When Michaela finally found her way through the labyrinth of halls and back through the kitchen to the dance floor, Brittany had resurfaced. Michaela snaked her way across the dance floor and held onto both of her friend’s hands, as she was very drunk and stumble-dancing. Her updo was down in ragged ringlets. She had lost an earring, and the heel on one shoe was gone. In a slurry voice she yelled into Michaela’s ear that she had to pee and started to lift her skirt up right then and there. Michaela half-dragged her towards the room where they had checked their coats, managed to gather all their stuff, and dressed Brittany back into her winter gear as best she could. Before Michaela could stop her, Brittany wobbled back into the main hall. Michaela fell back against a wall, completely overheated now and exasperated. She couldn’t leave Brit there. But then there she was, red-faced and laughing, pulling a full bottle of vodka out of each coat pocket like a six-gun. By the time they hit the stormy street, they were pulling each other along the slippery sidewalks, laughing like teenagers and feeling alive the way only the young and the new can.
Five
ROMÉO LEDUC rifled through his top dresser drawer, looking for a pair of clean underwear. He couldn’t remember whether he’d left some at Marie’s or not. He could, of course, bring a few pairs to throw in with her laundry, but he did not want to show up like some dumb college kid on school break with his dirty clothes for maman to wash. He finally found an old but still serviceable set of boxer briefs and threw them in his small duffel bag along with a fresh shirt and the sweater Marie had bought him for Christmas. He didn’t like it much and hadn’t worn it after the holidays ended, but he suspected it would be a welcome gesture tonight. Roméo downed the dregs of his single malt as he stepped into his bathroom and peered at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. As he examined the stubble of beard, he thought about shaving—but then he’d never make it in time. He had to get ahead of the imminent snowstorm, or he wouldn’t make it to Marie’s at all, and his window of opportunity was closing fast. He examined his left then his right profile, and thought he saw the beginnings of a double chin. He was definitely not shaving now. Marie always told him he looked like her childhood heartthrob, Gregory Peck, as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite being the healthiest of the cops he knew—all of whom seemed to eat nothing but McDonald’s and Tim Hortons—he couldn’t help but notice he seemed to have aged since he turned fifty. Had he taken a coup de vieux? He scratched at his beard and noted how much grayer it was than just a few months ago. Marie often pointed out yet another gendered injustice of aging: male gray was distinguished and female gray was just old and over the hill. He had to admit that men certainly got the better deal when it came to—well, practically everything. Still, what was a barely noticeable thickening when he quit smoking was now definitely a paunch, despite how many sit- ups he did. His once perfect vision was perfect no longer. He’d become one of those people who peered at a book or newspaper an arm’s length from his face but refused to buy glasses.
Roméo quickly ran a comb through his still mostly dark brown hair, and then checked his watch. He would be there in forty minutes if he left right now. As he passed through his small and spartan living room, he glanced at the two thick sets of files on his kitchen table. He had been looking through his new case load that morning and debated bringing them along. As Chief Inspector for Homicide in the district of St. Jerome, a bedroom community in the lower Laurentians, the good news was there hadn’t been a homicide in his largely rural district for almost three months. The bad news was there hadn’t been a homicide in his largely rural district for almost three months, so in the interim he had been put in charge of the Sûreté du Québec’s Cold Case squad for the greater Montreal region. Roméo was tasked with tackling a backlog of unsolved murders dating back almost fifty years, focusing on cases involving women and children, especially. Roméo had never worked cold cases before, and he couldn’t help but think this was the SQ’s way of telling him retirement wasn’t so far off.
The other good news was that he was now head of a team of about seventeen officers, and one of them was Nicole LaFramboise, finally returning after a one-year maternity leave, and a one-year transfer to Labelle, two hours north of Montreal. Nicole was his best officer. Despite the very drunken sex they’d had one night several years earlier, they were still very good partners as detectives, and now that Nicole’s baby was in daycare and she had lost that disaster of a boyfriend, things were looking up. Roméo remembered when Nicole first told him she was pregnant, and how for one terrifying moment he had thought the baby was his. But it wasn’t. Nicole was so thrilled to find a good man, who was so doting and so in love with her and the baby. Or the idea of a baby. But he quickly became a liability. He flew into rages when the baby kept them up all night. Left Nicole for hours and then days at a time. She finally threw him out when the baby was only eight months old, and she discovered he had a new girlfriend. Nicole was too angry and disappointed to be heartbroken. She just wanted him gone. Now the father saw the baby one weekend a month, which seemed to be what he wanted all along. Poor Nicole. It was a constant source of amazement to Roméo how often people totally misjudged each other. Or in her case, invented an entire person who didn’t actually exist. They were doomed to fail.
Roméo’s thoughts wandered back to the first time he and Marie had had sex—or tried to. They had planned a romantic evening at a hotel in Old Montreal. They booked supper at l’Epicurien—a restaurant that was so upscale and soigné that it didn’t even have a sign. Marie ate an enormous surf and turfish thing. Roméo couldn’t even remember what he had—he was not such a fan of high-end anything, and as a vegan, there were few options on the menu. He just remembered Marie’s beaming face, how much she enjoyed teasing the obsequious waiter, their mutual nervousness over the expectation of intimacy—the knowledge that they were going to soon cross that romantic Rubicon. By the time they got to their very chic and tasteful room, Marie was already feeling queasy. By the time Roméo emerged from the bathroom ready to romance, Marie had thrown up all over the bed. Then she projectile vomited all over the bathroom. When it was all over twenty-four hours later, he joked about the lengths women would go to not to have sex with him. Marie was as weak as a newborn and smelled pretty awful. But still, he could not get over how lovely she was. Roméo smiled as he thought about how they finally did the deed the next day. At first they were so nervous, they couldn’t stop laughing. Then Marie just took his face in her hands and kissed him with such tenderness it was the most erotic experience he’d ever had. Roméo wondered if moving in together could ruin their relationship. In fact, he was quite nervous about it, and sometimes he felt like they should just leave things as they are. On ne réveille pas le chat qui dort.
Roméo picked up the files and then dropped them back on the table. He would be too tempted not to pore over them, and he and Marie’s Saturday evenings together were sacred—they permitted no phone or email checking, no texting, no communication with the outside world—unless Roméo got called to an emergency. Suddenly, Roméo heard a rush of wind at his front door, which actually seemed to blow his daughter, Sophie, into his tiny foyer.