A man returns home from New York to bury his father. He tries to gather together the fragments of words or gestures his memory has preserved of this little-known man. For he had been someone discreet to the point of secretiveness; affectionate, but devoured by his wife, who hardly left him the time to become close to his children – two sons. The narrator, transfixed by pain, tries to pay attention to the woman sitting next to him, but the memories keep coming back, and with them, a few secrets, like only families can produce.
Arriving in his native eastern France, he sees the older brother with whom he never really shared anything at all. More importantly, he sees his mother, who worshipped him excessively; to such an extent that her son began to wonder if he would ever have his own life. Should he be searching in this exclusive love for the reasons of his exile and the need he’s had to put an ocean between himself and his youth?
Returning to the scene of a childhood sometimes means returning to the scene of the perfect crime – one in which the guilty party is never who you thought, and the victim is never aware of being one. For the narrator, it means touching once more the letters that contain the reasons for a sorrow that only words will ever resolve.

One is tempted to say as wide as possible – as the simplicity of Gilles Fleury’s writing tends to such an extent towards universal emotions.