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Gallebrie could see the familiar-yet-foreign village from a few hundred kilometers away. It wasn't big, but it was right in the middle of Putain-De-Nulle-Sur-Ville, she guessed.
Galle wasn't in a great mood.
The few memories she had of this place weren't good. Glaring eyes, burning tobacco smoke filling her lungs, petite hands on her arms, the stench of manure on a sunny day, sore muscles, spoiled milk, curdled milk, fresh cheese, moldy cheese, gasoline. Smells she could recognize anywhere, even after her temporal lobe got sucker punched by 2000 kilos of metal.
She knew she had to do this. She had a considerably big list of places she would rather be than here, right now.
Somehow, she knew her birth parents weren't bad. They weren't good, either, but she had no ill feelings towards them.
No feelings at all meant no ill feelings either, she supposed.
There was some guilt there. The memories she had of her hometown didn't get by her traumatic brain injury unscathed - she recovered them, bit by bit. Months at a time. But certain synapses would never be the same, the neurologist said.
She wondered how her dad felt about it.
Her dad, not her père . She separated them by language.
Galle's petite, blond dad was sitting on the sidecar of her bike. He seemed to be enjoying the view. It was beautiful, she could guess. Too much on her mind at the moment.
A big man carrying hay bales was the first to see her. He tugged at her memory, like she should know him. He stared, and then yelled something behind him.
If she thought about it, she would have no idea where she was going on the stone path clearly not made for anything more powerful than a horse-drawn wagon. So she let her subconscious take over.
It was weird, relying on habits she didn't know she had. The upside of starting a whole new life when you lose all your memories is that you relearn everything anyway.
She got to a familiar property, a little cottage dwarfed by a shed clearly - for her - used for aging barrels, a recently tended garden in front with a couple of fruit trees shadowing the view of the house.
"Is this it?" her dad asked.
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Maesther would be lying if he said that trip was something he was completely fine with. It's… complicated. He knew that he had to take his kid to see her biological parents.
Damn the complicated circumstances of the adoption. People asked what made him decide to adopt her, because he was only 27 and the kid was already 16.
It was destiny, plain and simple.
He couldn't imagine his life without her anymore. Despite knowing that she wouldn't probably leave after seeing her biological family .
Oh god… his child was already so grown up. He glanced at the ginger young woman that was driving the bike.
His little rooster had gone through so much, he also put her through a lot. He never wanted anything to do with parenting — everyone knew that — and was always too reckless to be ever considered a responsible option.
The judge fell for my charms . He'd say, that was also enough.
The accident was marked on his mind, he was an eyewitness and his legs moved before he could even think. Calling emergency, checking for vitals and all that jazz was a blur. The only thing going through his mind was: this kid needs to live .
Then he paced on the emergency room until the surgery was over and stayed as a visitor. To make sure she was going to wake up. The moment he recognized that she was talking french on her sleep, he grabbed his Les Mis playlist and played it, to be slightly prepared.
The worst thing was to wake up in a place that wasn't his first language, he knew about that from experience.
Then recovery started to happen and people questioned why he was staying. Why this, why that and then he just blurted out about being his kid and people thought it was his kid . Then the adoption lamp lit up and they went on from there.
And even though it was complicated, it was great. He had a daughter that was kissed by the sun twice.
He saw Galle jumping out of the bike and picked up a book to read. He didn't want to think about the trip.
Not at all.
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She knocked on the door twice. There were a few noises inside before it opened. It wasn't locked, she noticed.
A short, familiar girl looked up at her. Something about the way her blonde locks fell still made Galle's heart twitch. But she wasn't the one who had it, anymore.
"Gallebrie?"
"Good afternoon." she greeted, in French. "Are my mother or father home? "
She realized the girl looked… rounder than the last time she had visited. A moment after, she realized why.
"Uh… I'll check." and she closed the door. Galle knew she wasn't going to check if they were home, she was going to check if they wanted to talk to her.
A few moments passed. Then the door opened again, and- ah.
Galle felt like she was looking at a mirror when she saw her. It was… bizarre. The same skin tone, the same eyes, the same weirdly ginger hair. More freckles and wrinkles, though.
"Hello, mother. "
"Come in. What about him? "
"He'll be fine. "
"So pale…” she muttered.
The cottage was familiar and unsettling. She couldn't point out what had changed since the accident. She didn't particularly care to learn.
"What do you want? " her mother asked. Blunt as always.
"I need some documents. I'm missing my birth certificate and some other stuff ."
She nodded. "Do you want a coffee, or something? "
Galle shook her head. "I don't plan on staying long ."
"You might just have to. It's going to get dark soon. " she shouted as she left the room. Galle made herself comfortable at the dinner table, fiddling with her lighter.
She heard the blonde talking, and a man's voice cooing. Laughter.
At least she's happy.
Her mother came back with an old, worn box.
" Anything you need should be there. I'll have a smoke in the back. "
No one was a fan of staying too long around her. Maybe it was some superstition about death, maybe it was the eyeliner.
The box smelled tangy and old. Lots of papers and… pictures.
A baby who was unmistakably her sitting on a cow, being supported by her father. Her with a pair of pigtails, pretending to help roll a big cheese wheel. Sitting in the stream, around 7 years old.
Those children had died. They didn't make it past 16. A shame, really. She wondered what the child in the pictures could've become if she hadn't stepped in. Stolen the rest of their time on Earth.
Galle didn't have any strong beliefs. But she believed in death. She knew what it was like. She took the pictures.
She left one, though. A dark-skinned ginger little girl holding hands with a blonde little girl, both of them smiling and holding huge apples in their tiny hands.
At the bottom of the box she found what she needed. Her birth certificate, marked by GALLEBRIE ANNE-MARIE BOUCHER and a birth date that wasn't her own. The birth of the child in the pictures, really.
She sighed. Well, her mission was done. Now what.
She heard shuffled footsteps as the love of her former life entered the kitchen.
" I know she doesn't want to be around you, but I thought it was horribly rude. Do you want a glass of water? It's hot outside. "
Galle realized she was parched. She wore leather, after all.
" Yes, please. "
The girl opened the fridge and poured her a glass.
" How many months? " Galle asked, in lieu of a thanks.
Her eyebrows shot up, and then turned to tenderness as she rested her hands on her belly.
" 19 weeks. We just found out she's a little girl ."
" Congratulations. I hope she's born healthy. "
" All the signs point to that. Do you want more water? "
" No, that was good enough, thank you. "
They sat there in silence. Some part of her wanted to ask if it wasn't bad for the baby to live around a human smoke machine, but she figured she no longer had the intimacy to ask things like that.
" She wants to name her Anne-Marie ."
" It's her middle name, too. Will you? "
" I don't know. We have time to decide. "
What a weird household this was.
Galle gathered all she wanted to take with her, leaving the picture of the two of them on the table for the other woman to see. She smiled.
" A long time ago. "
Galle nodded.
" I'll talk to her for a minute, then I'll be on my way. Is… is everyone okay? "
She didn't know why she asked. She didn't care. And still.
" Yes, yeah. Everyone's still working at the same thing. But she's getting weaker now, so I'm picking up some of what she can't do. As much as I can, anyway. "
" That's good. Well, bye. "
" Bye ."
Holding the swath of papers in one hand, she opened the back door from the kitchen. Her mother looked at her, disinterested.
" Found what I needed. I'm taking some pictures with me, if you don't mind. "
" I don't. "
Galle leaned against the outside wall opposite her, and reached into her pocket for a cigarette. Her pack was empty.
"Damn." she muttered.
" They have you swearing in English now? "
She huffed a laugh.
" Force of habit. Do you have one? "
Before she finished asking, her mother already held it out for her.
Bumming a cig off of her estranged mother. Weird day.
" Thanks. "
" How are you doing? " she asked.
Galle shrugged.
" I'm fine. Same as always. Many corpses. " Her mother did the sign of the cross. " I'm learning to tattoo. "
" Any girls? "
Now how the fuck did she answer that question. Yes, mother, three, in fact. Two of them are married to each other and twenty years older than me. I'm pretty sure the third one has mob ties.
" Here and there. I don't spend nights alone. "
" And him? "
" He found someone, too. I think I'll have three fathers pretty soon. "
There was a moment of silence as her mother took a drag.
" Two. "
Galle looked her in the eye for the first time since she got here. " What happened? "
" Heart attack, the doctor thinks. Worked too hard. Drank too much. He's in an urn on the fireplace. "
She nodded slowly. Took a deep drag.
"Merde."
Her mother agreed.
She left the cottage after paying her respects to her père's remains. She probably looked dazed.
“Hey, Rooster, can I drive? You can take a nap.” her dad gave an understanding smile. “I always wanted to drive by the beautiful fields of France.”
"Sure, yeah. Thanks. Look what I found." she showed him the baby pictures.
“Ohhhh a baby rooster!” he grabbed the pictures and looked fondly at them. “Now the album is complete. I can show everyone how beautiful my tall girl is.”
"Just going to make people more confused." she smiled. The whole thing had taken all the energy from her. "'I didn't know you had a farm!' and all that."
“Eh, I don't care. Confusing people is fun anyways.” he said getting up from the cart.
Galle rolled her eyes at her dad's usual chaos, and moved to sit in the sidecar. She originally dismissed his suggestion of a nap, but her eyelids were feeling heavy. So she put her findings inside her bag, put on her helmet and made herself comfortable.
She was out in a minute.
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Maesther had a grin as he saw Galle slumped on the sidecar, the moment she left the house he knew she needed a break.
He didn't drive her bike much, so it took some adjusting to get comfortable and a couple of tries to turn it on. Then making the U to go back to start the way back home, the blond looked over his shoulder and saw a couple on the doorstep.
Maesther waved. “ Au revoir! ”
Then he parted, going slowly and enjoying the view and empty roads. Fields extending for miles and miles into the horizon, never ending.
But it would change and they would be home.