*Paris, March 6, 1882.*
Marguerite had already retied the knot three times when Henri Dervieux laid his cane on the box.
The gesture was not violent. The ivory knob touched the gray cardboard with the precision of a forefinger on a line of accounts, and the linen twine, taut beneath Marguerite’s fingers, remained suspended above the lid.
“This one isn’t going to the Faculty.”
Across the table, the notary continued reading the inventory as though he had heard nothing. The room smelled of cold coal, leather, and dust disturbed after years of stillness. For eight days, Dr. Théodore Dervieux’s cabinets had been emptied in layers: medical treatises into numbered crates, scholarly correspondence into blue boxes, invoices and accounts into beige folders. Against the back wall remained the boxes without a destination.
Marguerite lowered her eyes to the label she had written that morning.
**SESSIONS — 1876–1881 — TRANSCRIPTS, LETTERS, SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS.**
“It’s listed under reference fourteen,” she said.
Henri removed his cane.
“Then cross out reference fourteen.”
The notary finally looked up. Maître Béchard had eyebrows that always seemed on the verge of requesting an additional fee.
“Monsieur Dervieux, if the item has been entered in the inventory—”
“These aren’t valuables. Nonsense from the end of his life.”
The dryness with which he spoke of the dead man put Marguerite’s grief back in its place, as it always did. She was neither relative nor colleague. For six years, she had copied the doctor’s notes, repaired his books, sorted his letters, waited for him to finish dictating pages he sometimes began again three times. She knew when to bring him coffee without asking whether he wanted any. She knew he hid unpaid bills beneath the proofs of his articles. None of that made her someone whose loss the family had to acknowledge.
She drew the twine a centimeter tighter.
“Your father kept these files separately.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.