Page 97 of Where the Snakes Sleep

I almost tell him. “I found it.”

Just three words and Camille would leave whatever he is doing. He’d come straight here. He’d know what to do. And if I’m honest, there is a huge part of me that wants exactly that.

I want to hear his footsteps coming through the cottage. I want to show him the letter and watch his face while he reads it. I want him to explain what the fuck I’m supposed to do with a potentially encrypted USB containing evidence of crimes.

I want him to take over for five minutes so I can stop being the only person in this dark little musty hole carrying the weight of it.

My thumb moves toward the keyboard, but Alberte’s warning stops me.

Do not trust anyone simply because they tell you they hated him.

And another memory follows. Camille standing in the cottage yesterday, silent for too long, redirecting me, taking the hammer away, fucking me against the exterior wall precisely when I started asking whether we should open it.

My stomach turns. Maybe it was nothing.

It was probably nothing.

But if I tell him now, I can never untell him.

And now I understand exactly why someone might decide that withholding information isn’t technically the same as lying.

The realization tastes bitter.

Camille: Très bien. See you soon, petit chaton.

I stare at petit chaton until my vision blurs slightly.

“Fuck.” The word echoes softly through the hidden space.

I set an alarm for ten minutes till two, then put my phone on silent before slowly pulling the notebook from its plastic wrapping.

I settle back against the cold stone wall and whisper, “Okay, Grandpa.” My fingers slip beneath the cover. “Let’s see what else you were too afraid to say.”

17

Alberte

12 January 1996

I bought this book today because apparently I have become the sort of man who requires somewhere to speak when the person he has spent nearly eighteen years speaking to no longer seems particularly interested in listening.

That sounds melodramatic.

Henri would say so.

He would lift one eyebrow, take the glass from my hand before I could spill wine on something expensive, and tell me that I have always possessed a remarkable talent for turning ordinary dissatisfaction into Greek tragedy.

Perhaps he would be right.

He is right often enough that I have learned to distrust my own indignation whenever it stands opposite his certainty.

Still, I bought this book.

I nearly left it behind at the shop because journals seem like something meant for adolescent girls with secret crushes or dying men hoping posterity will find wisdom in the final arrangement of their thoughts. I am neither. I am thirty-eight years old, perfectly healthy, moderately successful, and have spent the better part of my adult life beside the most brilliant man I have ever known.

There should be nothing to write that I cannot simply say aloud.

That is the problem.