Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

“He is not there, mademoiselle,” Jacques said quietly. “I keep the peeled eye, but there is no such car since Paris. From now, we will have the smooth sailboat.”

Just as he uttered these words, a low rumbling sound began in the distance and spread across the sky above them.

Jacques chuckled. “Too soon do I speak, yes? Tonight it will be the rain.”

The ancient Gallic stronghold that would eventually become the city of Besançon was built on an oxbow in the Doubs river, a tributary of the Saône, close to what is now the border of France and Switzerland. The original town inside the curve is surrounded on three sides by water and was once protected on the south by the magnificent citadel on Mont Saint-Étienne. Six other hills ring it, some with their own smaller fortresses. The modern city sprang up in the valley across the river from the old quarter. Besançon is the capital of the Franche-Comté, the free county, France’s last incorporated province.

It was twilight when the Renault Modus crossed the bridge into the old town. Nora and Jeff had stayed there overnight on their honeymoon, in a little guesthouse near the foot of the mountain. Now she remembered two things about the neighborhood that she could use: a pleasant restaurant with sidewalk tables and a florist. She hoped they were still there. They were; while Jacques waited at a table outside the café, Nora walked around the corner to the little shop where Jeff had bought flowers. The woman there was just closing for the day, but she smiled and wrapped a dozen red roses for Nora.

The specialty of the restaurant was a savory beef stew with peas, leeks, and new potatoes, as delicious as she remembered. Jacques liked it too, and he suggested a burgundy to go with it, explaining that it was bottled “just down the road.” He ordered a glass for her, but he drank only water. She wasn’t a bit surprised to see that he had perfect manners, any more than she’d been when he readily agreed to join her for dinner. By now, very little about this charming man would surprise her.

Nora looked around, delighted. She’d enjoyed her day here twenty-one years ago. She and Jeff had spent the morning exploring the old town, including the cathedral and the birthplaces of Victor Hugo and the Lumière brothers, and then they’d stormed the sprawling citadel above the city in the afternoon. She recalled the spectacular views from the battlements overlooking the river valley, and she remembered the museum in the fort dedicated to the French Resistance fighters and deportees of World War II, when the Germans occupied the citadel until the Americans expelled them. It was a beautiful city in a dramatic setting of blue river and green hills, rolling away as far as she could see.

Still, as nice as it was, she and Jeff hadn’t made that long-ago trip from Paris just for the sights. It had been a personal journey for her husband. Late that afternoon, they’d driven their rental car out of town, to the south, on roads that climbed up into the hills, arriving at sunset in the tiny mountain village where his mother’s family had once lived. He’d shown Nora the little house in a row of similar houses at one end of the village’s only street, not far from the gray stone church. As a teen, Jeff had spent several summers there with his mother and his widowed great-aunt, Jeanette, while his father traveled for business back in the States.

His great-uncle, René, had been a woodsman like his brother, Henri, Jeff’s grandfather. The two brothers had chopped down pine trees in the wild woods beyond the village. All four of Jeff’s grandparents had died before he was born, and he’d never known his great-uncle, René, either. Grand-tante Jeanette had served as honorary grandparent for Jeff; she’d taught him to play the piano on her ancient spinet and sent him off with some of the men in the town to learn how to fell trees. He’d loved the village and working with the men in the forest and, most of all, his great-aunt’s baking. He hadn’t been able to get enough of her croissants and spice cookies and Black Forest cakes.

He and Nora had looked at his great-aunt’s house from the road because new people had lived there and he hadn’t wanted to impose on them. Then he’d taken Nora into the big wrought-iron-fenced cemetery behind the church and placed a dozen red roses on Grand- tante Jeanette’s grave. He’d told his bride that she had loved red roses and he made this pilgrimage whenever he was in Europe. He’d brought Nora there, he said, so he could share these memories with her. Nora had been moved by his revelation. She already loved him, of course-she had been carrying his child-but seeing that aspect of her groom’s character had deepened her affection for him.

Now she relaxed at the sidewalk table in Besançon, sipping coffee as she and her driver watched the locals strolling by. Somewhere, in a bar or nightclub down the street, a girl was singing a lively chanson to the accompaniment of an accordion, and after a while other voices joined in. The lights of the shops and houses were just coming on when another ominous peal of thunder told her it was time to go. As the raucous singing ended in laughter and applause, Nora asked for the check.

Just before they got up from the table, Jacques said, “ Un moment, mademoiselle. This village, Pinède-Is mademoiselle meeting someone?”

She thought about how to answer this, finally deciding that there was no reason to be duplicitous with him.

“If all goes well,” she said, picking up the roses, “I’ll be meeting my husband there.”

He raised his eyebrows at this. “So, I should not be calling you mademoiselle. You are madame.”

“Mademoiselle will do,” she told him, and they walked back to the car. Nora took a nostalgic look around before she got in, remembering how happy she’d been the last time she was here, and why. She smiled at the quiet streets and squares, and up at the former military garrison on the ridge above them. This time she sat in the front seat beside him, and Jacques drove around Mont Saint-Étienne to the southbound autoroute.

Dix roses pour Grand-tante J ce soir: Ten roses for Great-aunt Jeanette tonight . Jeff had always placed a full dozen roses at her grave-it was part of his ritual-so the ten in the message was obviously the time Nora was to be there. He’d be waiting for her in the churchyard, he would explain everything, and he’d take that damned manila envelope from her. He’d tell her why she’d had to come to France, and then to this remote part of it, and he’d assure her that everything was all right now. He’d have his own rental car, so Jacques could follow them back to Paris. They’d stop somewhere on the way, a room for them and a room for Jacques. She’d sleep in her husband’s arms while the rain fell outside, washing over everything, making the world clean and clear once more.

As evening and the gathering rain clouds darkened the sky, she fought her urge to make another wish. This was no time to tempt fate. The car continued on its way toward the distant mountains.

The little ribbon of road wound up around the hillside, curving and zigzagging as it unspooled before them. The beams of the headlights revealed an ever-changing view: now a press of tall fir trees on both sides of the car, now the sudden arrival of open sky, with a stone-and-metal guardrail protecting them from a plunge of several hundred feet. Even Jacques, the speed demon, knew better than to zip around these treacherous turns. He slowed the car from time to time, inspecting the signposts at every turnoff, looking for the right one.

“ Prie Dieu … Caprice de Coeur -the names these villages have!” he exclaimed at one point. Nora thought they sounded lovely. She could see the occasional settlement as they passed, groups of lights winking from the forest or perched in a hanging valley overlooking the Doubs, which flowed through the plains far below. Some of the landscape looked familiar, and when the car abruptly veered away from the valley and crossed a stone bridge over a stream, she knew they were close.