Chapter 3: The First Lies

The days were turning into a confused tangle, where reality seemed to disintegrate with each breath. Clara, on the other hand, knew nothing. Not yet. She didn't know that her husband was dead. In her mind, I was still Alexandre. Her husband, the one she had lost, the one whose shadow she was still searching for through my actions and words. She didn't see the gap, she didn't feel the difference. To her, I was him, and I played the part with desperate thoroughness, dreading the moment when the truth would come out, when everything would fall apart.

Every gesture I made seemed to me to be an act of survival, as if I had no choice but to maintain this illusion, to keep this facade intact. I lived in a world where the walls seemed to come a little closer every day. Clara would look at me, smile at me, and in her eyes there was this glimmer of need. She needed to believe that everything was still as it had been, that her husband was there by her side. And I was just a mirror, a reflection of a man she had loved, a man she had not yet realized she had lost.

One morning, she asked me to go with her to the doctor for Lucas. I had to be there, and even though I would have preferred to stay at home, I accepted. I had learned to accept this life of imitation, to stop thinking too much about the cracks that were widening around me. I was there with them, and that was all that mattered. But every moment spent with them seemed like an additional ordeal. I was an intruder in their daily lives, an actor in a play whose script I didn't know. I was playing a role, and that role was becoming increasingly difficult to bear.

In the car, Clara, while driving, told me about her daily life, her work, her concerns. She seemed so fragile, and I was content to be a silent presence at her side, content to listen to her, to play the perfect illusion. She told me anecdotes about Alexandre, memories she thought she shared with him, but which, for me, were foreign, distant.

“Do you remember when we went to the mountains, just before Lucas was born?” she asked me, glancing at the road. ”You told me you didn't like the cold, but you had so much fun...”

I froze. No, I didn't remember. But I had no choice. I had to find an answer, to cling to the image of Alexandre, to do him justice, even if I was only his shadow.

“Yes, of course. I... I remember very well,” I said, taking on a light tone, feigning nostalgia. ”It was a beautiful time.”

Clara smiled, but her eyes betrayed a depth of sadness that I didn't know how to assuage. Perhaps, subconsciously, she suspected that something was wrong. But she didn't say it, she didn't want to see it. She still wanted me as Alexander, and I was just a disguised impostor.

Lucas' doctor played the role of “husband” alongside Clara for a little while longer. She seemed appeased, as if everything was normal. But for me, every interaction, every word exchanged, was a new stage in this fragile dance. The false normality that was building up around me was suffocating me, but I had no right to break it.

I sometimes caught myself wondering what Alexandre would have done in a particular situation, as if, in a desperate bid, I thought I could tap into his memory to better blend into his role. But these attempts exhausted me more than they helped me. There was a gulf between what I was trying to do and what he had been. I couldn't reproduce his habits, his gestures, his character, not because I didn't want to, but because it all seemed foreign to me, inaccessible, like a book whose pages were too worn to read.

On the way back, Clara suggested we cook dinner together, like we used to. She talked about little things of no great importance, but for her, these little things were living memories, pieces of her life with her husband. Pieces that I could only borrow, memories that were not mine. She seemed to find a form of comfort and normality in these everyday gestures. But for me, every minute spent with her reminded me that all this was just a fragile mask, ready to crack at any moment.

She leaned over for a moment, placed a hand on my arm, and said, almost in a whisper:

“You know, Alexandre... sometimes I wonder how you manage to stay so calm, so stable. With everything we're going through, I feel like you're our anchor. I feel safe with you.”

I had nothing to say. I lacked the words, the truth gnawed at me, but I wasn't ready to face it. Clara needed to believe, to cling to this man she thought she still had by her side. And I was there to allow her to continue to live in this illusion. But inside me, something broke every time I uttered words that I knew were not my own.

I didn't know how long I could continue to play this role, how long I could lie to Clara, to Lucas, to myself. I could feel the truth slowly consuming me. Every smile, every look, every word exchanged was a false note in this symphony of lies. And yet I clung to it.

But in her, I saw much more than a woman lost in grief. I saw a woman who, somewhere, knew that there was a void, that something was wrong. She smiled at me, but sometimes I perceived in her gaze a form of doubt, an unasked question. She might not say it, but I could feel this anxiety, this fear of discovering what she did not want to see.

Every night, in the silence of the apartment, I found myself alone with my thoughts. The mirror reflected the image of a man who was not me. Alexandre. Samuel. The boundaries between the two blurred a little more every day. And the lies... They multiplied, intertwined around me, suffocating me.

I knew that I was sinking deeper and deeper into this role. But I had the impression that if I stopped playing this role, everything would fall apart. Clara would fall apart. Lucas too. And what would I be without this mask, without this illusion that I created day after day?

I was just a man trapped by his own lies, with a haunting question that never ceased to plague me: Who killed my brother, and why?

I didn't know if I really wanted to discover the truth, or if I was just afraid to face it. But one thing was certain: the deeper I sank into this role, the further I distanced myself from myself, and the more unbearable the truth became. One day, reality would catch up with me, and I might not even know who I really was.