Read Chapter 11: A Mélodie for Élise

The storm had finally broken, leaving the world outside Antoine’s chalet a muffled white cathedral of silence. The first clear dawn in days pressed against Camille’s window, a pale gold light that felt almost accusing after so much grey. She sat on the edge of her bed, the magnifying glass Antoine had jury-rigged resting in her palm, a small, useless talisman against the looming weight of her deadline.

She had tried to work, but the words swam. The editor’s voice, sharp and impatiente, still echoed in her skull. She needed to *move*, to think in a different rhythm, and yet she was trapped here, in a stranger’s home, in a winter that seemed to have no end.

Frustrated, she rose and began to tidy the room, her fingers tracing the spines of books she couldn’t read, the rough weave of a woolen blanket. Her hand brushed against something cold and metallic beneath the dust ruffle of the bed—a wooden crate, shoved into the shadows. She pulled it out, curiosity overriding propriety. Inside, nestled in a layer of soft, mildewed felt, was a record player. Not a modern one, but an old, boxy turntable with a single speaker grille, the kind her grandmother had owned, its wood veneer chipped at the corners like a beloved piece of furniture.

Beside it lay a small stack of vinyl records, their sleeves worn thin with age. She lifted them one by one, reading the faded labels. Jacqueline François. Charles Trenet. Édith Piaf. A collection of French chansons, impossibly out of place in this rugged Quebecois chalet. Her breath caught when she saw the last one—the distinctive, striking cover of a woman with dark, intense eyes. It was a recording of a song her grandmother used to hum while she kneaded dough, a melody Camille hadn’t heard in nearly twenty years.

She lifted the record, its weight familiar in her hands, and placed it on the turntable. She fumbled with the switch, and with a soft *pop* and a warm hiss, the needle dropped. A slow, aching piano introduction filled the room, followed by a woman’s voice, rich as velvet, singing about a lost summer and a heart that wouldn’t mend. The sound was raw, analog, so different from the sterile perfection of digital files. It filled the small space with life.

Camille closed her eyes, letting the melody wash over her. She could almost smell her grandmother’s lavender sachets, see her thin, knotted hands. A sudden, sharp ache of homesickness pierced her, so acute it made her chest tighten.

She did not hear the floorboards creak behind her.

When she opened her eyes, Antoine was standing in the doorway, but he didn't look angry. He wasn't looking at her at all. He was staring at the record player, his face unguarded, a strange, soft vulnerability smoothing out the usual hard lines. He took a slow step into the room, then another.

He didn't say a word. He just started to hum.

It was a low, almost unconscious sound from the back of his throat, but he hit every note perfectly, weaving his voice around the singer’s. He knew the song. Not just the melody, but the phrasing, the little dips and rises of emotion that only a native ear would catch.

Camille stared at him. “You know this?”

Antoine’s humming stopped. He blinked, as if startled out of a dream. He looked at her, then at the record player, a flicker of something—embarrassment, or grief—passing through his eyes. “My mother,” he said, his voice rougher than usual. “She used to play this. On the nights the storms were too loud for her to sleep.”

“Your mother was French?”

He nodded slowly, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, his large frame making the furniture look small. “From Lyon. She came to Quebec for a summer, to teach at a university exchange program. She met my father. He was a man of few words, but he could make a tree fall exactly where he wanted it to. I think she found that fascinating.” He paused, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “For a while, anyway.”

He didn't look at her as he spoke, his gaze fixed on the spinning record. The singer was now building toward the refrain, her voice soaring with passionate *reviens-moi*.

“The fascination didn’t last,” Antoine continued. “The winters here… they’re not just cold. They’re relentless. They bury things. She was a woman who needed light, who bloomed in warmth and conversation. She found our silences unbearable.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “She left when I was twelve. Packed a single suitcase and took the first flight back to Paris. She said she couldn’t stay in a place where the snow erased all the joy.”

The words hung in the air, heavy as frost. Camille understood the weight of them. She knew the stereotype of the icy Canadian, but hearing it from the inside—a woman from *her* city, *her* nation of talkers and debaters, abandoning a child for a sun-soaked life she missed—felt like a blow she hadn't anticipated.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words feeling inadequate.

“It was a long time ago,” Antoine said, but his voice was tight. “She sent letters for a while. Then she stopped. I blamed the distance. Now I realize… perhaps she just didn’t know how to fit us into her new life.” He finally turned to look at her, his amber eyes unreadable. “Your accent—it was softer than a Parisian’s. I noticed it the first day. You speak *joual* with a gentleness, a precision. But you have that same light in you, that same quick fire.”

Camille’s heart gave a traitorous lurch. “I’m not—I’m nothing like that. I transliterate dead people’s words for a living. I don’t have fire.”

“You do,” Antoine said, his voice dropping low. “You came here, to a place you didn’t know, in the middle of a snowstorm no sane person would travel in. You fought back when I was cold to you. You argued with me about a snowshoe. You have fire, Camille. You just spend all your energy keeping it hidden behind your sentences.”

The singer on the record let out a final, long note, and the room fell into a silence deeper than the snow outside. Camille felt exposed, stripped bare by his observation. She had kept her grandmother’s locket hidden under her shirt, a secret token against the cold, and here he was, seeing into her with disturbing accuracy.

She swallowed, her mouth dry. “She had a voice like this,” Camille said, gesturing to the now-silent record player. “My grandmother. She used to sing this to me. It was her way of telling stories without words, of saying I love you without having to say it.”

“Stories without words,” Antoine repeated softly. He stood up, the silence between them stretching into something new, fragile. “That’s what I try to do with my photographs.”

He was standing close now, so close she could smell the cedar and woodsmoke that clung to his flannel shirt. The distance between them was charged with the shared history of music, of grandmothers, of absent mothers. For a moment, she thought he might touch her hand. The air was so thick with it, so impossible to breathe.

Then his gaze shifted, fixing on the window behind her. His expression hardened instantly, a shutter snapping shut over his face.

“It’s clear enough,” he said, his voice flat again. “The wind has died. A perfect day to check the logging roads before the next front moves in.”

Camille followed his gaze to the brilliant, deceptively innocent blue sky. The plan they had made just yesterday felt like a distant dream, a theoretical exercise. Now, with dawn light flooding the earth and the mystery of Luc and Antoine’s father pressing down on them, it was real.

“We’re still going,” she said, not a question.

Antoine finally looked back at her. “I promised you I would,” he said. “But Camille… out there, the snow covers everything. It hides tracks, it muffles sound. If someone doesn’t want us to find what we’re looking for, they will have had two days of clear skies and new snow to bury it. We won't be going for discovery.” He paused, the light leaving his eyes. “We will be going for confirmation. Do you understand?”