The American Girl (12 page)

AUGUST 2, 2015

I
was sitting outside La Grande Bouche drinking black coffee and taking a break from my duties at the hospital. Until you've been a fake aunt to a recently woken coma patient with amnesia, you don't properly appreciate alone time.

Still, alone time isn't what it used to be. I'd managed—with a combination of hard graft and Google Translate—to get a sense of the report from July 30, 2013, I'd taken from the school. It didn't say much more than what I already knew. It mentioned the unfortunate death of a student by suffocation. It listed the students present that day, including Freddie, Raphael, and Noémie. The report censured Émilie Blavette for “poor making of decisions” and being “slow to react to the series of consequent tragedies.” It concluded that there were “conspicuous inconsistencies” in the testimony of the various witnesses that suggested “an absence of management that appeared chaotic” in the school and a “culture of intimidation,” but it didn't say who was bullying whom.

Given the negative contents, I was surprised I'd found it at all. Maybe Émilie had meant to get rid of it and it had fallen down in the filing cabinet before she had a chance. Based on its contents, I'd been digging a bit deeper, but for all my boring internet research (and even a trawl through the microfiche newspaper archives for 2013 in the town library) I'd found nothing further on Nicole Leclair, which seemed pretty strange. You'd think the death of a local teen would be a major story.

I remembered Marlene saying, “Things happen in St. Roch that are not shared with the rest of the world”; but a cover-up on such a scale would take connections in high places, surely. It would also make great material for
American Confessional
, if I could find some evidence to back the theory up. Nicole's parents seemed like a good starting point for that: there must be some reason they hadn't sued or kicked up a fuss. Could they have been paid off or frightened away from St. Roch somehow? Regional paper
Sud Ouest
had run a dry little obituary for Nicole that gave more details of the Leclairs, but a Google search told me they'd moved to New Zealand a year after her death. Their number was ex-directory. I managed to find an email address for the mom and dropped her a tactful line in the hope that the parallels with Quinn's story might draw them out.

I had a theory: that Freddie was involved and for some reason Émilie had shielded him. But it seemed as hard to prove that as to prove that Freddie-the-stalker had anything to do with Quinn's accident or the Blavettes' disappearance, or even that he was a stalker.

The only concrete thing I had actually found was a weird co
incidence. Marc Blavette had walked out of his family's life in the same week as the Leclair incident, leaving Émilie about as messed up and broke as a person could be. However mean she might be, I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for her. I decided to pump Marlene for more details on the mysterious Marc.

I was just about to finish up my coffee and go back to the hospital when a shadow fell over my table. “You look ghoulish, Fräulein Perkins. Are the beds at the Napoléon still made from rock?” Her waxed eyebrows twitched.

I smiled up wearily. Without spelling anything out, Marlene and I had reached a tacit understanding. We would trade one of her tall tales for a piece of my hearsay on a fair, individual basis. She didn't seem to speculate about why a devoted aunt like me would need to know these things. In her view, scandal was lifeblood, the best—indeed the only—currency. Ours was the kind of forthright turkey-talking that could only be had between a pair of accomplished rumormongers. When she slid onto a chair and leaned her bosom towards me, I knew what she needed.

“There are bedbugs,” I said, leaning close, “and the breakfast room serves the same pastries three days in a row.”

“How do you know?” asked Marlene in a hushed voice.

“Because I left myself a message in a croissant and I found it this morning.”

She grunted. “This is just fantasy. I can't do anything with this.”

“Why did Marc Blavette leave his wife?” I asked suddenly. “It was the same week as that accident at the school.”

“Yes, indeed, that was not Émilie's week.” As I'd hoped, it
caught Marlene off guard. She looked away, her lower lip twitching at the dilemma. It was beneath her to trade what she knew for so paltry a price, but on the other hand whatever it was must be too good not to share. To sweeten the deal, I offered her one of my Gauloises
.

She countered with a pack of Marlboros. “I smoke American,” she said in her gravelly accent that made me think of my mother's crackly collection of Kurt Weill songs.

“You told me you hated Americans,” I said, lighting up.

“The people, not the cigarettes.” She bummed a light.

“You're a complex person, Marlene. There are layers.”

“Complex! Layers! This is exactly one of the reasons I hate Americans. These words you have invented. This psychobabble. It's all—” she gestured with her cigarette “—meaningless. It does nothing but encourage people to blame everyone else but themselves for their problems.”

“Yeah, well, you may be right about that.” I laughed. “And the French never do that, I guess?”

Marlene looked disgusted. “The French! Don't speak to me of the French with their affairs and their snobbishness and their secrets.
Scheiße
, I have lived with the French for too long. And you know they will never accept you completely. Even in a place like this where there are barely any French at all and it is basically just the English and the Germans running the place. Yes, yes, basically little Germany here.” She dragged deep, eyeing me skeptically as if she expected me to disagree.

“So do people mix here—English, German, French? Or do they stick to their own nationalities?”

“Oh no, of course. People are friendly. Very friendly here. There are very many events here. The Ceramics Expo. The stupid Strawberry Parade. The Sauerkraut Festival—now that is an extraordinarily boring event.”

“And did you ever used to see Marc and Émilie Blavette at these events?”

“Well, of course. Émilie was positively the Queen Bee of these things back when she was wealthy. She has always loved to boss the people around, organizing this and that. She and Stella are unstoppable . . .”

“Stella Birch, the porn writer you mentioned?”

Marlene scowled. She could see what I was doing. Nothing was ever lost on her. But gossip was like salted caramels. One was never enough. “They are joined at the hip,” she said, almost angrily. “Those two would run the whole town if they could, though why I don't know, given their history.”

I didn't even need to interject. I just kept smoking and she kept going.

“Even though—” she leaned closer, mouthing the words with barely a sound “—it was plain to me that Stella was having it off with Marc Blavette before he disappeared. I felt sure he would run off with her actually.”

I took a long drag to hide my expression of surprise.

Marlene still caught a whiff of shock, though, and it clearly gratified her. “The thing you must know about Stella, though, is that she is an awful hypocrite. Marc vanished without a word and no one could find or contact him. When Émilie became poor and had her little nervous breakdown, many people expected
her to blame Stella, cast her aside. Especially when Stella moved into Mas d'Or, which had been the family home for centuries. But Stella was so cunning. She paid for the children's clothes and music lessons, made sure there was food on the table. By the end of the day everyone thought she was an angel really, she had shown so much charity.”

Marlene's story was beginning to seem just a bit too one-sided, perhaps one of those long-buried grudges small towns are so good at nurturing. “You make her sound evil, Marlene,” I exclaimed. “No one's that bad!”

“Bah! She is British, you know. And the British . . . well . . . I will organize a lunch and you will see for yourself. It will distract you from all your troubles at the hospital.” Her eyes shone. I could see she was desperate to find out the details of Quinn's condition.

I was just as keen not to discuss them, though. “I have to admit I'm curious now,” I said, steering her back to her favorite topic, Stella Birch.

“She knows where the bodies are buried,” Marlene whispered, “quite literally.”

I laughed. “Okay, you persuaded me. And so you're saying that in all this time, no one ever found out what happened to Marc Blavette?”

“I told you, there are things that happen in St. Roch—”

“—that no one ever finds out about. I'm getting that vibe.”

“Besides, solving cases is not poor Bertrand's forté as you may have seen. But the strange thing is . . . there have been sightings many times.”

“Sightings?” I asked, wondering if we'd strayed onto weirder territory than usual.

“Oh yes, people swearing they've seen Marc in the flesh. In the woods by the Old Schoolhouse, near to the caves, even once at that church over there.”

I gazed skeptically at her over the rim of my coffee cup. “And what was he doing in these sightings?”

“Searching,” she said, looking spooked, “as if he had lost something.”

AUGUST 2, 2015

Video Diary: Session 3

[Quinn sits cross-legged on the bed, the sheets kicked off, the pillows pushed to one side]

Um, I reckon French people don't like sleeping much. I keep turning around in this bed, but I can't settle because of the way it's been tucked—see what I mean? The pillow's all hard and also a really dumb shape like a tube of mints. The sheets basically sand your skin off if you move and the springs . . .

[She bounces on bed]

Hear them? Also, I keep hearing funny noises: boards creaking, wood stretching, floorboards moving. Like someone was walking outside my room. Must be one of the nuns doing night rounds, I guess. I've tried counting sheep, counting nuns . . . but nothing works. I'd better get on it, though, 'cause Sister does not approve of insomnia.

Don't think she approves of me either. I heard her talking to one of the other nurses today and I know enough French to know what they were saying, because they were saying it yesterday, too, as they handed out the trays and emptied bedpans. How no one has come to visit me except my aunt—police and therapists and journalists, sure—but not my family. It's sad, apparently, that my dad doesn't care enough. They keep showing me pictures of him, as if they're trying to make me even sadder. But I still can't remember him, so I'm not.

[Turns the camera off]

[The camera is on again. Quinn is lying under the sheets]

Okay, I definitely cannot sleep. Plus
[speaking
more quietly]
noises are getting creepier. So, yeah . . . There are shoe-leather-squeaking sounds again. Heavy sounds. Either Sister Eglantine has gained a lot of weight in the last few hours, or she's turned into a man, right? Weird. Still it could be my imagination, I guess. Everything's so damn loud.

[Quinn turns the camera off]

[The camera is on again. Quinn is lying in the dark under her bed. She is whispering]

Okay, so things got way weirder after that. It was dark—I dunno, about two
A.M.
I kept hearing the footsteps, so I just lay still, trying not to breathe too loud. The steps kept coming, but, uh, muffled or something.

[She pulls
the camera right up to her face]

They came into the room. Someone . . . came into the room. And when they were almost at my bed, they stopped.

It got really quiet.

There was this noise and I just . . .
knew
someone was standing over me. There was this smell like cigarettes and a wet smell, like the woods. I kept my eyes squeezed shut. I heard . . . like . . . breathing, the drawers opening, stuff getting moved around, then the footsteps again, but this time they were walking away.

[Pause]

When I was sure I was alone, I pushed the covers down. I, uh, I could still smell the damp smell. The cigarettes. I had this crazy itch on the tip of my nose and I didn't even want to scratch just in case he was out there waiting . . .

I waited ages. Then I groped around for the cord next to the bed. The light came on and I sneaked over to the chest of drawers. I slid the drawer open and felt around for the things inside the plastic tray. None were missing, but each one was in a different place from where I'd left it. Weird, right?

[Quinn draws further back into the darkness. She's hardly visible now]

So I slammed the door. Hid under the bed, under here. Then I slipped my hand up between the mattress and the bed until I could feel the edges of my phone.

[She shows the iPhone to the camera. The screen is cracked]

Is that what they were looking for? Something in my head told me to hide it.

How did I know that?

AUGUST 3, 2015

A
fter my visit to La Grande Bouche, I went to walk Quinn around the hospital grounds. It was the first time the doctors had allowed her out and seemed to me a sign that they thought she was improving. She was still weak enough to need a wheelchair, though, and she had to wear my aviators because the brightness of the blue sky hurt her. When we got past the line of trees shielding the hospital from view, I lit a cigarette.

“You're smoking?” she asked, sniffing the air.

“Yep,” I said unapologetically.

“Aren't I sick and in the hospital?”

“Smart-ass. Are you kidding? This is what aunts do.”

“Model poor life choices?”

“Yeah,” I said, and laughed, surprised by her snarky turn of phrase. “As a deterrent.”

“Obviously,” she said.

I suddenly thought of my own little niece, my big sister's kid.
What was she now, four? Maybe I could store up this type of aunt wisdom for her one day. When we walked back, past the line of birch trees, Quinn shivered.

“You cold?” I asked, reaching to adjust her blanket.

She shook her head. “It's just those trees. They give me the creeps. Last night I thought I heard . . .”

“What?”

“It's . . . never mind.”

I looked up at the trees she was avoiding, their spectral shapes clawing the blue sky. They
were
a bit spooky, reminding me of the woods around the Blavette house, the woods she walked out of screaming.

“Sometimes I dream about being in them,” she said, “those trees. And in my dreams, I feel like someone's coming—” She broke off, pulling the blanket around her.

I hesitated a moment before saying, as neutrally as possible, “The doctor says you've been remembering some stuff. Do you remember what they looked like, this person in your dreams?”

She looked away from the trees. “Can you stop for a minute?”

“Sure.”

She took off the sunglasses and turned around to me, her eyes running over my face, my hair, as if she was searching for something. After a few moments, she said, “We don't look much alike, do we?”

It was the moment I'd been dreading, a bullet I'd hoped I'd dodge somehow. I could feel the sweat breaking out in my pits, the squawking lies coming home to roost. What should I say?
You
take after your mother's side of the family. Um, actually, I'm your dad's adopted sister. We do look alike! Everyone always says . . .

Before I could think of some neat way to sidestep her first question, she asked two more. “Anyway, why has my dad not visited yet? Why is it just
you
?” She sounded angry, as if she'd had enough of me, or worse, as if she saw through me.

“Your dad's on vacation,” I said, smiling lamely. “He'll come soon, I bet.”
Not too soon, though
, I thought to myself.

She put the aviators back on and turned to face the trees again. “I don't remember him, anyway,” she said, and that was that.

I think I'd expected her to cry or shout, but in the end, it was the flatness of her voice that made my heart break a little, as if she was one of those orphans that haven't been hugged enough and doesn't know how to love. It was hard not to feel how alone in the world she was then, with me, a total stranger, as her closest relative.

“Well, you've got retrograde amnesia or whatever,” I said, by way of comfort. “The docs say your memories will come back gradually and stuff.”

“Mainly, all I remember is being in the woods,” she said suddenly, before adding in the same flat voice, “Can we go back now?”

I wheeled her back to her room and she got up and walked to the bed. Watching the way her knees knocked as she stumbled into bed, wiped out after ten minutes of fresh air, I realized I'd pretty much never felt this guilty in my life. I wanted to fix things somehow, to give Quinn something real to hold on to, not
just the fake and not-very-reassuring reassurance of my company. I rummaged in my bag for my spare iPhone charger and plug adapter.

“Here,” I said, “maybe we can charge your phone, and then we could see if you had any family photos on there to look at or something.” After all, it was what the therapist had suggested.

“Give it to me,” she half growled, grabbing the charger out of my hands. “That technology isn't designed for old people.”

Her change of tone gave me a chill. “Excuse me?” I asked, my voice sounding too much like my mother's again.

“Um.” She looked up, embarrassed, as if her aside was something I wasn't meant to hear. “Anyway, thanks.”

Within seconds, she'd scooted under the bed and plugged the phone into the outlet. Feeble no more, she pressed and held a button down. After a second, the little red battery image popped up on the broken screen. She looked up smugly, like,
See?
A few moments more and the screensaver picture popped up. I felt another pang of guilt at knowing so much about what lay beyond it.

She rubbed her thumb over the screen. “I think I would like to look at photos, but I'd rather do it alone. Do you mind if I do it alone?”

I shook my head, trying not to feel too disappointed. “Bye, Quinn.”

I turned back to the door with a little shiver. Perhaps after she'd been through the images on the phone, her memories really would start returning, like a Pandora's box opening. That was the whole idea, to use that key to open the closed door of her
mind and let the truth out. I didn't know whether to feel more happy for her or more fearful.

V
ALENTIN WAS WAITING
for me in reception. In fact, he was pacing, a bouquet of red roses held behind his back.

“For Quinn,” he said, thrusting the flowers at me.

“Thanks,” I said, oddly embarrassed to take them from him.

He took off his hat, revealing his fluffed-up hair. “Might I take this opportunity to apologize for my drunkenness the other night? I enjoyed our conversation very much. But I didn't mean . . .”

“It's all right.” I smiled. “I enjoyed it, too.”

He tipped his hat. “I'm glad.” And then he gave me that little half smile he knew was appealing. “I thought that perhaps you seemed to be hiding.”

“I've just been a bit preoccupied,” I said, but I couldn't help smiling back. Even though there was something about him that made me uneasy—his chivalry perhaps, or his too-easy charm—I couldn't help liking him. I wanted to ask him about Nicole Leclair and Marc Blavette's mysterious disappearance and reappearances, but there was no way to do it without being obvious.

“How's the Blavette case going?” I asked instead. “Any leads?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, taking off his hat and rubbing his hand through his curls. “It is really very stressing. We have had so many hundred tips by phone and it is really killing the girls handling these call lines. Each one tip we must look at and yet noth
ing is leading us to the family. I wish we had something more that could help.”

I stared down at my espadrilles, feeling more than a little guilty about Quinn's phone. What if there were things on there that might help? I didn't want to betray her trust, but I didn't want to actively impede Valentin's investigation either. I was about to say something when he touched my arm.

“Listen, it would be nice . . . to have a drink again sometime perhaps.” He looked away shyly, pulling his hand away as if I might bite.

I was getting the feeling that Valentin had a crush on me and in fact it wasn't just a drink he was suggesting. It was a date. At any other time, I actually wouldn't have minded going on a date with him. After all, he was hot, he was French, and he was a complete emotional train wreck—in other words, my type. It was just that, right about then, I felt like I'd become about the worst person I could be.

“Well . . .” I began, trying to think of some kindly form of letdown. Then I remembered Bill's words about
using it
and making a difference. “Okay. I guess.”

He looked at me uncertainly. “Really? You don't sound as if you are so keen, but . . . tomorrow night, then, at the hotel bar?”

“Sure,” I said, rubbing my hand over my face. “That sounds . . . classy.”

“And if Quinn tells you anything,” he said, his mouth creasing into a sad little frown, “anything of any kind, please ring my phone at once. Your niece's memories are the keys to breaking this case, and time, as they like to say, she is running out.”