Morning had crept into the room without Annabelle noticing.
Wrapped tightly in her blankets like a cocoon, she was still floating, warm and heavy with sleep. The sun was already up; a pale light was spreading across the walls, gently erasing the shadows of the night.
She blinked.
There was something strange.
An unusual silence hung over the house, a thick, almost liquid silence that seemed to swallow the familiar morning sounds. No creaking stairs. No clinking dishes.
And that smell.
At first furtive, it sneaked into her nostrils — a sharp, slightly fetid odor, as if something, somewhere, had begun to rot. She grimaced, wrinkling her nose, instinctively trying to locate where it came from
But the sensation was too hidden to find its origin. It perfused the air like a diffuse miasma spreading slowly, but surely.
She reluctantly pulled off the blankets, as if, in leaving her bed, she was abandoning her refuge.
The floor immediately bit into the soles of her feet with a dry cold.
She quickly slipped on her boiled wool jacket, pulled on her cotton socks and, over them, her thick wool slippers — all with quick, clumsy gestures.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a movement through the window. She turned and saw a very thin layer of white covering the landscape, and snowflakes floating and falling slowly towards the ground, carried by the icy air currents.Winter had just arrived with its first snow of the year.
Nothing extraordinary.
Feeling her way, she pushed her door open just enough to slip into the long hallway.
The house greeted her with a frozen breath, the cold invading the space.
She moved silently toward the kitchen.
And stopped short.
Éléna was sitting at the table, motionless, her hands folded before her. Her eyes, wide open, were fixed on some invisible point far ahead. No knitting, no movement, not even a twitch. Like a forgotten doll in a house too large.
Albert was there too. Sitting across from her.
He looked up.
There was no smile. Only that raw worry, planted in his pupils like a splinter even he could not seem to remove.
Usually, at this hour, her mother would be humming, a spoon in hand, preparing French toast or oatmeal. Her father would be in his office, bent over his papers, his quill racing across the parchment.
Nothing was in its place.
Annabelle stood frozen in the doorway.
Perplexity slowly climbed along her arms, cold and slow.
Éléna started, as if shaken from a dream too deep. She turned her head toward her daughter. For a moment, her gaze seemed to hesitate to recognize her. Then, mechanically, she asked:
"What would you like to eat, darling?"
Her voice slid, empty, without the slightest inflection. All the affection she had once had for her own flesh, her own blood, the being she had carried in her womb, no longer seemed to belong to her. She was becoming dissociated.
Annabelle opened her mouth. But no sound came out. Just yesterday, she had tucked her in as usual, and nothing had seemed wrong.
What had happened in the span of one night?
She only felt Albert's gaze weighing down on her. A heavy gaze, saturated with silent worry. As if, somehow, he knew a secret he would obviously not tell her.
Albert quickly looked away, as if burned by the mere idea of meeting her eyes.
He tried to stand, but the movement stalled. His legs barely faltered, a slight sway that only an attentive eye could have caught.He leaned heavily on the table, seeking support more solid than his own body.
His skin lost a shade, whitening under the pale light stretching across the kitchen.
And in his gestures, in the breath catching in his throat, Annabelle perceived something strangely fragile, a tension ready to snap.
Without thinking, she rushed toward him.
"Papa... are you okay?" she murmured.
Albert raised his head.
His smile burst out too quickly, too stiffly, like a poorly fitted mask.
"Yes. Everything's fine, sweetheart," he replied, his voice sounding false, frayed at the edges.
Before she could say another word, he moved away, almost fleeing, one hand brushing the wall to keep his balance without it being noticed.
Annabelle remained frozen.
Éléna had also gotten up. She practically threw herself at the sink, grabbing a dish towel, a pot, anything, with the fervor of an actress half-heartedly replaying a scene she knew too well.
The clatter of plates against the wood shattered the silence.
"So?!" repeated Éléna, turning abruptly. "What do you want to eat?"
Her voice cracked through the air. A sharp, unexpected snap.
Not the soft, laughing voice of every morning.
Not the voice that sang, even on bad days.
Annabelle barely flinched, a shiver under her skin, but she felt her heart slowly sink, as if drawn toward something heavier than the silence itself.
She was confused and lost, not understanding why she was suddenly being treated like a stranger in her own home.
She lowered her eyes, unable to answer right away.
It was the first time her mother had spoken to her that way.
The first fissure, clear, irreparable.
Annabelle gathered all her courage and whispered, almost inaudible:
"Some... French toast, maybe?"
Her voice thinned out in the air, tiny, like a twig in the wind.
Éléna, however, gave a flicker of irritation.
Her shoulders rose imperceptibly.
She slammed a plate onto the table, too hard for it to be accidental.
"French toast, then," she said, her tone carrying more weariness than tenderness.
She turned toward the stove, grabbing the bread with a brusque gesture, slicing the pieces with a hand quicker than necessary.Each blow of the knife echoed against the cutting board like a dry slap.
Annabelle slipped onto a chair, perched herself silently, legs squeezed under the table.
Her fingers played nervously with the edge of her jacket, worrying the wool until it frayed.
"You're not dressed yet?" said Éléna without turning around.
The tone was neither gentle nor truly angry. Just... worn out.
"I... I just wanted to say good morning," Annabelle replied with a fragile voice, as if apologizing.
A sigh slipped from her mother's lips, long and endless.
"We don't have time for that today," she finally said.
No time for what?
Annabelle would have liked to ask.
But the words remained stuck in her throat, heavy, too heavy.
The French toast sizzled in the pan, spreading a barely perceptible smell of burning, a sharp odor that mixed with the older, rancid smell that had invaded the house.
Albert, in the other room, coughed softly.
A muffled, painful sound.
Annabelle lowered her eyes to the table.
The veins in the wood seemed to snake under her fingers like a living network.
No longer as warm and welcoming as before.
A before that was just yesterday.
Albert returned from his office, and they ate in silence.
A tense silence, bordering on unbearable, punctuated only by the noise of cutlery against plates.
The slightly blackened French toast cracked under their teeth, a tiny sound, disproportionate in the too-quiet room.
Albert, sitting across from Annabelle, suddenly raised his eyes.
And this time, it wasn't the fleeing gaze from that morning.
Something shone behind his pupils: a soft urgency, almost feverish.
"Tell me, Annabelle," he said, gently setting down his spoon."Do you feel ready... to learn to read? To write? To count?"
His voice was low, warm, almost rushed with urgency.
Annabelle blinked, surprised.
Then her face lit up completely, as if the sun had come back to beat against the window.
"Yes!" she exclaimed, forgetting everything else. "You finally have time?"
She had jumped on the words as one seizes an unexpected gift.
The cold in her belly evaporated in an instant, replaced by a new, vibrant warmth.
Albert smiled, and this time, it was a real smile.
Broad, alive, a little trembling.
He reached across the table and laid his hand on his daughter's. His skin was cold, a bit rough, but the gesture was so tender that Annabelle felt herself float.
On the other side, Éléna watched them.
She said nothing.
Her plate remained almost untouched, her fork turned upside down.
In her eyes, something flickered — a quick, dark glint that the little girl didn't see.
A twitch of the jaw, a clenching of fingers around the tablecloth.
A fine, dry jealousy, sharpened like a forgotten blade at the bottom of a drawer.
She had given up everything for that man.
Why wasn't he looking at her, instead of that irritating child she had to pretend to love every day?
She had dreamed of a life for two, not for three.
But Annabelle saw none of it.
She laughed, her laughter sparkling, effervescent, filling the kitchen with a new life.
And Albert laughed too, a little, a broken laugh at the bottom of his throat.
Like a man who laughs for fear of crying.