Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

He’d been drowning in lies for years. And what did he do when he was sinking like a stone? Make up more untruths. The strange thing was, the more he lied, the easier it was to convince himself he was telling the truth. He knew he was digging himself a hole, but somehow he found it comforting. To pull the cover of a project over his pain, the way others might hang a fancy tapestry to hide a crack in a wall. It was like last night: the more he danced, the more he felt like dancing.

Sébastien folded the blanket, stood up from the sofa and went over to the patio door. It was hard for him to admit, but he’d had the wind knocked out of his sails. That morning, he hadn’t been able to break the news to his father that his mother had bought herself a condo in Longueuil and wouldn’t be coming out to join him in the Gaspesian dream they had shared. Sébastien would have felt embarrassed, spouting about his father’s blind subservience to his wife while eating his food. And now, waking up to the sight of the sea with a vaguely clear head, he didn’t feel like dredging up the reasons why he’d left Maude. Come to think of it, maybe it was better that way: he should catch his breath and reconnect with his father before standing up to him.

The sea was shimmering in the sun. Down at the foot of the cliff, to the west, Sébastien could see his father setting up to fish. He checked his line, then cast it over the water. The lure made a little ripple as it broke the surface. The line started to reel out. It looked like he’d got a bite. On the first cast? That’d be a stroke of luck. Sébastien watched his father give the line some slack, walk a few steps to the left and try to reel the line in. Ah, no. The hook must have caught on something. He gave it some more slack, walked a few steps to the right, and tried to reel the line in again. Still stuck. That was strange, Sébastien thought, because his father had said it was deep around there.

Maybe a deer had fallen off the cliff, or something. In sync, father and son both turned towards the rock face and squinted. This was going to be painful. They looked back towards the trench, wondering what the hook could have snagged on.

Of course, Joaquin could just cut the line. He wasn’t worried about losing a cheap lure. But there shouldn’t have been anything down there to get snagged. Sébastien watched from inside as his father shrugged his shoulders and made up his mind. Joaquin leaned his rod up against the red rocks and took off his shoes and socks.

Then a phone rang. It startled Sébastien. Wait, wasn’t that the same ring that had woken him? He looked around for the device and found it sitting on the kitchen counter. ‘Private number’, said the caller ID. Sébastien hurried back to the patio door, opened it and called down to Joaquin, but he was too busy taking off his shirt and trousers and readying himself to wade into the chilly water to hear.

Sébastien answered the call. ‘Wait a sec, my dad’s just gone for a dip. I’ll go fetch him.’

He grabbed a towel from the bathroom before picking up the phone again and dashing down the steps that clung to the side of the cliff.

He set the phone and towel down on a rock, picked up the fishing rod and let the line go. And waited. At last something moved, and his father surfaced and swam quickly back to shore. ‘The hook got caught on a tree trunk,’ he said.

Sébastien smiled and began to reel the line in now that it was free. ‘Is it cold?’

‘Freezing.’ Joaquin emerged shivering from the water and reached for the towel.

‘Here, there’s someone on the phone for you.’

Moralès raised the phone to his ear while his son busied himself with the rod, tackle box and pile of discarded clothes. ‘Hello?’

‘Detective Moralès?’

Joaquin Moralès glanced at his son, who was already climbing back up to the house. ‘Speaking.’

‘Lieutenant Forest here.’

He tried to towel himself dry with one hand.

‘Oh good, I was going to give you a call. I’d like to take a few days off.’

He’d been due to take three weeks’ holiday since the day he moved into this place on the shore of the Baie-des-Chaleurs, but his new boss had always found a reason to snatch the time away. She’d thrown a homicide at him as he’d pulled into the driveway of his new home for the first time. After that, there had been a string of thefts inland and a grave-robbing to take care of.

Moralès was a patient man, though. He hadn’t brought it up again, because he’d been planning to take the time off when his wife came out to join him. However, with the unexpected arrival of Sébastien and his pots and pans, he thought it would be a good idea to take a few days to be with his son.

‘Detective Moralès, I’ve told you already, the Gaspé is no place to take a holiday.’

‘Well, it’s just that my son’s visiting and … er…’

Moralès wasn’t sure how to put it exactly. A mental-health memo had gone around at work recently, and he remembered reading that helping a relative in psychological distress was a valid reason for taking immediate family leave. But none of those words flowed as easily from the lips of a father and detective as they did from the pages of a pop psychology magazine.

‘My son needs … er…’

How could he ask for this? Moralès senior and junior hated explaining themselves to their bosses as much as they did father-son conversations.

‘I’d appreciate it if you could finish your sentence today, Moralès.’

‘I have to help him with his culinary experiments.’

The words sounded all wrong coming from him, like a trumpet in the middle of a piano solo. He could feel himself blushing like an idiot. His boss cleared her throat before replying with the measured control of someone doing her damnedest to quell a wave of sarcasm.

‘Moralès, how should I put this? You have to help me with a “detectiving experiment” over Forillon Park way.’

He felt ridiculous, but that wasn’t a reason to kow-tow to his boss’s demands. ‘That’s not my patch.’

‘Homicide detectives are few and far between in this neck of the woods, Moralès, and the SQ detachment in Gaspé needs help with a misper that came to light last night.’

‘You’re mixing up a disappearance with a homicide, lieutenant.’

Suddenly, Moralès realised he was shivering. He started back towards the house. Meanwhile, his boss was pretending she hadn’t heard him.

‘We share what resources we have around here, detective. Loaning your talent to our colleagues will buy precious time before they send a team from Montreal to take over. If they even bother.’

‘I’m already busy investigating the grave-robbing case…’

‘I’ve put Constable Robichaud on that.’

Moralès stepped inside the house. He couldn’t help but wonder whether the young rookie had told their boss precisely how Sébastien had arrived on the peninsula that morning.

‘Listen, my son’s here and I’d really like to…’

‘I hear what you’re saying. But whatever you’re cooking up, you’re doing it out there on the point in Gaspé, all right?’

There was no way he could tell the truth and say it wasn’t about cooking. He couldn’t say he thought his son needed help when he was right there, behind his pile of pots and pans, riffling through the kitchen cupboards.

‘To be honest, I thought about you specifically for this case,’ she purred.

Now his son was opening the fridge.

‘And why’s that, Lieutenant Forest?’

‘Because it’s a woman who’s missing.’

Suddenly his son was the least of his concerns; a chill of fear surged through him.

‘A woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘At sea?’

‘Yes.’

Marlène Forest was revelling in the silence. She was clearly taking advantage of his weakness. Joaquin glanced at the telescope he used to scan the horizon every day, hoping he’d see Catherine, the woman who tied his heart in knots, sailing home. He was hesitant to ask the question. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt.