it was a pile of girlie magazines?
“Markie,” Simone said. “Let me . . .”
She stepped toward the kitchen, and Markie prepared to hear the older woman say she could explain, it wasn’t what it looked like, here, come sit on the couch with us and we’ll show you what we were looking at. But Simone wore the same closed-off, unapologetic expression Markie had seen so many times in her twin, and when she reached the kitchen, Simone offered no explanation.