So I fell to my knees in the Rocamadour cemetery and begged them to open the coffin.
Because I had heard something.
A faint knock.
Weak.
Dry.
Coming from inside.
Everyone in our small corner of the Lot region kept saying Claire had passed “according to God’s will.”
I did not believe it.
Not this time.
Not when my son, Julien, had not shed a single tear.
Not when he kept checking his watch every few minutes, as if burying his wife was an appointment he wanted finished quickly.
Not when he refused to let me see her one last time.
Claire had arrived at the maternity ward in Cahors in the middle of the night, nine months pregnant, one hand pressed to her stomach and the other gripping my wrist so tightly it hurt.
She was sweating.
She was shaking.
And just before the nurses took her through the swinging doors, she looked at me with eyes I would never forget.
Not the eyes of a woman afraid of pain.
The eyes of a woman afraid of someone.
“Don’t let him take my baby, Madeleine…” she whispered.
Then she was gone.
My name is Madeleine Delorme. I am sixty-four years old. I have buried my husband, my sister, and more hopes than I can count.
But I had never buried a woman still carrying so many secrets.
At five in the morning, Julien stepped into the maternity ward corridor.
Clean shirt.
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