Free The Islands of Dr. Thomas by Francoise Enguehard

and Emma’s hair, the obvious pride of the farmer, who held his suspenders with his thumbs, the sparkling waves, the distant promise of the Langlade dune.
    A childlike carefree pleasure came over him. The suffering of his patients, the odour of camphor and death vanished, the feeling of helplessness in the face of disease evaporated, his heavy responsibilities temporarily lifted...Today, between the salt air of the ocean and the softness of the meadow, the doctor thinks only of the pleasure of the carriage ride up to the Larranaga farm, the delicious meal promised by the generous farm-wife, the wild berries that would sweeten the dessert, the inimitable stories the farmer would tell...
    â€œDon’t move!” he said.
    The first day of holidays was about to begin.
    Ã‰milie focused next on a series of photos featuring the doctor’s wife and daughter: one of them horseback riding in the Goulet, with its singular contrast of the riders and black horses against the dazzling white-hot sand in the August sun; another of a dreamy-eyed rider in the foreground who had stopped at the site of a shipwreck run aground on the West dune. Émilie could tell it was the day after a storm because she could see the disorderly waves of a sea that had not yet recovered from its fit of rage. All of the photos had been taken in the summer.
    You had to be intimately connected with the landscape to recognize the season. On this isthmus, windswept just about every day of the year, summer could be distinguished by some sparse and thorny plants that managed to survive in a few of the most sheltered spots. It could be felt more than seen, in the softer surf, in the glow of the sun high above the idling waves, in the green patches around the tolts at Delamaire’s place, in the absence of snow on the hilltops in Miquelon. Things that would matter little to a tourist, but to the initiated, meant everything.
    She thought that the photos would please François, that they would bring into his office in Paris a little bit of the ocean, a gust of iodine-scented sea air from Langlade, a little bit of happiness , she thought, having always suspected he missed it terribly. Just as she did.
    Then she looked at the photos Doctor Thomas had taken when he was out hunting, and one in particular stood out, with dozens of Canada Geese with their immaculate bodies and their long black necks that stood like exclamation points of pain on the snow. A hunting companion of the doctor’s, dressed in white, was parading in front of his victims, proud of having managed to trick them and kill them, despite the fact that they “usually took wing when they heard the hunter shoulder his rifle.” That’s what her Uncle Louis, who loved hunting migratory birds, had told her, sighing with regret at the thought that he had never been able to put a feather of one of these birds in his cap.
    She put that snapshot aside, despite herself. François liked hunting. It was a way for him to feel like a local son who had grown up here and still belonged here in spite of having gone away to school at a very early age, and never staying for more than a few weeks since then, his father having died before he had taught him to hunt. Émilie understood that he had started hunting late in life, having learned to do it so he could join his brothers and friends on common ground.
    He would no doubt like the idea of hanging this image—so incongruous in Paris—on the wall of his office, if only to be able to see the reaction of his visitors.
    As the sun slipped down into the west, she hurried to leaf through the rest of the snapshots, all similar to the first ones—except for the very last one.
    She immediately recognized the place although it was taken in the middle of winter (February, she guessed) in Miquelon. It was a picture of Cap Blanc taken from the top of a hill: the Chapeau, perhaps , she thought, trying to orient herself. It was not easy, given