She was a monster and also the woman who had sung to him when he was sick as a boy, and both were true, and he was going to have to live inside that contradiction for the rest of his life.
I watched it begin to break him in that kitchen chair, and I pulled him up anyway, because our daughter needed us and there would be time for him to come apart later.
There was.
In the months that followed he came apart more than once, quietly, and I learned to let him, even when I could not yet comfort him.
Chapter 13 — Directions to a Chapel
A cousin of Lucien’s remembered something: Mireille had recently asked him for directions to an old, half-ruined family chapel up in the mountains near Flagstaff.