The portrait had returned to its place above the sideboard on a Saturday when no one had had time to deal with it.
Odette had insisted it be rehung before lunch, Anne had replied that the wall could survive another twenty-four hours of emptiness, Julien had mentioned the drill in his trunk, and the matter had been settled the way things were settled at Les Ormes now: through a compromise everyone later described as their own decision.
On Sunday morning, the frame was crooked again.
Camille saw it the moment she came in with two grocery bags and a crate of empty jars she had been promising her mother for three weeks. She did not straighten it. This tiny surrender gave her less satisfaction than it had at the beginning of the month. By turning good behavior into exercises, she was gradually stripping it of all grace.
“Put the jars in the kitchen,” Anne said. “Not on the table.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Good morning. Not on the table.”
The table had disappeared beneath the paperwork for selling the house. Energy assessment, cadastral plan, repairs list, the real estate agent’s valuation, two quotes for a septic tank no one wanted to discuss before coffee. Julien had added a column in marker headed MONEY WE DON’T HAVE, which contained almost every figure.
Odette sat by the window in a plum-colored sweater with a garden-center catalog. She had decided she would take three potted rosebushes when she moved, though none of the roses at Les Ormes were in pots and she did not yet know where she would live after the sale.
“People move stone houses,” she had told Anne the day before. “Surely you can manage three roots.”
Camille put her bags in the kitchen and came back with the coffeepot.
“Is the exhibition still standing?” Julien asked.
“For twenty hours now. We had a hundred and eighty-three visitors yesterday.”
“And nobody noticed that the most complicated portrait in France was missing?”
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