Page 192 of Saint Céline
“Then what are they?”
“Witnesses.”
I looked at him. For once I could not tell whether he believed the distinction mattered or simply needed it to.
“Did your father know?”
“He knew I kept things. He did not understand why.”
“Did he care?”
“My father cared only when my behaviour became an inconvenience to him.”
The flatness in his voice caught me. There it was—a door, not open, but not quite locked.
“You hate him.”
“Very much, he was a lot like yours but with money and a lot of restraint.”
“Is he alive?”
“…Yes”
“You sound disappointed.”
Vincent looked at me then, while the familiar pain moved behind his eyes.
“He sent me away when I was twelve.”
“To boarding school?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I became inconvenient.”
The answer was too simple. I waited.
“I was too observant,” he said. “Too difficult to frighten properly. Too unwilling to apologize for noticing things he preferred left ignored.”
“And your mother?”
“She let him.”
The words carried no bitterness. That made them worse. I understood mothers who survived by silence. I understood them too well to hate his easily.
Vincent’s mouth curved again, without humour.
“I came into my trust at twenty-one and stopped needing his permission to exist. We have been largely estranged since.”
“That is why you have your own money.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him standing among his quiet collection of fractures—beautiful, monstrous, and alone in a way I had not let myself recognize before.
“You are more like me than I thought,” I said.
