After the doctors told Joseph that his wife was ill, he rushed home to tell his daughter. Although he had not been getting along with Helen for years, he felt a terrible panic at the thought of losing the woman he married twenty-nine years ago, the mother of his children. As he was walking up rue Saint-Jacques where they bought their apartment, he tried to remember the joys of their daily life, but the only image that came to his mind was her plump old face with saggy cheeks. At the hospital, they told him that the illness had been there for a long time, and in those words and by the look in the resident's eyes, Joseph felt all the guilt was on him. He had spent the last six months in Bretagne, to try to finish his book on total serialism but instead he went swimming and fishing. When Joseph got home, he found Emma in front of her computer, sitting on the wicker chair in the living room. He had to explain it to her, and then do it all over again with his younger daughter who lived in Germany. That was his role, he knew it, but how should he start? He was thinking of saying, ‘Mom is sick, but she won’t die.’ How could he say that, when no one else knew? He remained silent, sighed, and then, as he was about to speak, he realized that Emma was no longer looking at the screen, and that she lowered her head. So he almost shouted, ‘Mom is sick, that’s what the doctors said’. Then his eyes became blurry, and as he moved, he fell on the large mirror in the living room, on his own reflection. The suntan and healthy glow of his skin appeared to him so intensely, that he felt the full extent of his twist.