Page 15

"Last Christmas there were two guys keeping watch on the drive all night, standing in the cold. I thought they were staff," he says.

"Hmmm, well, they were staff."

Nobody in my family has ever lied to him. My father is indeed in shipping. The men on the drive were staff. Every word in these statements are technically true and not one of them honest. I was fluent in lying before I could ride a bike.

"We've been together for four years, Manon," he says.

"I know."

"Four years, and you have been lying to me⁠—"

"Well, at the time, there was no need to tell you any of it. And it wasn’t lying. Just omission."

"What? I don't understand."

"At eighteen, I told my family I didn't want to be any part of it. Never took a dollar off them after that. I took out student loans and I’m still paying them like everyone else. I built my life on my own merit so I'd never have to stand in a kitchen saying any of this to anybody, and it worked for fifteen years." A small sound escapes my lips, a half-sob, betraying me. "Fifteen years of not wanting to associate with my own family except for the social aspects on holidays and the occasional conversation. That's not a thing you celebrate."

"It doesn’t explain not telling me."

"No. It doesn't."

He looks at the ceiling. I do love him, and we could have had a great future together, but not anymore.

"Julien," he says. "Where was he Thursday?"

So I tell him, in the voice I use when I'm telling a wife her husband isn't waking up—flat, slow, no surprises … because if I let any emotion into it I don't think I could stay calm for long. I talk about the club, about Nicko and Julien stabbing him four times.

"Why isn't he in custody?"

"Because there were no police at the scene and it was all handled internally. Novak's people took care of my brother." I put the coffee down. "They had him on his knees, gagged, about six feet away while the whole family was dining in the garden, eating duck."

"And you did what?"

"I went to speak to them and managed to get him back."

"How?"

My hands are steady, but I want to scream at Charles. We have been over this and over this, and I have been very patient.

"I agreed to marry the man who was ready to kill Julien in that garden, in front of his mother and his brother." Charles has stopped moving entirely. "Laszlo Novak... He owns several funeral homes. The funerals are the legal half of his business."

“You’re marrying this guy.” Charles scratches his head and then laughs. God … and we were doing so well. I think I need to leave now. Then his eyes widen. "Let's go to Montreal, to my mother's place," he says with such nervous excitement in his tone. "We'll be on a plane by lunchtime⁠—"

"You can't be serious. If I go, they take Julien and just kill him," I say, still wanting to fucking scream. "Maybe not now but when he's forty and has forgotten all about it."

"Then let him⁠—"

He doesn't finish the sentence and that's good, because I think I would have walked out if he had.

"Marry me," he says instead. What the fuck is going on here? Am I in some kind of matrix? My head is spinning.

Oh, Charles. This man is not getting this and I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.

"City hall opens at eight-thirty. Whatever this guy thinks he's owed, he can come and discuss it with me."

"He'd kill you."

"Let him try."