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took up an armful of flowers, the cellophane from the florist crinkling in his hands. He made his way past the oak toward the iron gate.
The cemetery was vast, filled with rows of stone slabs, separated by thin bands of gravel. It was a far cry from the sprawling, green-lawned cemeteries of New England.
Amidst the individual graves and family vaults were occasional tipped crosses and flourishes of sculpture. Many tombs had been colonized by lichens or bore a blanket of moss. A life-sized maiden bearing a flag in one hand and an olive branch in the other stood as a lissome memorial for the war dead, her eyes cast downward in sorrow, her crown adorned with a five-pointed star, a sensual horror. What did she represent? The nation? Gratitude? The Angel of Death? All Philip knew for sure was that she’d gone to rust, with flakes of metal lifting off the rise of her breasts and the pleats of her robe.
Names reeled by with each step, the stones providing a directory of the families of Yvetot—Cottard, Bourdin, Massue, Rioult, Joret, Desplanches, Hesse. In this single stretch were dates spanning more than a hundred years. Old and new were interspersed, abandoned graves having been reclaimed to make room for new occupants, resulting in glistening new stones tucked between ruins. There were so many dead to accommodate.
A path led toward the back. After the maintenance shed Philip took a right. Halfway down the gravel alley, on the left, lay a brownish slab adorned with fresh wreathes and bouquets. The name Aubert ran along the arched top of the headstone, and engraved below was the inventory of remains, beginning in 1891. Below the name of Yvonne’s father, who had died nearly two decades ago, came the last completed entry: Anne-Madeleine Aubert, 24 janvier 1926–7 juin 2008 . Four other names appeared beneath Anne-Madeleine’s, those of the now adult children, Yvonne included. Only the birth dates had been chiseled in.
He was sorry to have missed the ceremony, had hoped to pay his last respects with the others. No one had suffered from the events of fifteen years ago more than Anne-Madeleine. To be honest, he was surprised she’d lasted this long, racked with guilt as she was. He suspected she’d greeted death with something akin to relief.
“ Dieu te garde ,” he said aloud. “You’ll be missed.” He contributed a bouquet of flowers to the growing collection, lightening his load by half. A second bundle remained.
He turned to the right, walking past two more stones until he reached the one he didn’t want to see. This was a more modest grave, one of polished, reddish granite. At the bottom right corner he noticed a thin crust, the first foothold of lichen. A yellow rose lay on the top, still fresh. He added his own bouquet to the middle of the slab. Then he knelt, forcing his eyes upward to the inscription: Sophie Marie Adler, 4 février 1979– juillet 1993 .
He’d had to argue with that stuffy old priest for them to include her middle name. That wasn’t how it was done in France, Father Huet had said. But damn it, on this stone Sophie’s entire life had been reduced to a dash between two dates. The very least they could do was to let her have her name.
All the old imaginings surged forth. Sophie writhing on the ground, struggling under powerful arms. Darkness. Cries. Dirt. Sweat. The tear of fabric. A man’s back. Grunts. He pictured her straining to look over the man’s shoulder, desperate to focus on anything other than where she was, something far away, something she could cling to.
All this because of one man. One boy. Édouard Morin had been only seventeen years old at the time. Since the murder he’d traveled from one institution to another, first in Paris, then near Versailles, then in Marne-la-Vallée. It had taken a long time for Philip to kick the habit of tracking Morin’s whereabouts, a task that required fierce self-control and zero tolerance for relapse. He wondered if Morin had ever experienced a