Read Seen and Not Heard for Free Online Page A

herself laughing. “Thank you. I’m afraid my lack of French didn’t help matters.”
    “I don’t imagine it did. By the way, my name’s Tom Parkhurst. You ought to know who you’re married to. That is … you’re not really married, are you?”
    Not yet, she should have said. “No, I’m not married.” Tell him about Marc, she ordered herself sternly. Say thank you very much and get rid of him.
    It had been so long since she’d spoken to anyone but Marc. So long since she’d heard the blessedly flat vowels of an American accent. Surely she could indulge herself for just a short while?
    “My name’s Claire,” she said, deliberately omitting her last name. She wasn’t sure why she did—it was just an instinctive gesture of self-protection. She stopped, and he took his arm away from her slender shoulders and shook her proffered hand. There was just the right feel to it, not too soft, not too rough, not too squeezing, not too limp. He was harmless, she told herself. A fellow American, and someone to talk to.
    “I don’t suppose,” she said, “that you know the French words for coffee ice cream?”
    * * *
     
    Malgreave slammed the book shut with a nasty curse. His English wasn’t bad, better in conversation than in literature, but this book, for all the effort he was putting into it, wasn’t proving any help at all. He glared down at it. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to get it. It was the latest American best-seller, chronicling the history of several of the copycat killers in the last decade. And there was absolutely nothing of value for his current case.
    He leaned back on the uncomfortable, overstuffed sofa that Marie had banished to the back bedroom, the room they now called his office. It had been Margritte’s room, until she got married, and for almost a year Marie had refused to change anything. But now Margritte was about to give birth to their first grandchild, an event Marie clearly anticipated and dreaded. On the one hand Marie loved babies, she loved Margritte, and she looked forward to having a new little one to dress up and play with.
    On the other hand, being a grandmother meant getting old. And he knew very well that Marie had no wish to get old.
    She’d lost weight recently. She’d been going to a health center and exercising, and her waist had come back. She no longer bought sweets, and she scarcely touched her morning roll. She was wearing more makeup now, and her hair had lost the becoming silver. No, she didn’t want to get old. But was her sudden youthfulness for her own sake, or his? Or someone else’s?
    Margritte wouldn’t be coming home now, and the spare bedroom was simply going to waste. And if Louis was going to bring his work home with him and smoke those nasty cigarettes, then he needed a place to work, she said. She wasn’t going to give up her television programs because he wanted to concentrate. God knows, she said, she had little enough to entertain her these days.
    She was going to leave him, he knew she was. And while the thought ate away at his soul like acid, there was nothing he could do. If he said anything, there would be no turning back. So he just plodded onward, his head in the sand, hoping she would change her mind.
    And in the meantime, the weather forecast was for three days of rain.
    Rocco Guillère strolled down the narrow street, away from the park, his cruel dark eyes following the old lady’s elegant pace. He hated women like that. They looked like they had a broomstick up their ass and they’d rather die than admit it. Tall, straight, born rich and she’d die rich.
    Sooner than she’d like. He looked up into the clear blue sky, peering into the fleecy white clouds scudding along. When he’d been a boy and lived outside of Paris he could tell what the weather would be from the clouds. He’d forgotten all that—now he only knew the weather from what landed on his skin. He’d wait, he had to wait. He’d promised, and promises like