It’s freeing, really. For me, anyway. Travert stares like he can’t decide what to do, his brow knitted in consternation. “I didn’t expect—”
“It’s our wedding night, isn’t it?”
Travert drains his champagne, his gaze traveling the length of me. I let him look, almost like I’m daring him to find fault and call the whole thing off. Like I hope he will. The problem is, he’s not looking like some cool-eyed art critic appraising a painting. No, there’s a tender expression, and when he lights a cigarette I worry this is going to take a while. “Don’t people usually smoke after, Sergeant Travert?”
“It’s Yves.”
“I know your name.”
He exhales a plume of smoke. “I like to hear you say it.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “All right . . . Yves.”
“I need the cigarette to calm my nerves,” he explains. “I thought we wouldn’t do this until we both feel . . .”
As he searches for the words, I’m afraid he’ll get sentimental, and I go prickly as a cactus. “Let’s not try to make this into something it’s not.”
I promised him marriage; I didn’t promise him love.
Now he watches his cigarette burn. “People speak well of your betrothed. Was he good to you?”
What kind of question is that? Henri was good to me, good for me, perfect in every way . . . and even if he wasn’t, I’ll always say he was, because he’s forever young and forever dead.
Like he can read my mind, Travert asks, “So he was a saint? Whereas you and me, we’re just made of flesh and blood.”
“I don’t want to talk about Henri.”
Travert drops the ashes of his cigarette into a crystal tray. “Okay. But I have to say this much . . . I know I can’t be him. I wouldn’t try . . . And I can’t be her either.”
I try to guard my eyes, but too late. If he didn’t know about my feelings for Anna before, he does now. He’s a good detective. Maybe he guessed when he interrogated me about the graffiti and Anna put her arm around me in a hug. Maybe I’m more transparent than I think. Now he’s caught me at a vulnerable moment, shocked me by guessing those feelings I’m too depraved even to count as sins. And my mouth is too dry to deny it.
He’s stripped me bare with six words. Now he tries to absolve me with four more. “Who can explain love?” He shrugs like it doesn’t matter. But it does. I want to say so. I want to say something, anything, even if just to deny it, but I can’t get the words out.
“We want who we want, Marthe.”
“Shut up,” I finally hiss.
“You can’t have either of them, but you can have me. It doesn’t have to be love, but we can still make it something.”
This marriage is a mistake. I want an annulment, but as I try to get up off the bed to get dressed, he catches my wrist. He knows he’s gone too far. That he’s upset me. “I’m sorry.”
I just glare, but when he lets go of me, I don’t move and neither does he. The music swells on the radio. We’re silent for a long time. Eventually he asks, “Do you want me to go?”
How bitter I am to realize that the answer is no. I don’t love Yves Travert—I don’t even like him. At least, I don’t want to like him. I tell myself he’s not funny or dashing or sophisticated, and he’s older than me by a decade. He’s just a burly village gendarme. A plodder trying to get by.
But somehow he’s also the only person in my whole life I don’t have to lie to, and that makes me say, “Stay.”
He nods, stubs out his cigarette, climbs into bed in shorts and a sleeveless white undershirt. He’s all brawny shoulders and hairy arms, and I want to feel revulsion when he reaches for me. I want to feel violated. He’s got muscles like stone, and I want to hammer against them until I provoke him to do something terrible to me.
Then he hugs me, which is the most terrible thing of all . . .
I actually gasp when he pulls me close. His big arms tighten around me, not in lust, but to give comfort—and I burst into tears. I’ve never liked anyone to see me cry, not ever. My whole life, I’ve held back the flood . . . only for the dam to burst on the shoulder of a man whose middle name I just learned today.
And now I cling to him, sobbing in the crook of his neck. I can’t seem to stop. I’m crying all the tears I haven’t felt like I deserved to shed for Henri. All the tears I’m not entitled to cry over Anna. All the tears I’ve been holding back for every kind of reason, as petty as my stalled ambitions and as big as my nation’s shame.