Chapter 78 Chapter Seventy-Seven

I spent three weeks at Le Bains and the convent, making useless phone calls, searching for the proper French to express my urgency. Sometimes there is a detective and his men with a nonchalant expression next to me, and other times I have nothing but tears to accompany me. "At first, I just hoped to see Helen still alive, walking towards me with her usual detached smile, but in the end, with a bitter, little desire left, I only hoped to find her mutilated limbs. I'm almost reluctant to admit that I want her body for another purpose - to find out if she died of natural causes or if I need to finish the hard work I've done on Rosie's behalf.

"Finally, my mother and father convinced me that I couldn't go on like this forever, that I should take you back to New York, and I could come back and watch it again. They reassured me that if Helen was alive, someone would see her In the end, I gave up, not because of these assurances, but because of the forest itself, the dizzyingly steep cliffs, and the silence that surrounded me every time I stopped to search. "Before I left, I asked the abbot to bless Helen at the end of the corridor where she jumped off the cliff. He said a mass, surrounded by the monks around him, and raised one ritual object after another to the vast sky, I don't care What are these things. My parents stood with me. My mother wiped away her tears quickly. You writhed in my arms and I held you tight. You breathed against my cheek, your little arms Hold my neck, obediently."