She ran down the stairs. I followed her.
When she reached the front door, she pressed her eye to the peephole.
And she screamed so loudly that a chill ran through me:
“Don’t come back! Go away! Go away! He’s back… he’s back for revenge!”
I pulled her aside and looked in her direction.
There was no one there.
Just the damp driveway, the closed gate, the shadows of the cypress trees in the moonlight.
I didn’t sleep that night.
Or the next.
Three days later, the phone buzzed again.
Elias
I answered, already crying.
And I heard that voice again, the one I’d carried with me since he was born.
“Mom, it’s me. I’m alive. I’ll explain tomorrow. At nine at the Café des Ombres. Come alone. And above all… above all, don’t tell Valérie.”
With that, the call ended.
I stood still, clutching the phone in my hand, my heart pounding in my ribs as if it were about to burst.
How could a son, mourned without a body, live?
And why was his own wife so afraid of his return?
The truth would not only bring the dead man back to life.
It would also unmask the murderer.
