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constantly of the flowers she was supposed to deliver on the day of the accident. The bouquet that never made it stood for time come to nothing. Incessantly, the event replayed in slow motion right before her eyes, including the sound of the impact, over and over. The flowers were always there in the foreground, blurring her view. They shrouded her day and became her obsession in petal form.
Jean-Michel, very worried about her state of mind, worked himself into a lather trying to get her to go back to work. It was one attempt to rouse her that was as good as any other. And it worked, since she lifted her head and answered yes, like little girls sometimes do when promising to be good after having done something stupid. Deep down, she knew very well that she had no other choice. She had to go on. And it certainly wasn’t the sudden incitement coming from her colleague that talked her into it. Everything will go back to the way it was, thought Charlotte, her mind at ease. But no, nothing could go back to the way it was. Something had brutally shattered in the progression of days. That Sunday was there forever: you would find it on Monday and on Thursday. And it kept alive on Friday or Tuesday. That Sunday was never settled and began to look like goddamn eternity; it spread itself all over the future. Charlotte was smiling, Charlotte was eating, but a dark cloud covered Charlotte’sface. She seemed obsessed with a single idea. Suddenly, she asked, “Those flowers I was supposed to deliver that day … did you ever deliver them?”
“I had other things on my mind. I went to find you right away.”
“But the man didn’t call?”
“Yes, of course. I talked to him on the phone the next day. He wasn’t happy about it at all. His girlfriend didn’t get anything.”
“And then?”
“And then … I explained it to him … I told him you’d had an accident … that a man was in a coma …”
“And what did he say?”
“I don’t remember very well anymore … he apologized … and then he muttered something … I think he saw it as some kind of sign. Something very negative.”
“You mean … you think he didn’t ask the girl to marry him?”
“I don’t know.”
Charlotte was disturbed by that story. She took the liberty of calling the man in question. He confirmed that he’d decided to put off proposing. This news really left a mark on her. It couldn’t happen like that. She thought of the sequence of events. The marriage was going to be put off. And maybe a lot of events were going to be changed like that? It upset her to think that all these lives were going to be different. She thought, If I fix them, it’s as if it never happened. If I fix them, I’ll be able to go back to a normal life.
She went into the back of the shop to put together the same bouquet. Then she got into a taxi. “Is it for a wedding?” the driver asked her.
“No.”
“For a birthday?”
“No.”
“For … a graduation?”
“No. It’s just for doing what I ought to have done the day I ran somebody over.”
The driver continued the journey in silence. Charlotte got out. Put the flowers on the woman’s doormat. She stayed there before that image for a moment. Then decided to take a few roses out of the bouquet. She left with them and climbed into another taxi. Since the day of the accident, she’d kept François’s address with her. She’d preferred not to meet Natalie, and it was definitely the right decision. It would have been even harder to pull her own life back together if she’d put a face to a shattered life. But at that moment, she was carried away by an impulse. She didn’t want to think. The taxi drove along; now it was stopping. For the second time in the past few minutes, Charlotte found herself on a woman’s landing. She placed those few white flowers in front of Natalie’s door.

Twenty-one

Natalie opened the door and asked herself: was it the right moment? François had been dead for three months. Three months, so