The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,61

had operated on him and finally, brutally, cut out the putrefied flesh. Hector lifted his glass and did not drink. His hands, used to performing tricks and juggling objects in the air, seemed to fail him and had grown weak.

“I am sorry about that even if I could have predicted something like this would happen. I know the extent of your feelings for her,” Étienne said. “I’m also sorry about the girl. You appeared to get along well enough.”

“Yes.”

Étienne waited for him to elaborate but instead Hector drank his wine. Étienne, understanding there would be no more conversation, slowly unfolded his paper and began reading it again. But then Hector changed his mind and spoke.

“I’ve never met anyone like her.”

“Like Valérie? Ah, I admit she’s easy on the eyes, but hard like a diamond,” Étienne said, shaking his head.

“Like Antonina,” Hector replied.

He recalled when she’d told him about Bosegnan and how, even though he did not really care to visit the city, he grew interested in it because she liked it. He had wanted to look at it so he could tell her about it later, sharing his impressions. He did not understand many of the other things she fancied, like her precious insects, but he did enjoy when she spoke about them. He missed her already.

“I think she wanted nothing from me,” Hector added, “nothing at all but to let her love me.”

Étienne raised his eyebrows at that, but as usual he had a perfect reply. “It’s a damn tragedy. Now, drink up. Let us not mention any women for the remainder of the trip,” Étienne said. “Once we reach Bosegnan, we can have champagne and ask Luc to take us to meet his friends. He’ll find a party somewhere, he always knows someone no matter where he goes. We shall be merry and we shall be young again.”

Hector nodded but he knew it was a lie, that they’d never be young. He couldn’t be like Luc, he’d never been like Luc in the first place. But it was fine, he’d be fine. He’d press the memory of Valérie away, like a precious, dry flower. In time perhaps he might even be able to make amends to Antonina Beaulieu.

But then he thought of her face when he’d last seen her, her eyes pained. And he knew that despite whatever he might want to tell himself, he could not heal her shattered heart.

CHAPTER 21

She took her meals in her room and did not venture outside, despite her mother’s pleas. Gaétan arrived in Oldhouse for his annual summer visit, but even he could not persuade her to come out. When Gaétan and Valérie left, she was relieved.

At first, when Nina lay upon her bed and curled up under the covers, she could summon no proper thoughts. She made the books tumble from the bookcases many times over, the unintentional expression of her anger. One evening the box of cards Hector had gifted her fell upon the floor, the cards scattering all around her, and Nina thought she was about to cry again.

She’d cried far too often.

But she did not weep, instead gathering the cards with her thoughts and shuffling them. He’d taught her this, at least the principles of it. She shuffled the cards once and muttered his name, then she shuffled them again, and again she said his name.

She was struck with the idea that if she did this enough times, if she said his name out loud, it would eventually lose its meaning. She sat on the floor, in her nightgown with her arms wrapped around her knees, and she said “Hector Auvray” half a dozen times while she attempted to shuffle the cards without making a mistake.

She did it every day from then on. Sometimes she lost control of the cards and she had to start again, and she did not shuffle them well at first. But every evening she worked on this trick.

When she felt she had mastered it, she began to work on another.

Slowly she sought the books that until then she had forgotten, content only to dash them across the room. She ran her hands over the pictures of the butterflies, which had given her pleasure, their colors bright upon the page.

He did not write to her, not one single letter. It pained her, but what was one more hurt atop other lacerations?

At the end of summer, Madelena had her baby, and three days later Nina made the trek to her sister’s house. It was