Vallotton spoke, “She promised you a decision at the end of this trip, didn’t she? It would either be yes or no.”
The look of devastation on Thomason’s face was genuine. “She wasn’t like most girls. When they hear your voice and learn your name and who your people are and where you live, they are ready to marry you no matter if you have a chimpanzee for a brother. Felicity was different; she didn’t care. She loved me, but she wanted to give it consideration. I gave her a bloody book with our house in it, I was so desperate to impress her. She just laughed and said, ‘Who lives in places like this?’ She didn’t care about any of that; she had her own ideas.” He lowered his head to his hands. “She said she would answer when she returned from the trip. Then I ended up in Switzerland at the same time and had to know. I knew that she wasn’t answering her phone, because we had agreed on a timeline: I was going to her flat to have dinner when I returned. She was a stickler for keeping to arrangements. But we were just a few kilometers apart and that changed everything. I had to know.”
Agnes wanted to turn away from the pain on the young man’s face while at the same time she wondered if Felicity had turned him down and he had killed her.
“I think now I know why I hadn’t met her family. I think you know why.” Thomason buried his face in his hands for a moment, then he turned to Vallotton. “Are you married?”
“No.” He paused. “I’m a widower. My wife died in a car accident a year ago.”
Agnes looked at him carefully, searching for a lie. Something invented to placate Thomason, but his eyes had the look of truth.
Thomason turned to him; their knees touched they were so close. “You do understand.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How did you meet your wife?”
Agnes expected Vallotton to brush the question aside, but he didn’t.
“Meet Amélie? We didn’t meet; we were born knowing each other. My family doesn’t meet people, we just see those whom we know, acquaintances renewed, strengthened, let go. It was always a matter of finding the link, the brother or mother or common distant cousin. I had … lost someone dear to me, someone I thought to form a life with, and Amélie dared me to marry her, saying who else would tolerate all of my relatives. She didn’t need me, didn’t need anyone, and was funny and beautiful and swept me off my feet. She was the most daring woman I’d ever known.”
Agnes suddenly wished she’d taken that drink.
“Felicity was afraid I would leave her if I met her family,” Thomason said. “She lied because she didn’t trust me enough to tell the truth.”
Agnes felt the anxiety of a young woman running through the chateau, hiding her past, unable to confide in anyone. About to be exposed. Pushed outdoors into a killing cold.
“But you now know the truth,” said Vallotton, “and that’s the truth she would have learned if she lived. You wouldn’t have cared about her family. That’s what you have to take away with you. Your truth.” Vallotton started to stand, but Thomason gripped his knee.
“But I think I would have cared.”
DAY FOUR
Thirty
She was tired and cold. She had waited and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but they hadn’t. It was pitch-black. Her stomach grumbled and that made her angry. She had nothing to eat or drink. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Crying wouldn’t help; it never did. She thought of Monsieur Arsov and what he would do. He wouldn’t cry.
He would do something; he would find a way out. She pushed her lips together and concentrated on stopping the tears, but it was difficult. She had never been alone like this; even when she hid there were always people around, walking by but not noticing, looking, calling her name. When she hid she was in control.
She bit her lip. Monsieur Arsov. What would he do? She remembered the stories he told her about when he was young and first came to Switzerland, and earlier, when he lived in France. In the stories he was always hungry and there was mud and loud noises, but in the end he always made it home safely. Not luck he would say, but per-something. She sounded the word out: “perseverance.”