Chapter 14: Mireille Leaves

Nobody slept in the Siasconset house that night.

By seven the next morning the guests were in the kitchen in yesterday's clothes.

I had taken the small room over the garage.

Rémy had slept in his truck in the driveway and refused to come inside.

When I came down, the long table was set for breakfast.

The five wives sat along it with coffee going cold in front of them.

Their husbands were in the dining room, arguing in low voices.

Nobody had told the wives to be here.

They had come on their own, one at a time, and sat down where they could hear the men.

Mireille stood at the stove with her back to them.

She was making eggs. Her hands were steady, and she hadn't slept at all.

"Bonjour," she said when she saw me. "Sit. There is coffee."

I sat beside the banker's wife, who would not look at me.

"I didn't know," she said finally, in English, to her cup. "About the baby. About any of it."

"You knew about the clip," I said.

Her face closed.

"You listened to it," I said. "You played it back at lunch once. I was in the pantry."

"It was a joke."

"It was my voice."

She said nothing more. Nobody else at the table spoke either.

The dining room door opened and Mireille's husband came out.

He was a big man with a pleasant red face, the kind who gave long toasts.

He stopped when he saw his wife with a spatula in her hand.

"Mireille," he said. "Come on. We're going to the ferry."

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