The Things We Find – Chapter 1: A Place to Do Nothing

The first thing Camille did in paradise was move a chair.

It stood beside the broad windows with its back to the room, positioned so that whoever sat in it would have nothing to consider but the Atlantic. Camille turned it slightly. From the kitchen, she could now see both the chair and the cat carrier beneath it.

“There,” she told Mistral. “Something for everyone.”

He remained at the back of the carrier, unimpressed by the arrangement.

Beyond the windows, the water changed colour over distances she couldn’t judge. Pale green close to shore, blue farther out, then a deep, almost purple band beneath the horizon. The house seemed to have been built around the view and to regard everything else as an unfortunate necessity.

She closed the bedroom and exterior doors, checked the windows, set out water and the travel litter tray, and opened the carrier.

Mistral extended one white paw.

Camille sat on the floor.

They had travelled together before, but never this far. For weeks, she had collected confirmations, checked documents, and worried about problems that had failed to occur. Now they were here, on San Salvador, and she was too tired to enjoy having been right about anything.

The cat emerged slowly. He inspected the underside of the chair, the table legs, and one corner of her suitcase. Then he chirped and jumped onto the cushion she had positioned for him.

“Of course.”

Her phone rang.

Anaïs appeared on the screen wearing hospital-blue scrubs and eating something directly from a saucepan.

“Show me.”

Camille turned the camera toward the windows.

Her sister stopped chewing.

“Oh, that’s offensive.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to become unbearable.”

“I was hoping to become well rested.”

“Ambitious. Show me the bedroom.”

Camille obliged. One suite contained her luggage; the other stood untouched, the bed so neatly made it seemed impolite to look at it.

“You could still come,” she said.

“I have a job.”

“So do I.”

“Yes, but yours has discovered holidays.”

Back in the living room, Mistral had settled into the chair. His grey tail hung over the edge, white forepaws tucked beneath his chest.

Anaïs smiled. “He looks furious.”

“That’s his contented face.”

“They’re all his contented face.”

Camille leaned against the kitchen counter. “How did the meeting go?”

“What meeting?”

“The one with your supervisor.”

“Oh. Fine.”

“Did you ask about changing your hours?”

“I said fine, Camille.”

“I only meant—”

“I know.”

A small silence travelled across the distance between them.

Behind Anaïs, someone called her name.

“Go look at the water,” she said. “Properly. Without telling it how to improve.”

After the call, Camille put her phone face down.

She placed her toiletries in a row, hung dresses she might never wear, and put two novels on the bedside table. Then she carried a glass of water out onto the deck and sat until the water grew warm.

There was nothing she needed to finish.

The realization should have been pleasant.

Instead, she thought of the last apartment, the scrape of a key in the lock, the two of them asking what to eat with the dull resignation of people discussing maintenance. They had spent years being reasonable. Even the separation had been orderly. He kept the dining table. She kept the cat, who had never belonged to him in any meaningful sense.

The sun lowered. Somewhere beneath the house, a loose object tapped against concrete.

Camille stayed outside until she wanted to go in.

It felt, absurdly, like an achievement.

The next morning she ate toast at eleven. Mistral followed a moving patch of sunlight across the living room. She read thirty pages of a novel without checking how many remained in the chapter.

By late afternoon, she had begun to believe the holiday might work.

She drove out for a few things she had forgotten, returned with more than she needed, and made three trips between the car and the house.

On the last trip, a bag caught on the door handle.

She shifted it, pushed the door with her hip, and heard what she thought was the latch.

Later, while she was washing a peach, something moved behind her.

The door stood open by the width of her hand.

Camille turned off the tap.

“Mistral?”

No answering chirp.

She checked the chair, the bedrooms, the space behind the sofa.

Then she checked them again.

Outside, the deck boards were still warm beneath her bare feet.

“Mistral. Viens, mon beau.”

The water moved below the rocks with a sound she had found soothing that morning.

She went back inside for her shoes.

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