35Simon Valette stood in the midst of the ruin, surrounded by rubble and carefully sorted piles of stones, staring down the driveway where the coroner’s van had traveled hours earlier, on the way to the morgue with his father’s body.
Everything was entirely surreal. Death after death…and the feeling of unreality was compounded by the family’s recent move to Castillac, where they experienced serial traumas but did not have the comfort of people and places familiar to them.
My father is dead, Simon kept saying to himself over and over, trying to believe it.
Camille was in the kitchen, planning dinner with Merla. After Violette’s death, they had hired the cook to make dinner for the family twice a week, and thankfully the day of Raphael’s death was one of the appointed days; Camille did no
