Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. – Robert Frost

Je sais, Brielle, que tu ne veux pas d’homme, mais je pense que ça te ferait du bien. Anne-Laure Renaux in and email to her cousin, Brielle, after Brielle enrolled in the FBI

“Brielle ? Ce n'est pas vrais !”

“Oui, c'est moi.”

In some ways, the years had not proven as kind to Anne-Laure Revelles as they had to Briel. The youthful bloom of color that had once graced Anne-Laure's cheeks had faded, replaced by what looked like permanently purple half-moons under her still lovely golden eyes. Instead of the tall, slender mignon that Briel had left behind, Anne-Laure had spread into the softly-round figure of motherhood, though plumper than Felicity Miller's elegant version of a mother.

Still, something behind the eyes of the two mothers matched. Yes, both Felicity and Anne-Laure wore the somewhat vapid look of sleep deprivation, but each also bore a sense of ecstasy that seemed removed from her external circumstances. Their situations seemed so alien, so pitiable, and yet so enviable.

Did a family produce such elation? Briel's hadn't. In fact, Briel wondered if the beauty offered itself only to the parents and not to the children. Mothers, though usually haggard, seemed to possess some internal utopia that Briel could not reach. Though from opposite sides of the world, both Felicity and Anne-Laure mocked Briel's isolation by their sheer existence.

“No, he's great,” Anne-Laure continued in French. She stood with Briel in her private courtyard which was hemmed in by a stone wall topped with a picket fence. Brilliant flowers filled the gaps between the pickets and formed a colorful visual background for Anne-Laure's plump physique. “I met him at lycées and found him funny and kind. Of course, that was at lycées.”

High school sweethearts. How typical. Briel kept up a running mental commentary to suppress the way her cousin's stories dredged up that same envy from the Miller's house.

“He works for the government repairing the roads.”

Doesn't everyone in France work for the government? Briel thought wryly. Without faltering in her pleasant smile, Briel ventured a question to arrest the flow of domestic insignificance, as Briel soon coined Anne-Laure's subject material.

“And how is your maman, Aunt Colette, since Uncle Thierry died?”

“As to be expected. It helps her to watch my two little ones running around. Do you have any children?” Anne-Laure quizzed innocently.

Briel had chosen an ill topic to avert the flow of talk from husbands, because this topic - children – definitely ranked as Briel's worst nightmare: the typical unthinking family member who begged to know the status of Briel's private life.

“Um, no,” Briel forced herself to maintain civility. Of course, upon watching Anne-Laure's change in demeanor, Briel remembered why she hadn't cared much for Anne-Laure as a child, something the mysterious motherhood aura had obscured for a moment. Anne-Laure had always felt superior to her odd, pensive cousin. The smug look of pleasure when Anne-Laure noted Briel's answer sent Briel's teeth grinding.

In reality, very little had changed in the eighteen years since Briel had left her childhood home, and Briel didn't see validity in Anne-Laure's judgment. Couldn't the woman see that the world had passed Revelles by? The countryside still lay in a pattern of patchwork shades of green, delineated either by disheveled shrubs or by the tall, neat lines of the cypress-shaped poplars. Though Anne-Laure's mother still occupied the main building of the château that had painted the backdrop for Briel's childhood, most of the rest of the property had changed hands several times, first to family members and then to strangers. The majority of the change had occurred generations before so that the once elegant “château” now seemed little more than a larger-than-average suburban home, albeit a couple of centuries older. Only a few changes in ownership had occurred after Briel's childhood egress.

“Does Albert still sit in front of the brasserie and shout stories to the tourists who pass by?” Briel queried, only partially feigning her enthusiasm.

“Non,” Anne-Laure smirked at the memory. “Unfortunately, he died seven years ago. Still, now his friends try to continue his tradition, though they have not his skill.”

Briel could imagine the squashed faces of the diminutive French vieux, sitting at the open-air café in town and chuckling at their own senses of humor.

“And le Corse?” Briel quizzed artlessly, though the question formed the crux of her conversation. “Did he die as well?”

Anne-Laure screwed up her now-pudgy face into the same expression of disapproval that she had often given Briel, three years her junior, whenever Briel embarked on an unsavory venture in their youth.

“That horrible man that you used to spy on all the time? The one who lives above the bar on Rue de Rivoli?”

“Oh, that's right. That's the one. So, he still lives there.”

“He's at least eighty by now; he was already old when you left, remember...”

Briel let Anne-Laure ramble on and, ignoring her, pondered her next steps. The Corsican, Briel had unearthed in her childish investigations, had falsified documents for Francois Spirito, the Corsican drug-smuggling kingpin from another era, and his organization.

At the time of Briel's earlier investigations, le Corse had found the precocious little girl with the haunting green eyes amusing and had often invited her into his home to tell her stories of Paul Bartolo and the French Connection. In the safety-obsessed new world, this could never have occurred, but in the bucolic French countryside, Briel had roamed freely through the streets of the provincial Revelles.

When Spirito and the French Connection had, she remembered the story, disbanded due to a government sting, le Corse had retired himself to the furthest corner of France, i.e. Briel's hometown. Thus removed from his immediate income, he lived a sparse existence in an insignificant town, spending as little as possible and living in near poverty on his earnings from the past.

Knowing what Briel now knew of criminals, she suspected that the Corsican still occasionally supplemented his income passing information for those who no longer employed him formally. Though a bit player in the grand scheme, he may yet have access to information regarding the criminal element in France.

“...has a new owner. You should let me take you there,” Briel became aware of Anne-Laure's lilting voice once again. “The owners when we were young did not care properly for their duty, and the restaurant fell into disrepair. If it were not the only restaurant in town...”

“That's at the corner of Domfront and Rivoli, right?”

“Bien sur, isn't everything near the corner of Domfront and Rivoli?” Anne-Laure seemed perturbed by Briel's interruption.

“When do you want to go?” Briel forgot her well-trained politeness in the face of her cousin's irritating babble; still, a bright smile broke out on Anne-Laure's face at Briel's acceptance.

“Well, avez-vous diner?”

“No, I haven't eaten since before I boarded the train,” Briel's demure smile could have reflected pleasure at the idea of dinner, or it might have revealed her satisfaction with how quickly she could enact her plans, but Anne-Laure would never know. In Anne-Laure Revelles Renaux's simple world, Briel's schemings would never enter the realm of possibilities.

“I will call Bernard, and he can drive us into town. It's too far for the little ones to walk,” she donned the ecstatic look once again, and Briel wished she could forgo the etiquette of dinner.

“Did you never learn to drive, then?” Briel asked incredulously.

“Non, pourquoi? Why would I learn to drive? I only need to go into town occasionally for groceries. Bernard goes to the pâtisserie in the mornings, and Maman cares for mes enfants when I must walk the kilometer to town.”

Though Briel could understand the logic, she could not imagine a life so completely devoid of stimulation and totally dependent on others. She laughed silently as she realized that she might have found her one phobia: helplessness. Trying not to betray her sentiments, Briel still internally recoiled from every aspect of her cousin's life. Briel couldn't wait to finish her business and leave the provincial misery of her hometown. The sooner Briel could go, the sooner she could desert her irrational fears as well.

Bernard Renaux's slightly rotund figure matched that of his wife, merely raising it several inches above Anne-Laure's matronly height. Though Briel wanted to dislike him, too, he had such a jovial demeanor that she couldn't find anything in him to criticize. His laid-back, comedic personality, though simplistic, soothed Briel, bringing her to a state of relaxation she had not felt for some time.

Even in the centre-ville, little had changed. The booming metropolis of three thousand residents had no real impetus to evolve, and in a way, Briel envied them. Since no one could achieve much monetarily, everyone focused on things more within his sphere of influence. In most cases, the quality of the produce or goods of the proprietors in the town outranked the politics of governmental control in the minds of the townsfolk. The townspeople wouldn't dream of considering the great philosophical questions of good versus evil. Every day, the entire town shut down at noon for lunch and then again at six for the night. No emergency required immediate attention except for those of a medical nature.

The day had stretched unreasonably long with the plane rides from Mexico to New York and New York to Paris, then the train ride to Rouen, and the bus ride from Rouen to Revelles, Briel had not slept in over twenty-four hours, and the fading light of the early evening brought on a sleepiness that Briel did not trust. As much as she may want to, she would not seek the Corsican tonight for fear that she would prove ineffective in her quest for information. Though he would no doubt remember her, he likely would not prove as amused with her inquisitiveness now as when she was a child, and Briel needed all of her mental faculties to face him.

Still, Briel recoiled from the thought of revisiting her childhood home as a guest: sleeping in a strange room and sensing the alien familiarity of the surroundings. She promised herself she would stay no more than one night in the house of Anne-Laure Renaux and her mother, Colette Revelles.