Disarm by Halle Karina

Author:Halle, Karina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

Saturday rolls around. It’s been raining all week, and today is no exception.

The funeral is at a cemetery just outside the city lines of Paris, where my grandparents are buried. Everyone is huddled under black umbrellas, the rain pouring off the edges; everyone’s shoes are wet.

I stand beside Pascal, my mother, and my father. There is no chatter today, no murmurs, even though the place is packed with people, some I’m sure are even tourists, braving the weather to see who might be attracting such a crowd. Eloise wasn’t a true Dumont, but she was well known and well loved in both Paris and in the fashion community for all her charity work and for being a lovely human being in general.

“Oh dear,” my mother whispers in my ear, grabbing my hand.

I turn to see Ludovic, Olivier, and Renaud approaching, looking absolutely devastated. Suddenly I feel the deepest shame on my mother’s behalf, and I don’t know what to do if Ludovic looks my way.

But he doesn’t. He is inconsolable, and I know that this must weigh so heavily on his heart too. I can only pray that he and his wife were able to get things right before she died, that there was still love between them.

However, as much as I feel for my uncle—even for my cousins, who are staggering with their loss—Seraphine steals my attention.

She’s coming up behind them, her arm linked with that of a man I don’t recognize.

I feel jealousy swirl through me, but more than that, I feel my own sense of guilt. I haven’t seen or talked to Seraphine in years. Even though she’s overcome with grief, she still looks as beautiful as I remember, and I wish that things between us had ended differently. We were both so much younger and naive, and I really ruined the fragile thread that connected us. Even if fear hadn’t driven me from her, I could have stayed friends somehow. I could have handled it better.

I could have been someone to her.

Now she has someone.

Let her be, I think to myself. She doesn’t belong to you.

And yet as she takes her seat beside her brothers, she looks over at me, and her eyes meet mine.

In that one glance I see our entire relationship. I see shock and then fear and then love and then hate.

But she leaves me with hate.

“Who is that with Seraphine?” I whisper to my mother, even though I can see Pascal give me a curious glance out of my periphery.

“That’s her boyfriend, Cyril,” she says with a lowered voice, her eyes darting over to them. “He’s with the United Nations. Bit of an odd duck, if you ask me. But they seem very serious. Wouldn’t be surprised if they get married.”

The word married burns into me like a lit cigarette.

I look back at Cyril, taking in his ill-fitting suit and glasses. He seems older than her, and boring. Stuffy. Safe. The complete opposite of Seraphine. What could she even see in him?

“Not the kind of person you’d expect her to end up with, is it?” Pascal asks.

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