Chapter 4 The shadows of the past

The rain fell slowly on the rivemarine cobblestones, covering the city with a melancholic veil. The drops crashed on the windows of Elise's house, tracing furrows that blurred the shy light in the morning. Sitting at her office, her gaze lost in the void, she held in her hands a photo of her and Thomas, taken during an outing at sea, long before everything collapsed.

In the image, Thomas had that bright smile that she loved so much, her hair in battle, the golden light of the sun highlighting the bursts of laughter in her eyes. Behind him, the boat he cherished so much was held proudly, the white veils swollen by the sea wind. Élise still remembered this day, the feeling of salt on her skin, the wind that made him fly his hair, and the promise he had made to her.

-"One day, I will take you to the other side of the horizon," he said, his hands on the rudder. "We will discover stars that no one has ever seen."

She had laughed, the treating of a dreamer, but a part of her had hoped that this day would come. Today, he only had this photo left, this memory frozen in time, and thousands of unanswered questions.

The evening she had met Thomas often returned to haunt her thoughts. It was at a party organized on Rivemarine beach, one of those nights when the sky was so clear that it seemed possible to touch the stars. Élise, freshly arrived in this small coastal town to start a job as a restaurateur of works of art, knew almost no one. Thomas, with her overflowing energy and her natural charisma, approached her with a glass of fruit juice in hand and a disarming smile.

-"You're new here, right?" he had asked him.

- "What if I say right?" had she replied with a smirk.

-"So I would say that I am a bad observer, but that, I don't think so," he replied.

It was the beginning of a conversation that lasted all night, and a story that seemed extraordinary from its first moments. Thomas, with his passion for the sea and his maritime travel accounts, had opened a new world in Élise. She, in return, had fascinated her with her ability to see beauty in the most insignificant details.

A sudden flash illuminated the piece, bringing Élise to the present. Her fingers cleared the compass she had recovered from Antoine, an object that seemed to whisper for forgotten truthsShe couldn't help but wonder how many secrets this compass held, how many truths on Thomas and this fateful night were still hidden in the shadows.

Samuel's memory was also present in his mind, although troubled. She knew he was playing a role in all of this, but her ambiguous behavior left more questions than answers. And Antoine ... He seemed elusive, always between shadow and light.

Not knowing who to turn to, Élise decided to search in the few personal affairs of Thomas that she had kept since her disappearance. Among the books, letters, and the memories of their getaways, a card drew its attention. An old sea map, annotated from the neat writing of Thomas. She deployed her on her table, discovering brands on several points on the coast, annotations that she did not understand entirely, but which seemed to correspond to the sea journeys of the sea moon.

Near one of the marked points was a sentence written in red: "Silence hides what the waves cannot erase."

A thrill covered Élise. These words, although enigmatic, almost seemed to resonate with what Antoine had told him. She released her phone and composed her number, but as usual, he did not answer.

She did not know why, but an intuition pushed her to return to Antoine's workshop, despite her warning to stay away.

When she arrived on the spot, the night had already enveloped Rivemarine. The light in the workshop was extinguished, but the door was again ajar. With care, Élise entered. The room was immersed in darkness, but a weak ray of moon illuminated an object placed on the workbench: a notebook, different from that which it had found before.

She grabbed it and began to leaf through it quickly. The first pages contained sketches of symbols, coordinates, and notes in abbreviation. But it was a photo inserted between two pages which made her stop suddenly: a photo of Thomas, surrounded by several men she did not know, all standing in front of what seemed to be the sea moon.

She turned the notebook, her heart beating faster and faster. An annotation on the back of the photo drew its attention: "Last trip - Port de Valmont."

While Elise continued to travel the pages, steps of steps were sounded behind. She turned suddenly, her breath cut. Antoine was standing in the door frame, his face plunged into the shadows.

-"I told you to stay far from it all," he said calmly, but with a hardness in his voice that made Élise shiver.

-"I can't stay far," she replied, tightening the notebook against her. "It is you who hides things, Antoine. This symbol, this compass, this notebook ... You knew everything from the start, right?"

Antoine approached slowly, but did not respond immediately.

-"What you do is dangerous, Élise. You don't understand what you start," he said finally.

-"So explain me!" she cried, anger and brilliant frustration in her voice. "Tell me what happened to Thomas. Tell me why you play this double game with me."

Antoine fixed her for a long time, her indecipherable expression. Then, slowly, he stretched his hand.

-"Give me this notebook," he said.

But Élise fell, refusing to give in.

- "Not until you tell me the truth."

Antoine sighed, but a radiance in his gaze betrays something disturbing.

-"Very well," he said finally. "If you want to know, then follow me."

Antoine led her outside the workshop, to an old hangar near the port. The building, abandoned for years, was filled with rusty tools and old cases marked by the wear of time. Antoine lit a torch lamp and pointed out with a particular box, closed by a padlock.

-"Everything you want to know is in there," he said.

Élise approached, suspicious, when she was looking for a key. But something in her attitude bored her. Why did he seem so calm, almost resigned?

When he finally opened the box, Élise retained her breath. Inside, documents, personal objects from Thomas, and ... a metal star, identical to that of his pendant.

- "What is this ?" she asked, the voice broken.

- "This is what Thomas was trying to protect," replied Antoine.

But when she plunged her hands into the box, looking for answers among the scattered objects and papers, another thought chick her: what if all this was only another manipulation? Antoine was perhaps directing her towards a false track, leading her further from the truth that she was desperately looking for. In the shadow of the hangar, Élise realized that she no longer knew who she could trust.

The discovery of objects in the body left Elise both in shock and overwhelmed by growing confusion. She had hoped to find clear answers, but everything she saw only won more questions. The documents seemed authentic, and some even wore annotations made by Thomas' hand, but their meaning remained unclear.

-"You still haven't told me what it means," she said, breaking the tense silence.

Antoine, still standing near the box, looked at her for a long time before answering.

-"Thomas set foot in a story that exceeded him. He did not know what he was committed to ..." He began, his voice trembling slightly.

- "What story? And why do you always seem to know everything I don't know?" Élise replied, the anger rising in her.

Antoine looked away, as if he was looking for his words.

- "There was something on this boat ... Something he shouldn't see. That's all I can tell you."

These half-truths only accentuated Elise's frustration. She approached him, holding a document that she had just extracted from the cash register: an expedition receipt with a written mention by hand in red letters - "confidential. Do not open."

- "And that? Are you going to tell me that it is unimportant? Who are these people who seem to control everything that happens here?" she asked, raising the paper.

Antoine passed a nervous hand in the hair.

- "Élise, if you continue to ask questions, you risk ... attracting the attention of bad people."

But before he could finish his sentence, driving noises resonated in the night. Antoine, suddenly tense, turned off the torch lamp and pulled Elise towards a dark corner of the hangar.

-"Make no noise," he whispered, his almost inaudible voice.

Outside, shadows were emerging under the trembling light of the headlights. Élise distinguished several silhouettes, and although she could not hear their words, she felt palpable tension in the air. Antoine seemed to recognize the intruders because her face was marked by a fear that she had never seen her before.

After a few endless minutes, the silhouettes left the hangar, and the engines moved away in the night. Antoine got up slowly, scrutinizing the surroundings before speaking.

-"I think we followed you," he said finally.

- "Me? But why?" Elise asked, although her mind began to assemble the pieces of the puzzle.

-"Because you ask too many questions," he replied, his voice tinged with reproach.

They left the hangar soon after, and Antoine insisted to walk with her to her house, despite her protests. Throughout the way, she could not help but go back to the events of the evening: the box, the compass, the intruders ... But more than anything, the elusive answers of Antoine irritated him deeply.

When they finally reached the house, Antoine turned to her, with a serious air.

"Élise," promise me to drop it all, "he said.

She shook her head.

- "I can't, Antoine. Thomas deserves the truth."

- "What if this truth destroyed you?" he whispered, before turning the heels and disappearing in the night.

Back inside, Élise collapsed in her armchair, a boiling spirit. She opened the documents she had been able to take discreetly of the hangar and tried to analyze them. Some seemed linked to maritime routes, others contained incomprehensible codes. But it was a handwritten note, widened in a hurry, which caught his attention:

"The stars hide the key. Valmont is the start, not the end."

These words, mysterious and enigmatic, rekindled its determination. Valmont, a name that constantly returned to this investigation. If it was the beginning, as this note said, then perhaps she would find there the answers that Antoine refused to give him.

What Élise was unaware of is that Antoine, at that moment, had returned to her workshop, where he stood in front of his office, his hands trembling. He opened a drawer and took out a photo of Thomas and he, taken aboard the seawater.

-"I'm sorry, my friend," he whispered, his eyes staring at Thomas' smiling face in the photo.

Antoine knew that the past would end up catching him, just as he knew that Élise would end up discovering what he had done. But he hoped to be able to delay this moment as long as possible, because when the truth would burst, it would destroy more than memories.