Devotion After Dark

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Solenne barely slept that night.

She had spent hours lying beneath the thin blanket, staring at the ceiling while the conversation outside replayed itself in her mind. Every time she reached the part where she had told him she planned to stay for two months, she found herself remembering the exact change in his expression.

It had been subtle.

Almost nothing.

A slight stillness in his face. A pause that lasted only a little longer than it should have. Something had passed through his eyes before he concealed it, and that tiny reaction had bothered her far more than any dramatic confession could have.

She hated that she had noticed. She hated even more that she could not stop thinking about it. Perhaps she was simply looking for meaning because she had already convinced herself there was a mystery.

That seemed much more reasonable.

Solenne had always known that the human mind liked patterns. Give someone two unrelated details and eventually, they would find a way to connect them. She could already imagine herself doing exactly that—taking an old photograph, a strangely familiar face, a quiet mansion, and an odd conversation, then weaving them together until she had created something far more mysterious than reality actually was.

Maybe the man in the photograph only looked like him.

Maybe the photograph had been altered.

Maybe the date was wrong.

Maybe she had misunderstood everything.

There were countless ordinary explanations. She simply had not found one yet. That thought should have comforted her. It didn't.

By morning, she was irritated with herself for still caring.

She got dressed and went downstairs earlier than usual, hoping breakfast and the familiar routine of her grandmother's house would force her thoughts into something more practical. The kitchen smelled of freshly cooked rice and coffee, and the quiet clattering of dishes should have made the morning feel completely ordinary.

Instead, Solenne sat at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup and wondered how a single photograph had managed to make an otherwise peaceful place feel unfamiliar.

She glanced toward the hallway. The old photograph box was upstairs. She knew exactly where she had put it. For some reason, she imagined it sitting there in the dark, silently keeping its secret.

She almost laughed at herself.

A box isn't keeping anything.

That was ridiculous. And yet she had never felt so aware of an object before.

Her grandmother eventually noticed her distraction. “You're quiet.”

Solenne looked up. “I haven't said anything yet.”

“Exactly.”

A small smile appeared on Solenne's face, but it disappeared when she remembered the question she had been carrying since last night.

She lowered her gaze toward her coffee. “Lola?”

“Hm?”

“Do you know the Vale family?”

Her grandmother's hand stopped. Only for a moment.

But Solenne noticed. She immediately felt a small spark of satisfaction, followed by something less pleasant. So, she wasn't imagining it. There was something about that family.

Her grandmother resumed what she was doing. “Why are you asking?”

“I met him again last night.”

Her grandmother's expression changed.

It was a small alteration, almost too controlled to notice, but Solenne had spent enough time with her to recognize when something had unsettled her. The older woman paused in the middle of folding a kitchen towel, her fingers remaining still against the fabric as she looked at her granddaughter.

“The young man from the mansion?”

Solenne frowned. “He's not that young.”

Her grandmother raised her eyes toward her.

Solenne immediately regretted the remark. She had not intended to sound defensive, much less give the impression that she had been paying particular attention to the man. She barely knew him, after all. He was simply someone she had encountered near the old property, a stranger whose unusual manner had caught her curiosity.

“I mean...” She glanced toward the window, searching for a better explanation. “He doesn't seem like someone who should be living alone in that house.”

Her grandmother said nothing.

Solenne waited, expecting her to ask what she meant or perhaps offer some explanation about the property and the people who had once lived there. Instead, her grandmother returned to folding the towel, her movements careful and deliberate.

“Lola.”

“Stay away from that house.”

The warning came so plainly that Solenne momentarily forgot what she had intended to ask.

“Why?”

“Because I asked you to.”

Solenne stared at her, disappointment quickly giving way to irritation. She was not particularly interested in disobeying her grandmother, but she was old enough to recognize when someone was deliberately avoiding a question. Her grandmother had always been straightforward with her, even when the truth was unpleasant or the answer was something Solenne did not want to hear. This sudden refusal felt unfamiliar, as though an invisible barrier had been placed between them.

“You know something,” Solenne said.

Her grandmother sighed, setting the towel aside before looking at her again. “Some things are better left alone.”

The familiar phrase tightened something in Solenne's stomach. It was almost identical to what the man had told her when she had asked about the photograph, and the resemblance between their answers was difficult to dismiss. For a moment, she wondered whether they had spoken about her, whether her grandmother had already known she would meet him, or whether the similarity was simply another coincidence she was beginning to notice everywhere.

She pushed the thought aside when her grandmother reached across the table and gently took her hand.

“Just trust me.”

Solenne lowered her gaze toward their joined hands. She wanted to trust her. She had always trusted her grandmother, even when she did not understand her decisions, but trust became difficult when everyone seemed to know something that she had not been allowed to learn. Still, she gave a small nod, unwilling to turn the conversation into an argument.

“Okay.”

It was not quite an agreement. It was merely the easiest answer she could give without revealing how many questions remained unanswered.

Later that, dusk had already begun creeping across the town, swallowing the last traces of daylight, Solenne decided to walk into town. She genuinely needed a few things from the shops, though the errand was also a convenient excuse to spend some time away from the house and the uneasy conversation she had shared with her grandmother. She wanted to surround herself with familiar, ordinary things, hoping that the simple rhythm of provincial life might finally convince her that she had been giving too much importance to a single encounter and an old photograph.

The town offered enough distractions to occupy her thoughts. Children played along the roadside, their laughter carrying between the houses as motorcycles passed through the narrow streets. An elderly woman watered the plants outside her home, while a nearby shopkeeper cheerfully argued with a customer about the price of vegetables. The familiar sounds and everyday exchanges gradually eased the tension she had been carrying since morning.

For a while, Solenne almost managed to forget the photograph.

Then she saw him.

He stood across the street near a small shop, looking as though he had been there for some time. His dark clothes and composed posture made him noticeable among the people moving around him, although there was nothing particularly unusual about his appearance in the afternoon light. He seemed perfectly at ease, as if the town and its residents were familiar to him.

Solenne stopped walking.

Her first reaction was annoyance, followed closely by curiosity. She had spent much of the day trying to put him out of her mind, and now there he was, appearing at precisely the moment she had begun to feel normal again. She considered continuing along the road, pretending not to have seen him, but her questions returned with such force that she found herself crossing the street before she could reconsider.

He noticed her approaching, a faint flicker of surprise passing through his eyes.

“You're everywhere,” she remarked when she reached him.

A slight smile touched his mouth. “Perhaps you're simply noticing me more.”

The answer made her uncomfortable because it sounded entirely possible. Solenne folded her arms, trying to conceal the way his remark had caught her off guard.

“Do you always answer questions like that?”

“Only the ones I don't want to answer.”

“At least you're honest about it.”

“I find that saves time.”

She nearly laughed, though she quickly suppressed the impulse. It irritated her that he could make her forget her own frustration so easily. She studied his face instead, hoping that a closer look might reveal something she had overlooked during their previous meetings. In daylight, he seemed no less difficult to understand. There was a certain stillness about him, a quality she could not quite explain, but she reminded herself that people were often different from the way they first appeared.

Her attention shifted when the shopkeeper approached them.

“Not buying anything today?”

The man beside her gave a polite shake of his head. “No, thank you.”

The shopkeeper looked at him more closely, his expression gradually changing into one of recognition.

“Wait a minute. I haven't seen you around in years.”

Solenne glanced between them.

The stranger became noticeably still, although his expression remained composed.

“You used to come here with your father, didn't you?” the shopkeeper continued, sounding pleased to have remembered him.

“Yes,” the man answered quietly.

Solenne's curiosity sharpened. She had already suspected that he might have some connection to the old mansion, perhaps as a descendant of the family who had once owned it. The shopkeeper's remark seemed to support that possibility, and for a moment, she felt relieved to have found an explanation that did not require her to entertain increasingly unreasonable thoughts.

The man could simply be a relative.

Perhaps he had inherited the property from his family. Perhaps his father had once lived in the town, and the shopkeeper remembered him from years ago. There was nothing particularly strange about that.

“How long ago was that?” the shopkeeper asked.

The man paused briefly before answering. “Some time ago.”

The shopkeeper chuckled. “It must have been. Things were very different then.”

Solenne remained quiet, listening as the two exchanged a few more remarks about the town. The conversation was ordinary enough, but she could not ignore the way the man avoided looking in her direction. She wondered whether he had noticed her curiosity or whether he simply disliked being questioned about his family.

When the shopkeeper eventually returned to his work, Solenne turned toward him.

“So, you're connected to the family that owned the mansion?”

His eyes settled on her. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you seem to know the place, and apparently people here remember you from years ago.” She tilted her head slightly. “I'm guessing you're a relative.”

For a moment, he said nothing. His gaze rested on her with an unreadable expression, and Solenne wondered whether she had guessed correctly.

“Something like that,” he replied at last.

She narrowed her eyes. “That's not a very clear answer.”

“Perhaps you should ask a clearer question.”

Solenne gave him a disbelieving look. “You really enjoy making things difficult, don't you?”

“I wasn't aware that answering questions was a requirement of our conversations.”

“It isn't,” she said, “but it would certainly make them easier.”

His faint smile returned, and she found herself fighting another smile of her own. It was an irritating habit of his, this ability to turn her frustration into something almost amusing, especially when she knew perfectly well that he was avoiding the very things she wanted to understand.

They began walking along the street, moving past the small shops and houses that lined the road. Solenne listened as he made occasional remarks about the town, pointing out buildings that had changed over the years and mentioning places that no longer existed. His familiarity with the area surprised her, though she continued to attribute it to his family's history. If he had grown up visiting the province, then it made sense that he would remember its older streets and forgotten landmarks.

“You really know this place well,” she said.

“I've been around.”

Solenne glanced at him. “For how long?”

He looked back at her, but no answer followed.

She exhaled through her nose, disappointed but no longer surprised. It seemed that every conversation with him led her toward another unanswered question, leaving her to assemble whatever explanations she could from the few details he chose to share. She disliked that feeling more than she cared to admit. It was not simply the mystery surrounding him that bothered her; it was the growing awareness that she wanted him to trust her enough to explain it.

That realization made her uneasy.

She barely knew the man. He was a stranger who appeared to have a connection to an old family mansion, someone whose face had reminded her of a person in a photograph taken decades before she was born. There was no sensible reason for her to become so invested in his history, yet her curiosity had begun to extend beyond the photograph itself.

She wanted to know who he was, where he had come from, and why he seemed so reluctant to speak about his family.

Most of all, she wanted to understand why he sometimes looked at her as though she had reminded him of something he would rather forget.

By the time Solenne returned to her grandmother's house, the sunlight had begun to fade behind the trees. She greeted her grandmother briefly before heading upstairs, her thoughts already returning to the photograph box. She had tried to convince herself that the man was merely a relative of the family who had once occupied the mansion, but the possibility had left her with more questions than answers.

She placed the box on her bed and opened it again.

This time, she searched more carefully, separating the photographs according to their apparent age and examining the handwritten notes on their backs. Many showed unfamiliar faces gathered in front of old houses, sitting around dining tables or posing in formal clothing for occasions she could not identify. She recognized a few members of her family from the stories her grandmother had shared, but most of the people remained strangers to her.

Then she found him.

The photograph was slightly smaller than the others, its corners worn from years of handling. He stood beside a young woman whom Solenne recognized as her great-grandmother, though the image was old enough that she had never seen her looking so young. The man wore a dark formal suit, his expression serious as he faced the camera.

Solenne stared at the image.

It was the same face.

She searched through the remaining photographs, her movements becoming increasingly deliberate as she examined each one. Another image showed him standing near a group of people gathered outside a house. In a third, he appeared at the edge of a family gathering, partially obscured by someone standing in front of him. Each photograph seemed to place him in a different moment, yet his appearance remained remarkably consistent.

Solenne sat back, holding one of the photographs between her fingers.

One image could have been a case of mistaken identity. Even two might have been explained by an unusual resemblance between relatives. But seeing the same man in several photographs from the same period made it harder for her to maintain that explanation, particularly when she had spoken to him only hours earlier and heard him acknowledge that he had once visited the town with his father.

Perhaps he was related to someone in her family.

That possibility still made sense, but it did not explain why his appearance seemed unchanged.

She studied the photographs again, looking for a family resemblance, a familiar feature, anything that could connect him to the people whose names she knew. Her fingers rested against the edges of the paper as a troubling thought began to take shape.

What if he was not simply a relative?

The question unsettled her enough that she immediately tried to dismiss it. There had to be a reasonable explanation, even if she had not discovered it yet. She reminded herself that old photographs could be confusing, especially when they contained people whose histories had never been properly recorded.

Still, she could not ignore what she had seen.

Solenne moved the photographs aside and sat quietly on the edge of her bed. The room was silent except for the faint sounds of the household below, where her grandmother was preparing for the evening. She looked at the images scattered across the blanket, feeling an unfamiliar uncertainty settle over her.

She had come to the province expecting a quiet stay with her grandmother, not a mystery involving a man whose family seemed to have vanished into the past. Yet the more she learned about him, the more she felt that the photographs were connected to something her grandmother had deliberately kept from her.

A faint sound outside drew her attention toward the window.

Beyond the trees, the old mansion stood in the deepening dusk, its windows dark and its roof barely visible against the evening sky. Solenne watched it for a moment, remembering her grandmother's warning and the strange seriousness in the man's expression when she had mentioned the photograph.

She wondered whether he had been telling the truth about being related to the family.

Perhaps he had inherited the mansion. Perhaps he had returned to the town after many years away. Those explanations were still possible, and she held on to them because they were easier to accept than the alternatives her imagination continued to offer.

Her gaze returned to the photographs. The date written on the back: 1936.

Solenne traced the numbers with her eyes, then looked at the man in the image once more. She could still remember his voice from their conversation that afternoon, the calm manner in which he had answered the shopkeeper, and the way he had avoided giving her a direct explanation about his family.

For the first time, she wondered whether the man she had met had been trying to hide more than his connection to the mansion.

She gathered the photographs and placed them carefully back into the box, though she left the oldest one on her bed. Her grandmother's warning returned to her thoughts, followed by the man's equally evasive advice to leave his past alone.

Two different people had given her nearly the same warning.

And neither had explained why.

Solenne looked toward the window again. The mansion remained quiet and dark, giving her no indication of what might lie behind its closed doors. She had no reason to believe anyone lived there, nor any proof that the man she had encountered was anything more than a distant relative of the family whose photographs she had discovered.

Yet the questions continued to gather in her mind, refusing to settle into any explanation she could comfortably accept.

She looked down at the photograph one last time.

Perhaps the man was simply connected to her family's past.

Perhaps the resemblance was an extraordinary coincidence.

But if he was only a relative, why had he looked so troubled when she told him she had found the photograph?

And why had her grandmother been so frightened by the mere mention of him?