“Old boyfriend?” Simone said, laughing. “What a story! Angeline and I have never had an eye for the same man! We have each loved one, and one only, and I can tell you it was not the same person. We are too diff—”
Markie cut her off with a long, exasperated breath and stood, then stepped to the window overlooking Mrs. Saint’s house. Someone had opened all the blinds, and wincing at the charred remains of the house next door, she crossed the room to the window on the other side of the bungalow.
“I’m so tired of all the misinformation!” she said, keeping her voice low to prevent the others from hearing. “If you had any idea what it’s been like to live here beside her. To be constantly intruded upon. Milked for information. Asked for favors. While at the same time . . .”
Markie shook her head, too frustrated to explain further what her neighbor had put her through. “You’d think it would all go away now that she’s gone, but there’s still as much as before! And I just can’t deal with it anymore.” She turned from the window to face Simone. “I wasn’t going to tell you this until after the funeral, but I’m not accepting her gift. Her . . . bequest. I’m going back to the lawyer on Tuesday and . . . disclaiming it.”
Simone took in a sharp breath but said nothing.
“She wanted to saddle me with all of her responsibilities,” Markie said, sweeping an arm to encompass the two neighboring properties, “but she didn’t trust me enough to be honest with me! She kept so many things from me while she was alive—about you, Frédéric, her health, and who knows what else. She even lured me into renting this place on pretense and dishonesty!
“And now, this gift”—Markie made finger quotes around the word—“of the bungalow. She expected me to stay here when she knew damn well I wanted to leave! She decided to surround me with people when she knew all I want is to be alone! She thought I should have to give up what I wanted for my life and take over what she wanted for hers!
“To devote my life to”—she angled her head toward the family room—“the people she was devoted to. I’m supposed to do all of that for her when she couldn’t even bother to tell me the truth! Well, I’m not going to do it! I’m not going to put up with being lied to, tricked, and played!”
Markie’s frustration with Mrs. Saint’s bequest—and her guilt about her decision to disclaim it—overcame her, and she felt her eyes burn with coming tears. She took a deep breath and spoke more quietly, trying to keep her emotions in check.
“If I’d been trusted, then maybe . . . I don’t know. There’s more to my wanting to leave than just my relationship with her, I’ll admit. I’m not putting it all on her. I can’t say I’d be jumping at this even if she had been transparent about everything. But I do know the secrets didn’t help. Other than to make it easier for me to say no.”
Simone rose and went to Markie, touching her arm briefly before moving her hand to Markie’s head and stroking her hair. It was such an unexpected gesture that it made the tears welling in Markie’s eyes finally spill over and slide down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Markie said, sniffing. “She was your sister. I shouldn’t have said those things. And you shouldn’t have to console me. You lost her, too.” She sniffed again and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “It’s been a long day, that’s all. A long weekend. I’m not used to having so many people around all the time, and I . . . acted badly.”
Simone stroked Markie’s head once more, then patted her shoulder. “You will wait one minute, yes?”
Markie nodded, and Simone left the room and went upstairs. Markie heard footfalls on the ceiling overhead as Simone moved around the master bedroom. Moments later, Simone returned holding a stack of photographs.
Nodding to the love seat, she said, “You will sit with me again?”
Markie nodded again and sat next to Simone, who placed the photographs beside her, away from Markie, and shuffled through them.
“Ah!” Simone said. “Here.” She held it up: the picture of her and Angeline in their party dresses.
“That’s the one,” Markie said. She held a hand out, and Simone let her take the picture, which Markie turned over. Angeline et Simone, 7ème anniversaire. “I can’t believe her little case survived the fire and all the smoke.”
“It did not,” Simone said. “This is my copy. These others, too. Mine and Frédéric’s, actually—he had more than me. Luckily, his things were in that metal box and underground. So we did not lose all of our memories along with our Angeline.”
She selected another and laid it on Markie’s lap. It was a copy of the first one Jesse had found behind the garage, the infant twins and the two others Markie had thought were their siblings.
“This is the other one I saw,” Markie said. “I find it impossible that these could be your parents. They look like children.”
Simone took Markie’s hand in hers and looked at her meaningfully. “Those are not our parents,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully, the way doctors do when they are giving news they don’t want to deliver and no one wants to hear. “They are our brother and sister.”
Markie slid the picture off her lap and removed her hand from Simone’s. “Of course they are! Of course they’re your brother and sister! Of course she had three siblings when she told me she had none at all! When I shoved the one of your birthday under her nose, she admitted she had a sister—a single sister, that’s all! But of course she had another! And a brother as well!”
She shook her head. “I suppose they live across town, and that’s where Frédéric disappears to, to report to them on how she is. Or maybe she went to see them herself.” She lifted her hands uselessly and let them fall back into her lap.
Simone studied the photo. “Sadly, non,” she said quietly. “They were taken about a year after our seventh birthday. And they were sent to a camp.”
She stared with what Markie interpreted as a message-filled look, but the meaning eluded her.
“I’m not following,” Markie said. “They went to camp and never came back?”
“Oui.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Was there an investigation? Was this in Quebec?”
“Quebec?” Simone asked, as though it were a word she had never heard before.
Markie looked at the ceiling, then back at Simone. “Quebec. Where you grew up?”
She could hear Bruce’s voice the day she moved in, saying, “French Canadian,” could see the way Mrs. Saint had smiled proudly at him. And then, only the day before Thanksgiving, Markie had asked Mrs. Saint if Frédéric had followed her and Edouard here from Quebec, and Mrs. Saint had confirmed it.