
The bright season at Aix-les-Bains made every hotel window a theatre, and the Walcotts were the pair everyone watched without knowing why. I came here for quiet, yet my wife seems determined that every stranger shall know our quarrels. You step into this one-chapter preview with Alan Walcott at the center, where choices turn on the people, promises, and pressure already in the room. Open it, and stay beside me; whatever it says, the answer begins before Paris. The chapter closes on a continuation question rather than resolving the novel's larger arc.
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