Something catching in his throat, suddenly. He runs back to the living room.
Madie?
He whispered, his voice hoarse, not to wake the children.
Idiotic, this panic that has suddenly come over him, his thoughts running riot, wondering where she could have…
No, not her.
Pata runs out like a madman, around the house toward the tall trees. She wouldn’t do that, no. Why did he leave a rope in the shed, why didn’t he think of everything. He runs, one hand gripping his sweater. Of course he thought of it. It was two or three days ago, because Madie was staring at the tall, broad-leaved trees with her sad expression. So why didn’t he hide that damned rope?
The line of beech trees with their wrinkled bark, turned toward the sky, like lanky, long-haired human shapes. Pata looks. His legs feel like jelly, his arms, his heart. He leans against a tree to catch his breath, coughing and spitting, tears in his eyes.
A hearty laugh.
The mother isn’t there.
Not hanged, not dead. He shakes his fist at the clouds.
Sets off again.
Where?
Hears his rapid breathing while he hurries to the house. One by one he opens the doors, to the rooms where the children are still sleeping, to the bathroom, the toilet. She is nowhere to be found. He even pulls back the curtains to make sure she isn’t hiding behind them, of course it’s stupid, only he’s run out of ideas, under the stairs, in the basement, under the bed, even, Madie cannot be found. Gradually the relief he felt on seeing the empty branches of the tall trees is transformed into growing anxiety. No, she can’t have vanished into thin air—so, once again, where?
He goes back out to the garden. The shed, the hedge, empty.
The water: the thought goes through him with a shock.
He scrambles down the grassy embankment and suddenly hears voices, down there, by the sea. His heart is pounding, he puts one hand to his temple. He would like to call out, doesn’t dare, there’s a little group of people by the water’s edge, looking at something. His eyes wide with fear, Pata murmurs, No, not this. Not this. He is trembling all over.
Please make it not be her.
The same fear as a few minutes ago but this time the trees are no longer involved. The water—why didn’t he think of it sooner? The others have seen him. Watch him come running, and it seems to him that they are whispering among themselves, staring at him, at him and then at something where they are, Please God, no, they are bending over it, and he comes up to them abruptly and stops and shouts:
“What’s going on?”
At the same time he looks all around for—a body, even part of one, a clump of hair, he is prepared for anything.
But this?
The man to his left is staring out to sea, and points to the rope that has been left in an untidy pile on the shore.
“My boat’s gone. Someone stole my boat.”
-
Long after the neighbors have scattered, Pata stays alone by the sea. He did not protest, he did not say it was impossible; and they were sure it was Madie. So maybe. Deep down he knows it’s true. Where else could she be, now that he has searched the house and the garden? He promised them he would pay for the boat. Once they were gone, he heard the neighbors quietly voicing their pity.
So now he is looking at the sea and wondering what to do. Later, he will go to the police station to declare his wife’s disappearance and they will react exactly as he expected: she is a grown woman, she hasn’t endangered anything or stolen anything—the neighbor had assured him he would keep quiet about the stolen boat—it’s not a matter for the police. Their advice? Wait. She’ll come back. Or not. Maybe she went off with another man, he’d be surprised to learn how often that happens. Pata shakes his head, and so do they. He goes home, disoriented. The children wonder where their mother is. He tells them.
Emily and Sidonie clap their hands: Louie, Perrine, and Noah will be arriving soon! Liam has to explain to them, and then they frown:
“But then why did Mommy go to get them?”
“She made a mistake.”
“And when she finds out she’s made a mistake will she come back?”
Liam and his father exchange a quick look.
“Yes,” says the father.
“Who’s going to take care of us?”
“We are, Liam and me.”
“And Marion? Who’s going to look after her?”
Again that quick glance.
“We’ll find someone to help us.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ll look for someone.”
Standing by the water that morning, Pata wondered whether someone should go after Madie. But who? There have been too many losses since August, too many departures; he feels as if there are traps everywhere, into which they could fall one after the other, fooled by certainty, rumors, hopes—and the ambushes of nature gone mad, he clenches his fists just to think of it, they’ve had no storms for quite a while now, so the mother is bound to encounter one on her way, he is sure of it. The neighbor’s boat has a little motor, but not enough fuel for more than a few hours, and after that Madie will have to reckon with the oars she took with her, with the craft’s greater weight, with the paltry amount of supplies she took. Pata counted a ham, some ewe’s cheese, and a big loaf of bread.
What if he followed her.
Leaving Liam, the two little girls, and the baby. He shakes his head. There has been too much abandoning, he can’t, not anymore. Save what is left, that’s all he can do; and the mother… let her go, then, let her break her heart among the drowned houses, go round in circles amid the driftwood, the scraps of plastic, get it through her head once and for all, so there is no more ambiguity, no more useless hope. Basically, Pata doesn’t mind, he figures it’s the only way for her to turn the page. What does fill him with a different despondency altogether is not knowing whether she’ll have the strength to make it back. So he wonders how long it will be before he has to go back to the police station to try and persuade them to equip a small boat and go and get her, or work something out with Gabriel, who also has a good motorboat, even if it would take him weeks to reimburse the fuel, these things Madie makes him do, after all, there are times he could give her a good slap in the face. Pata bites his nails, bleeds a little.
But Madie knows nothing of the thoughts running through his head, how Pata would gladly slap her just now, his rancor, his urge to scream that they are still there, the ones who survived, the ones she should be looking after instead of chasing after phantoms. No, the mother sees only one thing, the boat plowing through the water and taking her closer to their island, she knows the boat will run out of gas long before she gets there, but this is already a start, she thinks, with something bubbling inside her for the first time, and she thinks, hope—no, wait, not hope: certainty. This effervescence in her guts, it can’t just come out of nowhere, it can’t be a simple illusion, she feels it as a sign, she will find them, she doesn’t know where or how or why, but she will find them and bring them back. She cannot deny that their little clan has dropped from eleven to nine, she witnessed it herself; but not six. She has not seen them dead, those children, she has not seen them swept away, she doesn’t believe in it. Therein lies her strength: unless she comes upon their bodies floating on the surface of the water, she remains convinced they are alive and that she can still save them. She is convinced, too, that it was another house the first responders saw, and this one chance remains, that of error, she just has to seize it, and that is why she is there.