room. It was crowded again. The croque-morts were back. The
pallbearers. And there was an old man on the sofa, next to Joe.
He was sitting stiffly. There were two walking sticks propped
next to him. He had thin grey hair and a heavy dark suit with
a tiny ribbon in the buttonhole. Red, white and blue, maybe a
Croix de Guerre ribbon, or the Mdaille de la Rsistance. He
had a small cardboard box balanced on his bony knees. It was
tied with a piece of faded red string.
‘This is Monsieur Lamonnier,’ Joe said. ‘Family friend.’
The old guy grabbed his sticks and started to struggle up to
shake my hand but I waved him back down and stepped over
close. He was maybe seventy-five or eighty. He was lean and
dried-out and relatively tall for a Frenchman.
‘You’re the one she called Reacher,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember you.’
“We never met. But I knew your mother a long time.’
‘Thanks for stopping by.’
‘You too,’ he said. Touch, I thought.
‘What’s in the box?’ I said.
‘Things she refused to keep here,’ the old guy said. ‘But
things I felt should be found here, at a time like this, by her
sons.’
He handed me the box, like it was a sacred burden. I took it
and put it under my arm. It felt about halfway between light and
heavy. I guessed there was a book in there. Maybe an old
leather-bound diary. Some other stuff, too.
‘Joe,’ I said. ‘Let’s go get breakfast.’
We walked fast and aimlessly. We turned into the Rue Saint
Dominique and passed by two caf6s at the top of the Rue de
310
l’Exposition without stopping. We crossed the Avenue Bosquet
against the light and then we made an arbitrary left into the Rue
Jean Nicot. Joe stopped at a tabac and bought cigarettes. I
would have smiled if I had been able to. The street was named
after the guy who discovered nicotine.
We lit up together on the sidewalk and then ducked into the
first cafe we saw. We were all done walking. We were ready for
the talking.
‘You shouldn’t have waited for me,’ Joe said. ‘You could have
seen her one last time.’
‘I felt it happen,’ I said. ‘Midnight last night, something hit
me.’
‘You could have been with her.’
‘Too late now.’
‘It would have been OK with me.’
‘It wouldn’t have been OK with her.’
¢Ve should have stayed a week ago.’
‘She didn’t want us to stay, Joe. That wasn’t in her plan. She
was an individual, entitled to her privacy. She was a mother, but
that wasn’t all she was.’
He went quiet. The waiter brought us coffee and a small straw basket full of croissants. He seemed to sense the mood.
He put them down gently and backed away.
‘Will you see to the funeral?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’ll make it four days from now. Can you stay?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I’ll get back.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay a week or so. I guess I’ll need to find
her will. We’ll probably have to sell her place. Unless you want
it?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want it. You?’
‘I don’t see how I could use it.’
‘It wouldn’t have been right for me to go on my own,’ I said.
Joe said nothing.
‘We saw her last week,’ I said. ‘We were all together. It was a
good time.’
‘You .think?’
“We had fun. That’s the way she wanted it. That’s why she
made the effort. That’s why she asked to go to Polidor. It wasn’t
like she ate anything.’
311
He just shrugged. We drank our coffee in silence. I tried a
croissant. It was OK, but I had no appetite. I put it back in the
basket.
‘Life,’ Joe said. ‘What a completely weird thing it is. A person
lives sixty years, does all kinds of things, knows all kinds of
things, feels all kinds of things, and then it’s over. Like it never
happened at all.’
‘We’ll always remember her.’
‘No, we’ll remember parts of her. The parts she chose to