I left the factory vomiting at eleven o’clock in the morning. The foreman saw me green and sent me home. When I turned into my street, the boss’s car was parked in my garage, pressed right against my wife’s. A Tuesday. In the middle of the morning.
I don’t know how long I stood there, in my own station wagon, with my hand on the gear lever. When I came to my senses, my hands were freezing cold without realizing it. I went downstairs. The door of the house was locked. In our village, no one locks in the middle of the day.
Inside, I heard Marianne laughing. It wasn’t his usual laugh. It was the other one. The one I knew only too well.
I grabbed onto the banister to climb the stairs. Each step creaked. I passed in front of the photo of my daughter’s First Communion. I had trouble breathing, like when you run uphill, except that I was immobile.
The door of the room was ajar. Mr. Vincent Cordier, my boss, was sitting on my side of the bed, putting on his shoes.
My name is Robert. I am forty-two years old. I spent eighteen years at the sawmill of Mr. Vincent Cordier, the richest man in the canton. I started by carrying boards, I ended up as a supervisor.
I didn’t come forward. Monsieur Cordier got up without haste, adjusted the cuff of his shirt as if nothing had happened, and cast a circular glance at my room. On my bed. On my wardrobe. Like an owner inspecting his property.
“Calm down, Robert.” “Tomorrow we’ll settle your balance all accounts,” he said, passing me by without looking at me.
Marianne didn’t even cover herself. She sat down in front of the dressing table I had given her and started to do her hair. She wore a burgundy silk bathrobe that I had never seen in her. Which I certainly hadn’t paid.
I thought of Thomas. I don’t really know what it is for. I had a ringing in my ear, like when you come down a mountain too quickly.
I sat in the yellow kitchen after he left. And I began to remember details that, at the time, had not meant anything to me.
For months, Marianne had been wearing designer clothes that she called “copies of the market”. She insisted that I get along well with the boss.
About a month ago, Thomas had stopped talking to me. I had put it down to adolescence. One evening, I asked him what was wrong. He just replied: “You don’t understand anything, Dad.” And he had locked himself in his room.
Last week, at the factory, I asked Mr. Louis — the oldest, the one who had known my father — for photos from the time when the sawmill was founded. The old man had changed his head. He told me that he didn’t remember it. Still, he remembered everything else.
I went back up. Marianne continued to comb her hair, slowly. As if I no longer existed.
“How long has it been going on?” I asked.
“And what does that have to do with you?” She hasn’t even turned her head.
“Our children sleep in this room, Marianne.”
She sighed, as if I was wearing her out.
“Vincent is going to give them what you have never been able to offer them. Do you know what really tires them, Robert? It’s putting up with you.
It hurt more than the car in the garage. Worse than the bathrobe. Only one question was running in my head: what did my children already know, and what did I still don’t know?
Somehow, I took out my phone and took a picture of the bed, the bathrobe, the boss’s shoes next to the nightstand. My hands were shaking. I put it away before it turned around.
“Who are you going to show this to?” She said at last, looking at me. “Quiet. You don’t even have enough money to pay a lawyer, Robert.”
She said it with chilling confidence. Too much confidence.
“How do you know I have no lawyer?”
She was silent for half a second. No more. Then she took her comb again.
That night, I didn’t sleep at home. I went to my friend Laurent’s house, in the small room behind his studio. I told him everything while stammering, without order. Laurent didn’t tell me that I was exaggerating. He served me coffee and told me that we would go see a lawyer tomorrow, that he would lend me the advance.
For the first time that day, I breathed.
I took out my wallet. In it, there was a photo of my children at the beach, three years ago. Thomas making sandcastles. Gabrielle collecting shells. I looked at her for a long time. I told myself that for them, I was going to fight.
That’s when a message from Thomas arrived. My son, who hadn’t spoken to me for a month: “Dad, don’t go to work tomorrow. Don’t ask why. After tomorrow, nothing will be the same.” »
I called him. Messaging. I called back. Nothing.
At half past eleven, my phone rang. Number unknown.
I picked up the phone, thinking it was Marianne. It wasn’t her. It was a woman, the voice of an elderly lady that I had never heard. She pronounced my full name, slowly, as if she were reading a piece of paper.
She told me that she had worked at the sawmill a long time ago, when my father was still alive. That she knew perfectly well why they were going to fire me the next day. And that it wasn’t the most important thing.
She told me that what was happening to me had not started today. That it had begun almost forty years ago. Even before I was born.
I asked her who she was. She didn’t answer. She asked me another question: did I still keep the key that my uncle Flavien had given me the last Christmas before he died?
I told him yes. Why?
She remained silent. I heard her breathe. Then she lowered her voice:
“That key is the only thing they don’t have. And they’re looking for it from your house right now. If you want to know what really happened to your father, there’s only one place you can go tonight…”
Part 2.
The chapel was not a chapel. It was a small stone house that my uncle Flavien had built alone, far from everything.
I drove two hours at night on the back roads. The key went into the lock as if it had been waiting for it for years. Inside, an entire wall covered with photos, newspaper clippings, woollen threads connecting the documents. The old ones were yellowed. But there were new ones, still tense. I followed them. One led to a photo of the sawmill. Another to the old ropemaker. Another to Vincent. And the last one, the most recent, came to a photo of my house. From my door. With a cut with my name on it.
My uncle wasn’t crazy. He had been drawing this for years. And I was at the center of the drawing.
On the table, there was an old leather briefcase. I opened it with a screwdriver. Inside, wads of cash. Under the banknotes, a sheet folded in four. I opened it. It was a photocopy of a signature. My father’s handwriting, but twisted, as if his hand had been forced. At the bottom, a date: three days before his death. I didn’t understand right away. I kept it.
And above all, a letter in my uncle’s trembling handwriting. A single line:
“If you’ve made it this far, it’s because they’ve already taken everything from you. So much the better. Now you’re going to believe me. »
I didn’t have time to think. My phone rang. Number unknown. I didn’t answer. Ten seconds later, a message from Laurent: “Robert, we ask questions about you in the village. People I don’t know. Don’t go in. »
I turned off the light that I hadn’t even turned on.
I was thinking of Thomas. To his message: “The day after tomorrow, nothing will be the same again.” My son was on the other side.
I didn’t stay until morning. I took the papers, slipped the photocopy in, grabbed the briefcase and left before dawn. In the rear-view mirror, headlights stuck behind me. This time, I didn’t settle down.
The next day, a number I knew rang. Mr. Cordier.
I didn’t expect it. I dropped out by reflex.
— Robert. His voice was calm, as usual, as if he was calling to talk about the game. Glad you answered. I’ll go to your corner tomorrow. Shall we have a coffee?
“I’m busy.
“Of course, of course. A short silence. Tell me, how is the little one? Thomas, right? He must be great now.
I didn’t say anything. He did not expect an answer.
“Good. When you can. Take care of yourself.
He hung up. I stayed looking at my phone. He hadn’t threatened me. He hadn’t asked me for anything. He had just pronounced my son’s name as we say “good night”.
It was the coldest thing anyone had done to me during this whole story.
The lady on the phone put me in touch with a lawyer. Short, glasses, not very talkative. She put the documents on the table precisely, like someone who knows that time is running out. I showed him the photocopy of the signature. She looked at her for a moment.
“Where did you get that?”
“In my uncle’s briefcase.”
She folded it carefully and set it aside, alone, away from the other papers.
“We’ll come back to that later,” she said. Then she continued: Your father owned half of the sawmill, Mr. Robert. That is yours by right.
“And what does this have to do with my dismissal?”
“Everything.” To take what belongs to you, you first had to leave you with nothing and no one believing you. Hence your wife. Hence your work.
And then she said what broke me in two:
“To your son, it was said that you had enormous debts. That if he ever spoke, you’d go to jail. The kid thought he was protecting you.
I covered my mouth. No sound came out.
My son hadn’t betrayed me.
“Your son’s new phone, who gave it to him?”
— The Boss.
“All his messages go through there. Whoever reads them sees them first.
Outside, a car turned the corner.
That evening, I called Thomas’ old number. The one before the new phone. The one I know by heart.
It rang four times. He dropped out quietly.
“Hello?
It wasn’t the voice of the messages. It was smaller. More frightened.
— Thomas. It’s Dad.
Long silence.
“Daddy?” His voice broke. I was told that you didn’t want to talk to me anymore. That you were angry.
“Who told you that?”
“Mamma.” And Monsieur Cordier. He started crying. That you had signed papers. That you were going to leave us homeless.
“I never signed anything, Thomas.
“I deleted your messages, Dad. They told me to do it. Sorry.
I told him that there was nothing to forgive. Three times, because he didn’t believe me.
The lawyer lent me a room above her office. It wasn’t safe. Laurent brought me food in the evening, without turning on the lights. The car kept turning — twice, three times, sometimes it was parked in front of it for a long time.
For the first time, I was no longer alone. But I wasn’t safe either.
One night, the lawyer took the photocopy and put it under the lamp.
“Look here. Your father’s signature on court documents. And that of the briefcase.
The two signatures were identical. Too identical. Same inclination, same line, as if copied.
“Your father was left-handed, Monsieur Robert.” Did you know that?
“Yes.”
“This signature was made by someone who was not. Someone who copied the line without understanding why the hand was leaning like that. We had it done. And your uncle found it before it was made to disappear.
That’s when I understood what this photocopy was. It wasn’t a proof that my uncle kept to myself. It was evidence that someone else had carelessly kept, and that my uncle had stolen before it disappeared.
Forty years hidden under a mattress.
That night, a stone hit the bedroom window.
For the death of my father, it was Monsieur Louis who told me everything. I went to see him with the lawyer. It was an old man sitting in front of his house. When he saw me coming, he didn’t pretend. He lowered his head, like someone who had been waiting for years for someone to knock on that door.
“I was ordered to turn off the tape that night,” he said. The old Cordier. If I spoke, I would end up like your father.
He wasn’t a bastard. It was another scared death. I believed him.
I faced Mr. Cordier when I had all the elements. I went to his office with the lawyer and the briefcase. He was sitting at the large walnut desk that had been his father’s. I placed the papers in front of him, and on top of it, the photocopy of the signature.
He didn’t even look at them.
“I know about my father,” I said. I know about the signature. I know about half of the sawmill.
He sank into his chair. Calm. He clasped his hands on the desk as if he were in a meeting.
“You know a lot about it. So what? File a complaint. We’ll see who will believe the guy full of sawdust against me.
He didn’t yell at me. He spoke to me as if he were a capricious child. As he had spoken to me on the phone the other day when he said Thomas’ first name.
“Robert, you don’t even have enough money to pay a lawyer.” Go home. Oh yes… It’s true that you don’t have a home anymore.
That’s when I understood that for him, I had never been a person. I was just a troublemaker with a last name. And what scared me the most was not the contempt. It was the calmness with which he said it. Like a man who has been winning for so long that he doesn’t even feel victory anymore.
I didn’t answer anything. I took my papers and went out. Around the corner, the same unknown number flashed on my screen. I didn’t answer. I kept everything. It would be useful to me.
Months passed. Slowly. One night, a voiceless call. Another, the car remained parked with all lights off until three in the morning in front of the office.
One night of heavy rain, I called Thomas and told him the truth: that I couldn’t take it anymore. That I was going to leave them everything — the house, the sawmill, everything.
My son remained silent. Then, with this fourteen-year-old voice:
“Dad, do you remember you came back to get me?”
“Yes.”
“If you give up, the next one they do this to will have no one to come back to get it.”
I hung up. I washed my face. The next day, I put on my only clean shirt and went back down to court.
The day the judge handed down his decision, the lawyer told me on the sidewalk, holding my hands.
— The signature was forged. It wasn’t your father’s. And the law sees that.
I started crying standing in the street. People passed by. I didn’t care.
Half of the sawmill went to its rightful owner. To me. On a new act, with my name, this time with my glasses on my nose.
Mr. Cordier was prosecuted. For fraud. For spoliation. He did not have a heart attack. He did not repent. He fell as he had always walked: before the law, until the day the law caught up with him. The last thing I knew was that in court he hadn’t changed his face either. Still as calm. As if losing was just another formality.
I did not prosecute Mr. Louis. Forty years in his head was already enough of a prison. I gave him work at the sawmill. He died in peace two years later. I went to his funeral.
Marianne has also had to deal with the law. I saw her for the last time when I left the court. She didn’t look down. She never lowered them. I wished him no harm. I didn’t feel sorry for it either. I had no room for either of them.
That Saturday, I had the lock on the house changed.
Because there was one key too many. I found out when Gabrielle showed it to me, trembling, with a burgundy keychain that I hadn’t seen since Marianne left.
“Mamma has come, Dad.” With a man in a suit, she whispered to me. She said she had the right to enter. I had a copy made so that they wouldn’t get angry. Sorry.
I hugged her. I told her she had done nothing wrong. That the bad guy was the man who scared an eleven-year-old girl to get a key out of her. With the fear of others, like everything these people did.
The locksmith asked me if I kept the old keys. I told him to throw them all away.
Thomas took the burgundy key ring, looked at it for a long time, and threw it in the trash himself. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t necessary.
Gabrielle had three new keys made. One for me, one for Thomas, one for her.
Three. Not four.
Today is Sunday. I’m in a smaller kitchen than before. I repainted it yellow. Thomas says he wants to be an engineer and not work with wood, and I contradict him just to see him get angry. Gabrielle passes me the screwdriver like when she was six years old.
Earlier, I came back from the sawmill. The door was open in the middle of the afternoon, as everywhere in the village.
I paused for a moment on the threshold. By old habit. Waiting for my belly to knot like that Tuesday.
It didn’t happen.
Because inside, you could hear laughter. And this time, I knew who they came from.
What these people have never understood is that a house is not protected with locks. She protects herself by knowing who is inside, and that they are there because they want to.
If one day your child moves away, becomes silent, different: don’t think he’s lost. Maybe he didn’t betray you. Maybe he was just lied to before you did. Go get it. Always go and get it.
I went home. I didn’t lock it. And for the first time in a long time, I slept peacefully.
Without the “almost”.
