Page 142 of Where the Snakes Sleep

I blink. “Oh.”

Camille looks at me. “What?”

“He wrote that in the journal.”

I reach for the green book and flip backward, searching by memory until I find the entry from October 2003.

“There.” I point. “He said he chose to move to Virginia because Americans say Virginia is for lovers.”

As Camille reads it, my eyes go back to the paper, and an idea pops into my head. “The password clue. What if it has something to do with that?”

“Possibly.”

“Virginia?”

“We can try it.”

It isn’t Virginia.

Neither is VirginiaIsForLovers, virginiaisforlovers, lovers, or the French equivalent Camille tries after he very kindly points out that Alberte was French.

Eventually, while rereading the page, I notice a date beside a tiny notation written in the margin.

24.02.96

“That was one of the journal entries.”

Camille looks at me.

“The dinner,” I say. “When he was trying to fix things with Henri.”

I flip again and find it.

February twenty-fourth.

Flowers.

Dinner.

Dancing.

Choosing each other again.

My chest aches with the memory of reading it.

At the bottom of the case, underneath everything else, there’s a photograph I had overlooked because it had stuck to the plastic lining.

Henri and Alberte.

They are dancing.

Actually dancing.

Henri’s hand is at Grandpa’s waist, Alberte’s arm around his shoulder, both of them laughing at something outside the frame.

For several seconds, I can only stare.

The monster and the coward.