“Oui.”
“But why would she say you’re dead? Why would you live in the basement? Why wouldn’t you tell people you’re husband and wife? Why . . .” She stopped herself. There were too many whys to list.
Frédéric shifted uncomfortably, and Simone cleared her throat. “I have told about our beginnings, mine and Angeline’s,” she told him. “You can now tell the rest.”
“I do not think—” he started.
“I do,” Simone said. “And I believe she would, too.” Frédéric didn’t respond to Simone, but he turned back to Markie, and after a deep breath, he said, “I was dead to her. The man she married, who vowed to be true, died, in her mind. I . . . betrayed her. Many, many years ago, I had a brief affair with another woman. It was a terrible thing. It devastated her.”
He looked to the corner of the ceiling as though there were a film there, replaying the scene where she discovered his infidelity and fell to her knees, sobbing.
“We were trying to have children, and I destroyed all of that. She told me to leave, to never see her again, and that destroyed me. I was a cochon to her, but I needed her like I needed air. I fell apart on my own, without her, with the guilt of what I had done. I started to drink more and more. I had started this before the affair, to be true, but I am making no excuses. Alcohol did not cheat on my wife—I did.
“All I did was work and drink,” Frédéric said, and to Markie’s surprise, she saw Simone nod as though this part of his story was not new to her. “Until the drinking got too much and I lost my job. I had been a promising engineer with a beautiful wife, maybe children someday soon, and now I was renting a room in a house, passed out most of the day. Going nowhere.
“I stayed away, as she told me. But she heard things, and she came looking for me. She dragged me home and pointed to the basement stairs and told me I could stay as long as I did not drink. I quit right away. Well, with help. This was a condition she set: I had to promise to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every day and to keep no alcohol in the house.
“I did not want to live there without making a contribution, so we agreed I would look after the house, the property. And when she began to bring in people to work for her, I served as the foreman, of a sort. Kept them organized. Kept them on the tasks that she set.”
“She went out and found you?” Markie asked. “After everything? And brought you home? She must have still loved you.”
Frédéric sighed. “She was careful to tell me it did not matter if she loved me anymore or not. She told me that when my parents allowed her family to hide in our barn, they did not love them, or like them, for that matter—they did not even know them. But they took them in anyway. Angeline told me she must do the same for me or it would be a dishonor to her parents for choosing our barn, for trusting our family with their little girls.”
“It was not only that,” Simone said. “Of course she still loved you. I do not believe she could have ever stopped. She had every bit as much need for you as you did for her.”
Frédéric smiled at his sister-in-law. “Perhaps. I would certainly like to believe that. But perhaps it is simply that she saw someone in need of help and wanted to provide it.”
Turning to Markie, he chuckled softly and said, “I was the original Defective, you might say.”
“Did she tell you about all this?” Markie asked Simone. “The affair, and . . . all of it?”
“Non. We were not talking, her and I. But him and I”—she nodded to her brother-in-law—“we have always kept in touch. Only maybe once per year, and not in any big detail. I did not know about these other people she has taken in, for one. But I knew he was in the basement, and I knew why. He told me this.”
Mouth open, Markie looked from Simone to Frédéric. She barely knew Simone, but she was amazed Frédéric would have kept up secret communications with someone without Mrs. Saint’s knowledge.
“What is it?” Frédéric asked, before she could turn away or erase the puzzled look from her face.
“I’m just a little surprised,” Markie said. “You two have been talking behind her back?”
Frédéric faltered, and Markie wished she could take her question back. He had confessed a major indiscretion. Did she need to point out a minor one?
“I’m sorry—” she began.
Simone cut her off. “I do not believe any of this was behind her back,” she said. “I think she knew. I think she expected it.”
“She would wonder aloud sometimes,” Frédéric said. “And I would posit a guess. ‘I suppose she married a wealthy man in New York.’ ‘I imagine they have had children.’ ‘I expect it was sons.’” He smiled at Simone. “She always listened intently, you know.”
“So it sounds like she did forgive you,” Markie said to Simone. “For whatever reason she thought you needed forgiveness. And even though she didn’t think forgiveness could be granted by a person . . .”
“She did not think she could be forgiven by a person,” Simone said. “She thought her sin, her disloyalty to our family, was too great for that. In her mind, this”—she gestured to Frédéric and the affair he had confessed to—“did not rise nearly to the level of what she had done.”
Frédéric agreed. “She blamed herself for my affair and for the drinking,” he said. “She said she had driven me to it by forcing me to hide my own past all these years. I told her of course that it was not the least bit true, but she remained convinced. Allowing me to live in the basement was in part her way of trying to make up for the wrong she felt she had done me.”
“But I don’t understand,” Markie said. “If she felt it was wrong, why did she continue the charade? Calling herself French Canadian. A Catholic.”
“She was not a simple woman, our Angeline,” Frédéric said, his eyes on Simone. “She felt it was the right thing to do for herself. But she knew it came with consequences. Painful ones. To her and also to other people.” He gestured to Simone, then himself.
“Why wouldn’t she have reached out to Simone years ago, then?” Markie asked him. “Why, if she was doing so much to try to make things up to you, would she not have done the same for her sister?”
“She was not without her faults,” Simone said. “But I am not without mine. I did not contact her when I heard that her marriage”—she gestured to Frédéric—“their marriage, had ended. I knew, and I could imagine how devastated she was, and yet I did not call or write. It was a big, terrible moment in her life, and her own sister did not offer solace.”
“You were still so angry with her for betraying your family,” Markie offered.