A Brother’s Empty Room

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Lucien's room was smaller than Nico remembered.

Perhaps that was what happened to places people kept inside their anger. They acquired extra windows, higher ceilings, whole corridors in which the people who had stayed could enjoy themselves. The actual room held a narrow bed, a desk and a chair with yesterday's newspaper on it. One curtain had come loose from its hook.

Nico stopped in the doorway, still wearing his brother's jacket.

"Was anybody in here this morning?"

Ines stood behind him with a cup he had not asked for. "The officers came through with Madame Laurent. I gave them the information I had. They said to tell them if we found anything else."

"Did they say we could move things?"

"I didn't ask."

He turned toward her. She was young enough to look younger when she was worried. He had expected his brother's assistant to carry an air of expensive certainty. Instead, she was holding the saucer too tightly.

"Then let's not."

She set the coffee on a hall table. "He usually drinks it here, at this time. I kept making it."

Nico looked at the empty chair. Somewhere between the quay and this doorway, his missing brother had stopped being an idea people were discussing and become a man whose coffee would go cold.

He asked Ines to show him what she had already shown the officers.

A canvas overnight bag stood beside the wardrobe. Inside, visible without opening it further, were a sweater, a rolled shirt and a paperback. A charging cable lay across the top. On the desk was a printed rail booking for Sunday evening, Saint Orme to Verrieux, with a return on Monday morning.

"He might simply have gone," Nico said.

"That's what I thought at first."

"Why Verrieux?"

"He didn't tell me. He asked me not to put anything after five on Sunday into his work calendar."

"Was that unusual?"

Ines gave him a look which held, unexpectedly, a little humor. "Your brother sometimes scheduled time to decide whether he had time."

Nico nearly smiled. He remembered Lucien at thirteen, making a list of things they needed for a picnic while Nico ate the bread intended for it.

The bag had not gone anywhere. Neither had the charger. That might mean plans changed. It might mean Lucien had packed a different bag. Nico made himself say both possibilities aloud.

"His coat?"

"The charcoal one isn't on its hook. He had it when I last saw him."

"When was that?"

"Sunday at four twenty. Downstairs. I had brought the revised board papers."

"You work Sundays?"

"Not usually."

He heard the edge in her voice and looked away from the desk. He had asked like a Laurent. As if her weekend were an available surface on which the family could put another problem.

"I'm sorry. I meant whether something had happened."

She considered him before answering. "He wanted the supplier annexes separately. Not just the summary."

From below came the muffled sound of Celeste talking on the telephone. The house had once been full of doors slamming. Now everybody seemed to be trying not to disturb someone who wasn't there.

Nico moved along the strip of carpet beside the bed, keeping clear of the desk. Lucien's watch stand was empty. Under the chair, near the skirting board, something curved out of the shadow.

He crouched without touching it.

It was half a brown leather watchstrap. A pin had torn through the end. Along the lighter underside was a dark, irregular mark.

"Ines. Was that there before?"

She came only as far as his shoulder. "I don't know. I didn't look under the chair."

His first instinct was to pick it up. Find an explanation in the weight of it, turn it into something his hands could fix. He pressed his palms against his knees instead.

"Get Celeste. And the contact the officers left."

For a moment Ines did not move. Then she put her own phone to her ear and went into the hall.

Nico remained crouched beside the bed. The mark could be oil. Old staining. Anything. He had worn a stain on his own hand all afternoon which would look terrible in the right kind of light.

But he remembered that watch. Lucien had worn it at their father's funeral, turning its face against his wrist as if he wished to hide the time from somebody.

Celeste arrived without the composed expression she had taken into the car.

"What is it?"

"We don't know. Don't move it."

She stopped. He saw her understanding that his not knowing was not a failure she could correct by sending for a more agreeable person.

They waited in the hall while Ines spoke to the police contact. Someone would come back to inspect it. Until then, they were to leave the room alone. Nico asked whether they could mention the rail booking again. Ines did, carefully, without converting it into proof of a journey.

Celeste went downstairs to meet the returning officers when they arrived. Ines stayed by the coffee.

"I should have seen it," she said.

"You weren't looking for a broken watch."

"Neither were you."

He had no answer to that which would help her.

Across the hall was the old playroom, now used for storage. Nico asked if anybody minded him sitting there. Ines opened the door and switched on a lamp. Boxes occupied the shelves where their mother's books had been. A sewing basket stood on the floor, impossibly unchanged.

On the windowsill was a little blue ferry made of enamel and tin. Its roof had a white chip beside the funnel.

Nico walked to it slowly.

"Was this always here?"

"Monsieur Laurent brought it down from the attic last month. He said not to throw it away."

Their mother had bought the ferry from a man outside the old terminal when they were eight. There had been only one. The twins had fought for it until she painted an N on the bottom and an L beside it, then told them ownership could be more complicated than winning.

Nico turned it over. Both letters remained, his own made clumsy by the tiny brush he had insisted on holding.

"He said it was yours," Ines added.

"He had seven years to give it back."

The bitterness arrived faster than he intended. He set the ferry down as if it had become hot.

Ines did not pretend she had not heard. "I don't know what happened between you."

"People here usually do."

"People here usually tell me what they want put in the calendar."

For the first time he looked at her without seeing an extension of the house.

They sat on opposite sides of the sewing basket. Outside, an evening ferry turned across the harbor, its cabin lights making a pale rectangle on the water. The old terminal was closed now. Its small pier still projected beneath the road, unused except by fishermen and children who ignored fences.

Lucien had called at seven forty-two. Had he been looking at the same water? Waiting somewhere? Angry that Nico had refused him even the chance to speak?

"He sometimes stayed here late," Ines said. "In this room. I thought it was because nobody could find him."

Nico looked at the toys among the archive boxes. "Could they?"

"Eventually."

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Nico put the ferry back exactly where it had been. The officers had returned, and the room across the hall was no longer his to enter.

At the landing Celeste met him.

"Tomorrow morning," she said quietly, "there is a meeting before the directors arrive. We could at least prepare."

Nico looked at his aunt's face, then past her at the open bedroom door. Preparing was what he had spent the afternoon doing. Preparing to discover that a missed call could turn into something he could never answer.

"A rehearsal," he said. "Not a meeting where I make decisions for him."

"Yes."

"And you tell me the truth if you learn anything tonight. Even if it makes tomorrow inconvenient."

This time she did not nod quickly. "Yes."

After she left, he took out his phone and called Lucien's number.

It went straight to voicemail.

Nico stayed on the line until the tone. Then, with Ines waiting silently beside the cold coffee, he said the thing he should have said on Sunday.

"It's me. Tell me where you are. I'll come."