Everything was disjointed and out of sequence, like clips from a movie that had landed on the cutting-room floor. Faces would come to mind, or names, often unrelated, and then whole scenes would appear and be crystal clear. It was like a crazy patchwork quilt of her life, which she tried constantly to sort out and organize, and put into sequence again, and just as she thought she had it right and knew what she was remembering, she would remember another detail, face, name, or event, and the whole story changed again. It was like a kaleidoscope, constantly shifting, changing, the colors and shapes altered and moving. It was exhausting trying to absorb it all and make sense of it. For hours at a time now, she had total recall, and then for many more, her mind seemed to shut down, as though it had had enough of the sifting and sorting process that occupied her every waking hour. She was trying to force herself to remember it all, and asked a thousand questions as things came to mind, trying to make the focus more acute in the lens of her mind's eye. It was a full-time job, and the hardest one she'd ever done.
Stevie was well aware of how exhausting it was for her, and sat in silence in her room when she could see that Carole was trying to run things through her head. Eventually, Carole would say something, but for long hours she would lie on her bed, seemingly staring into space, thinking about it all. Some of it still made no sense, like photographs of people in an album with no labels to indicate who they had been, or why they were there. About some things she remembered too much. About others far too little. And all of it was jumbled in her head. Sometimes it took hours to identify a scene, face, or name, and it was a real victory for her when she did. She felt triumphant every time, and then would lie silent and drained of energy for a long time.
The police had been impressed by what she did remember. Initially, they had been told she had no memory at all. And many of the other victims they'd spoken to recalled even less than she did. They hadn't been paying attention when they'd been sitting in the tunnel, talking to other passengers, playing with the radio, or the shock of the event and their resulting injuries had wiped all recollection from their minds. The police and a special intelligence unit had been interviewing people for weeks. And until then they had been told that Carole would be unable to contribute anything to their search. Suddenly that had changed, and they were grateful for her help. They were providing additional security for her at the hospital. There were now two members of a SWAT team, the CRS, standing outside her door in combat boots and dark blue overalls. There was no mistaking who they were, or why they were there. The machine guns they carried said it all. The CRS was the most feared unit in Paris, brought in to break up riots, during threats, or after terrorism erupted somewhere. The fact that they had been called in confirmed the seriousness of the event that had brought her to the Pitié Salpêtrière.
There was no solid reason to believe that other members of the group would attempt an attack on her again. As far as they knew, all the perpetrators had died in the suicide bombing in the tunnel, with the exception of the one boy who had fled. Carole distinctly remembered him running backward to the entry of the tunnel just before the first bomb exploded. Her memory was more vague about the subsequent ones, because by then she herself had been blown out of the cab and was free-falling toward the tunnel floor. But the police still had a reasonable concern that she was a highly visible victim of the event. Eliminating her would be a plus for the terrorists, as well as an additional victory, in killing a well-known person to bring attention to their cause. In either case, the police and special intelligence units had no desire whatsoever to have Carole die on French turf. They wanted to do everything possible to keep her alive, at least until she left France. And since she was an American, they had contacted the FBI as well. They had promised to provide surveillance of her home in Bel-Air for the next several months, particularly once she was home. It was both frightening and reassuring at the same time.
The possibility of further danger to her was far from encouraging. She had already paid a high enough price for her presence in the tunnel during the suicide bombing. All she wanted to do now was get her memory back, leave the hospital, and get on with her life once she got home. She was still hoping to write her novel. And everything about her life, present and past, seemed more precious to her now, especially her children.
Matthieu showed up halfway through the interview with the police. He said nothing, slipped into the room quietly, and stood silently observing. He had nodded at Carole, and looked serious and concerned as he listened. He had made several phone calls to the intelligence unit that was handling it, and another to the head of the CRS. The current Minister of the Interior had received a call from him the day before. Matthieu wanted both the investigation and her protection handled without slip-up or flaw. He had left no question in anyone's mind that the matter was of the utmost importance to him. He had no need to explain why. Carole Barber was an important visitor to France, and to the Minister of the Interior he admitted that she had been a close personal friend for many years. The minister did not ask him in what guise.
Matthieu stood watching her face as they questioned her, and was surprised to hear how much she did remember, as were they. She was able to recall many details that had eluded her entirely before. This time she didn't mind Matthieu being there. It was comforting to have someone familiar close at hand, and he no longer frightened her. She thought her initial fear of him when he visited her came from the fact that she sensed that he had been important to her, but she had no idea why. Now she knew, and oddly, she remembered more details about their life together than she did about other people and events.
The high points of her time with him were sharply etched in her mind, emerging from the seas that had covered them, and she remembered a million small details as well, important moments, sunny days, torrid nights, tender moments, and the agony she had felt over his not leaving his wife, the arguments they'd had over it. His explanations and excuses stood out in her mind, even their sailboat trip in the South of France. She remembered almost every conversation they'd had while they drifted lazily near Saint Tropez, and his inconsolable sorrow when his daughter had died a year later. Their joint grief and disappointment when she miscarried. The memories of him overwhelmed her, and seemed to drown out all else. She could remember the pain he had caused her as though it were yesterday, and the day she had left France. She had given up all hope of a life with him by then. Knowing all that, it was odd being in a room with him now. Not frightening, but unsettling. He had an austere, unhappy look about him, which was what had seemed ominous to her at first, but now that she recalled their history, his somber air was familiar to her. He didn't look like a happy man, and seemed tormented by his own memories of the time they'd shared. He had wanted to apologize to her for years, and now fate had given him that chance.
Carole looked exhausted when the police and officials left her room. Matthieu sat down next to her, and without inquiring first, he handed her a mug of tea. She looked gratefully at him and smiled. She was almost too tired to lift it to her lips. He saw her hand shake and held the cup for her. The nurse was still outside the room, chatting with the two CRS guards. The protests of the hospital about their machine guns had been overridden. Carole's protection was paramount and took precedence over hospital rules. The machine guns stayed. Carole had seen them herself when she took a walk down the corridor with her nurse, before the interrogation unit arrived to debrief her. She had been shocked to see their weapons, and yet reassured at the same time. Like Matthieu's presence next to her, it seemed both a curse and a blessing.