Dear old father-in-law died today. Or maybe yesterday, I'm not sure anymore.
Well—yes, I do know. I'm just trying to put on a literary act to hide the fact that I am probably the first law student in history to commit involuntary manslaughter with his ass. It's hard to look classy when your murder weapon is a discounted pair of H&M jeans.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind a bit—to the moment when I still believed my life was a romantic comedy and not an episode of Faites entrer l'accusé directed by the Monty Python crew.
My name is Eliot. I'm 22. I'm in my third year of law school, and I'm the human equivalent of a default wallpaper.
You know that guy at uni who always sits in the third row, takes neat notes, and never has a spare pen? That's me. I'm not a loser—I shower, and I can string three words together without stuttering—but I'm what you'd call a "non-playable character." A background extra. If my life were a movie, my credit would read: Student #4 (uncredited).
At least, that's what I try to make the world believe. Because in reality, I'm hiding a secret a little heavier than a badly shelved Civil Code.
—Eliot! Are you listening, or are you mentally revising Article 1382 again?
A hand with neatly painted nails waved in front of my eyes, snapping me out of my trance. I looked up and met Zoé's radiant face. Zoé is my anomaly.
She's beautiful, smart, from a family so rich they probably own a dictionary where the phrase "overdraft fee" doesn't exist—and for reasons I still can't fully grasp, she adores me.
—I was just thinking about the fragility of existence, I replied with a half-smile. And the fact that your father is probably going to grill me harder than the exam board for my obligations midterm tonight.
—Don't be ridiculous, she laughed, kissing my cheek. Dad is adorable. He's funny—he'll make you feel at ease. You're going to love him.
As we walked through the crowded university hallways, I felt that old, familiar sensation twist in the pit of my stomach. A little icy shiver. The kind of feeling I'd learned to ignore... but that always came galloping back.
It all started when I was eight. My grandmother—a woman who saw demons in microwave ovens—convinced a priest to perform an exorcism on me. I can still see myself, perched on a wooden chair too tall for my legs, the smell of cheap incense stinging my nose, while Father Marceau sweated buckets and screamed things in Latin.
"This child carries the reaper in his shadow!" he'd yelled, splashing holy water in my face. "Wherever he goes, death will follow!"
Back then, my only concern was whether I'd miss the Pokémon episode because of his nonsense. I grew up thinking the old guy was just a fanatic with a little too much devotion to communion wine.
Then there were my parents.
A household accident. Ordinary. Absurd. A short circuit, a small fire, a gas leak... and poof. Eliot, eighteen years old: orphaned, and heir to a dreadful doubt. Was I responsible? No. I was at the movies that night. But ever since that day, I started noticing something: the "not-so-great" people around me tended to have a pretty short life expectancy. The teacher who bullied me in middle school? Dropped dead from a heart attack mid-insult. My first boss who stole from the register? Crushed by a poorly bolted vending machine.
That's why I became a professional at staying under the radar. I don't want to be a hero. I just want to pass my year and kiss my girlfriend without the ceiling collapsing on her head.
—Everything's going to be fine, Eliot, Zoé repeated, squeezing my hand. We eat, we laugh, and we go home. Nothing bad can happen at a simple dinner, right?
I looked at her innocent smile and felt a bead of cold sweat slide down my back.
—Of course, I murmured. What could possibly happen?
Spoiler: absolutely everything.
The Belmont residence wasn't just a house. It was a fortress of social success, planted in the kind of neighborhood where even the pigeons look like they have savings accounts. The moment we passed through the wrought-iron gate, my impostor syndrome reached Himalayan altitudes.
—Stop fiddling with your tie, Eliot, Zoé whispered, elbowing me affectionately. You're perfect.
—I look like an intern about to get fired, Zoé. Your dad is a notary. A real one. He's going to ask me about the reform of security interests, and I'm going to end up telling him about my Pokémon card collection out of sheer stress.
She laughed. That crystalline laugh that usually calms me down. But standing in front of that massive oak door, I had this weird feeling. Not the "sense of death" the exorcist promised me, no. Just the premonition that I was about to knock over something extremely expensive.
The door opened. And then—impact.
Jean-Pierre Belmont.
If the concept of the "Ideal Son-in-Law" had a father, it would be him. In his fifties, the man radiated benevolence so intensely he could've powered a small city. Tall, athletic, salt-and-pepper hair perfectly maintained by a barber who probably knows the price per square meter in Paris, he greeted me with a smile that could've comforted a man on death row.
—Eliot! Finally! he boomed, in a baritone voice that made you want to invest in the stock market. Come in, my boy, come in! Zoé's told us so much about you. I was afraid she'd invented an imaginary boyfriend so I'd stop introducing her to my single notary clerks!
He burst into warm, contagious laughter and crushed my hand in a paternal handshake. But the picture didn't stop there. Behind him, the rest of the family looked like they'd stepped straight out of a happiness advertisement.
Hélène, Zoé's mother, glided forward with effortless elegance. She wore an immaculate apron over a chic dress and carried a gentle scent of lavender and roast-from-the-oven.
—Don't listen to him, Eliot, she said, kissing my cheeks with maternal softness. Welcome to our home. Zoé was right—you have very kind eyes. Come in, I've just taken the gougères out of the oven.
And then—two small blonde tornadoes came barreling down the stairs, laughing. Zoé's little sisters, barely seven: Léa and Chloé. They froze in front of me, stared with huge curious eyes, then hid behind their father's legs.
—Daddy, is he the man who studies laws to put bad guys in prison? one of them asked in a tiny voice.
—That's him, sweetheart! Jean-Pierre replied, scooping her up and spinning her around, earning giggles from everyone. But today, the only place he's going is the table!
I'd expected to be judged by the bourgeois Inquisition. Instead, I was being thrown into an episode of Little House on the Prairie—modern edition. On the way to the living room, Jean-Pierre kept up his natural charm routine, backed by his wife's gentleness and the twins' adorable antics.
Lunch was a torture of perfection. The tablecloth was whiter than my future, and the wine... the wine probably had a family tree more complete than mine.
Hélène had cooked a meal worthy of a Michelin-star chef while insisting it was "just a little something thrown together last minute." But Jean-Pierre did everything to break the ice.
—So, you're studying law, are you? he tossed out, carving the roast with surgical precision under his daughters' admiring gaze. A noble path, Eliot. Long, winding, full of people who wear wigs in certain countries—but noble! Do you know the difference between a good jurist and a bad one?
—The ability to read between the lines? I tried, a little tense.
—No! The bad jurist knows the law. The good jurist knows the judge!
The twins giggled without understanding, Hélène rolled her eyes with a lovestruck smile, and Zoé squeezed my hand under the table.
He capped his joke with a conspiratorial wink while pouring me a generous splash of Bordeaux.
For two hours, he was incredible. He told us how he'd helped an old lady from the parish reclaim her house from a crooked bank. He let his daughters steal fries from his plate with infinite patience.
Hélène, meanwhile, told the story of how Jean-Pierre grabbed the wrong case file in court the first time he approached her. They breathed pure love.
He was a saint. A golden man. The kind of person who makes you think humanity isn't completely doomed. Funny, attentive—and above all, he seemed genuinely to like me.
—You know, Eliot, he said more seriously at the end of the meal, his face suddenly softened. Hélène and I—we always worry about Zoé. But seeing you, I'm reassured. You look like a solid young man. Discreet—but solid. We need people like you in this world of sharks.
—He's right, Hélène added, laying her hand over mine. Consider this home yours, Eliot.
At that exact moment, an immense relief washed through me. Warmth filled my chest. That old fear—that feeling of being a "death-bearer" that had lived in me since my parents' accident—evaporated completely. Jean-Pierre was there, brimming with life, surrounded by a perfect family that welcomed me in. Nothing bad could happen here. It was statistically impossible. Karma doesn't hit saints.
—Right! Enough seriousness! Jean-Pierre exclaimed, jumping up and clapping his hands. I can't let you leave without tasting the Ancestors' Digestif. It's a bottle of cognac my grandfather hid during the war. It's in the cellar, in the reserve rack.
He turned to me, his eternal smile in place, while the twins were already racing into the garden with their mother.
—Eliot, my future colleague—come give me a hand going down. The stairs are a bit tricky, and with all this wine, I'd rather not end the night with a stunt my insurance didn't approve!
I stood up, light-hearted, ready to help him, my heart full of sincere gratitude for this man. I didn't know yet that those stairs would be the stage for my greatest catastrophe—and that Saint Jean-Pierre was about to meet his fate at the end of an untied shoelace.
The cellar stairs were a descent into the abyss of chic. Jean-Pierre went first, phone in hand to light the stone steps. The air was cool, heavy with oak and old grapes...
That's when destiny decided to trip me in the most metaphorical way possible. My phone—that traitor—slipped out of my pocket. In a stupid reflex, I bent down to catch it. Except between the Bordeaux, the stress of wanting to impress, and my natural clumsiness, I performed what physics would call an "uncontrolled transfer of mass."
I snapped back up. My hips pivoted. My ass slammed into Jean-Pierre's lower back with the force of a battering ram.
Time froze. I watched Saint Jean-Pierre lift off. His feet left the step, his arms flailed like a wounded bird's wings, and he dove headfirst into the darkness.
Crack.
The sound was sharp. Clean. Like a dead branch snapping underfoot. He landed ten steps below, his neck twisted at an angle that even a Cirque du Soleil contortionist would call ambitious.
—Jean-Pierre? I whispered, my heartbeat pounding in my ears like a war drum.
Nothing. The cellar's silence turned sepulchral. I stumbled down on cotton legs to check his pulse. Nothing. Nada. The saint had become a single line in a death register.
Panic struck me like lightning. Not the panic of grief—no. The panic of a law student already seeing his name next to Article 221-6 of the Penal Code: involuntary manslaughter.
"Oh my God, forensics..." I thought, hands shaking. "Can they find traces of my ass DNA on his tweed jacket? Does butt pressure leave identifiable marks? Am I going to end up in prison because my hips are too wide?"
—Everything okay down there, boys? Did you find the treasure?
Hélène's sing-song voice echoed from the top of the stairs. My blood made one full turn—and instantly froze in my veins.
—Uh... I stammered, in a falsetto voice that had just lost three octaves. I... I think there's been a problem...
I could give you the minute-by-minute breakdown of what happened next—from the moment she stepped onto the stairs to the second she understood—but honestly, it was horrific. The image of that perfect family exploding mid-flight is burned into my retinas forever.
Hélène screamed. A visceral, primal scream that tore through the cool, scented air of the cellar. The charcuterie board she'd been holding shattered against the stone. Then it was absolute chaos. Zoé came running and collapsed on the last step, clutching her face, screaming her father's name until her vocal cords must've been bleeding. From the living room, we could hear the little twins sobbing, terrified by their mother's and sister's screams.
Between the ripping sobs, the echoes of despair bouncing off the stone walls, and the sharp smell of 1945 cognac slowly soaking into Jean-Pierre's twisted body, I didn't know where to put myself. I stood there, pressed against the damp wall, arms hanging, holding my breath with the sickening feeling that I was the worst monster the earth had ever carried.
Everything happened fast. Too fast.
Blue emergency lights sweeping over the bourgeois façade, paramedics with grave faces, police officers asking gentle questions—"He slipped, you say? The stairs are indeed steep and poorly lit..."—the survival blankets, the blank stares of Zoé and Hélène. I nodded along to everything. Yes, he slipped. No, I couldn't do anything, I was behind him. A time-lapse worthy of a frantic movie montage carried us—almost without transition—several days forward.
To the funeral.
The church was packed. It looked like an Oscars red carpet, except with more tissues and fewer smiles. Zoé was wrecked beside me, clinging to my arm like a life buoy.
Me? I was in a private hell. Every time the priest said "good man," "pillar of the community," or "saint among saints," I felt like vomiting my breakfast. Guilt gnawed at me. I stared at the polished mahogany coffin and wondered if I should stand up—right then, right now—and scream the truth.
"It's me! My clumsiness killed the man who coached little orphans in soccer! Stop crying, I'm a monster!"
I was going to do it. I was going to open my mouth. I was two fingers away from ruining my life for the honor of this dead man.
That's when my phone, on vibrate in my pocket, started spasming like it was having a seizure. A notification from the City Journal app.
I checked it under the pew, purely out of survival instinct.
BREAKING NEWS: THE HORROR BEHIND THE MASK.
Following the death of Jean-Pierre Belmont, investigators discovered a secret room in his cellar. Searches uncovered thousands of child pornography images and damning evidence linking the notary to the disappearance of four teenagers in the region. Jean-Pierre Belmont, the "perfect notary," was in fact a notorious predator who had been operating for over twenty years.
My blood turned to ice. I raised my head toward the coffin. The "brightness" I'd felt in him had been nothing but varnish. The cellar where I'd shoved him wasn't just a wine reserve—it was his lair.
My guilt evaporated instantly, replaced by a shiver of understanding. The exorcist had been right. I carry death. But apparently death has an excellent sense of priorities.
The ceremony continued. People kept crying, but I stared at my hands. I wasn't a murderer.
I was... a necessary accident.
Cause of death: cervical fracture from falling down stairs (and an unintentional butt-check).
Verdict: accidental death.
Serial killer red flag: don't get a BBL. A rounder butt might've cushioned the impact—or at least wouldn't have been such a blunt instrument.
End of Chapter 1.