Part I
Dina and Edith were standing together just outside Saint-Catherine's, both still feeling hurt and both feeling a bit lost and more than a little furious -- as they stood there huddled against the snow -- which seemed to be falling harder now -- as they waited for Anton, Tracy, and the boy, Rolf.
"I have never felt so humiliated in my life," Edith snarled. "And to think my sister thought so little of me!"
"Were you close? The two of you, I mean?"
Edith shook her head as she looked at the snow gathering around their feet. "I thought we were, once upon a time -- maybe. Now...I'm not so sure anything was ever real."
"Did she have any reason to think you'd do something mean to Henry, even then?"
"No," Edith sighed. "I can't think of anything I ever did or said that might have made her think I'd do something like that."
"Interesting," Dina said, looking through the falling snow back towards the old port.
"Why...interesting?"
"She was expressing a strong emotion, almost as a warning to you, yet she wrote that before she passed away, presumably when you were both still little more than children."
"Yes? So?" Edith said.
"I'm sorry, but you were not around Henry this summer. So many strange things were happening, so much so that almost every time I turned around I felt like I was confronting some new manner of existential crisis. And always, it was a supernatural existential crisis..."
"Supernatural?" Edith said, clearly not understanding what Dina was getting at, or where she was going. "What do you mean by that?"
"You've met Pinky, I take it? And you know all about that stuff?"
"No, I really don't understand, not any of it," Edith said, distracted now and looking at the time on her phone. "We've been out here fifteen minutes. Should we go back to the restaurant and wait for them there? At least we'd be warm there..."
"Perhaps," Dina said reflexively, "but we have no idea where Henry is, do we? -- and yet I have a feeling that goddamn priest knows exactly where he is. I want to..."
And then the door to the church flew open and a hot, smoky breeze billowed from the nave, then out of nowhere Anton and the boy were standing just inside the doors, surrounded by swirling mists full of embers...
"Dear God!" Dina cried as she turned and looked at her grandson. "What has happened to you? Where have you been?"
Their clothes were in tatters, and both were soaking wet -- with sweat. Worse still, they both looked badly sunburned -- yet both seemed almost ecstatically happy...
Then the priest appeared, and even his somber demeanor was gone -- replaced by a heavily sunburned smile as he stepped out into the snowy evening.
Then Edith pushed her way through the three travelers. "Where's Tracy!" she cried when she realized her daughter was absent. "What have you done to my..."
"She will return when she is ready," Father Martin admonished.
"Where is Henry!" Dina shouted. "We've been gone from him for almost an hour..."
Only now the old priest looked down, and now he seemed to be at a loss for words. Then, looking pensive and almost reluctant to start down this path again, he looked at Dina. "Follow me," he said as he turned and started for the point.
No one had yet shoveled or cleared all the snow from the walkway beside the quay that led out to the point, so the going was slow -- and now Anton and Rolf were wearing shorts and polo shirts and were ill-prepared for such a walk. Dina took off her jacket and wrapped it around Rolf's shoulders, and then without quite knowing why she walked over to Anton and put an arm around his waist. Anton seemed embarrassed, and a little surprised, too, as they continued walking through the now very heavy snowfall.
"Look!" Rolf exclaimed. "Those tracks, they were made by a wheelchair, there, in the snow!" -- and with that, the boy took off at a sprint into the dark and the snow.
"I go with," Anton said, breaking free of Dina and taking off after Rolf.
The two women and the priest quickened their pace, and it wasn't long before they gained the point. The air was warmer here by the water, the snow not as heavy, but Henry's empty wheelchair was covered with snow -- like he'd been gone a while. His footprints leading to the rocks and the water were still just visible, however, but Rolf was standing with Anton down on the rocks looking out into the sea. Dina thought they looked defeated, almost wilted from the knowledge that Henry had taken things into his own hands and moved on in this night, his actions an echo of Claire's.
"He's gone to be with her," Dina asked the priest, "hasn't he? To rejoin her in the sea?"
"I fear for his soul if he has, physician, for that would be a mortal sin."
She turned back to the water, nodding in agreement and very afraid now. "I...I don't understand why he did this," she added. "Do you?"
"In truth, physician, I do not understand, but I am no longer of this life."
"What!?" Edith cried. "What do you mean...no longer of this life?"
"Perhaps one day you will understand," the priest said -- as his body began to shimmer in blue light, "yet for some reason, I doubt this will ever happen..."
Edith almost screamed when the old priest vanished, and when Dina turned to see what the commotion was all about she caught the last vestiges of the man's form before he had completely disappeared -- and at that point Dina began to feel the kind of fear she had convinced herself, through a lifetime of study, she knew to be irrational...and without really knowing why she began to walk to the rocks where Anton and Rolf stood.
The sea was, of course, inky black as she stood there at the water's edge, but almost reflexively she knelt and placed several fingers into the brine. 'Cold,' she said to herself as she pulled her hand away. 'Too cold to survive for more than a few minutes...'
She stood and turned to Rolf, then she shook her head.
And because maybe the boy knew what she meant, he turned and ran from the rocks and out into this night of falling snow...
+++++
Milos drove slowly along the Route de Rouen, taking the group back to Paris and the marina as the last snow fell in the middle of the night. The police had been summoned; they had taken notes and a few photographs but as no foul play was suspected they had released everyone. They would, one of the inspectors told Dina, keep an eye out for bodies washing up along the shore, but that was about all they could do -- other than informing the U.S. embassy.
Anton had followed Rolf's errant footsteps through the snow and found the boy not too far away, sitting on a park bench and now completely covered with snow, shivering uncontrollably. He had picked up the boy and carried him back to the Mercedes, whispering what words of comfort he could think of as he walked through the park, but he had to admit to himself that he too was feeling a little lost.
"What good friend Genry was," he said to the boy at one point. "Much love. Always much love."
He felt Rolf's grip tighten, heard the muffled sounds of inconsolable loss. "I don't understand," the boy whispered. "Why did he do this?"
