Page 120 of Where the Snakes Sleep

“I’m sorry.” My voice breaks completely now. “I’m so fucking angry at you, but I read all of that, and I kept thinking about you being a little kid, and I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how I’m supposed to look at you and be furious when your mom was murdered, and your dad—Jesus Christ, your dad—and—and Alberte didn’t keep his promise.”

Camille’s face crumples for half a second before he regains control. “He was afraid,” he reasons quietly. “Do not carry his guilt, Ryan. It’s not your burden. You are not responsible for anything that happened back then.”

“I know that intellectually.”

“That distinction matters.”

“Does it?” I gesture toward the journal. “Because I’m standing here reading about my grandfather telling your mother to wait when she wanted to go to the police. He handed Fournier’s card to Henri, and then Fournier died. He promised Nadia he would tell you she didn’t abandon you, and instead he fucked off to America. How exactly am I supposed to separate myself from that when I’m the person who inherited the house and found the evidence he was too scared to release? When I’m his grandson?”

Camille steps forward, then realizes what he is doing and stops himself. “By remembering that you were not born when any of those decisions were made. And even if you were, you are not culpable for mistakes someone else made, related or not.”

His shoulders have lowered, and his face seems exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with the afternoon spent looking for me.

“Ryan, I know what I say may be seen as worthless to you now, but I need you to hear this. I don’t know when I began wanting you to stay for reasons that had nothing to do with Alberte,” he continues. “There was no singular moment. I simply realized that I had begun counting how long it had been since I had seen you. I knew what foods you liked without intending to memorize them. I noticed when you stayed later after sex and was disappointed when you left quickly. I began anticipating your arguments before you arrived and enjoying them despite myself. I started looking toward your cottage because I wanted to know whether you were home rather than because I was thinking about what might be hidden there.”

My throat tightens, and Camille takes a breath that trembles slightly on the way in.

“I began this badly, Ryan. I began it selfishly and with motives you never consented to. But whatever this became afterward was not an act.”

I hate how desperately I want to believe him.

“That doesn’t erase the beginning.”

“No.”

“Or the lies.”

“No.”

I stare at him until my vision blurs again. “Then I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Nothing.” Camille’s answer is immediate. “You do not owe me reassurance. You do not owe me forgiveness. You do not even owe me the opportunity to explain further than you have already allowed.”

My eyes drop toward the journal. “And the evidence?”

His gaze follows mine but does not linger. “What about it?”

“You’ve spent twenty-three years looking for this.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re just standing there.”

Something almost bitter twists through his expression. “Would you prefer I lunge across the kitchen and rip it out of your hands?”

“No,” I mumble.

“Neither would I.”

“But you want them.”

“More than I can explain.”

The honesty hurts.

Camille looks toward the hole again, and for the first time I see what it costs him not to move toward it. His whole body seems oriented around restraint, as though every instinct that carried him through decades of searching is screaming at him to cross the room.

He doesn’t; rather, he looks at me. “But they are yours.”