Georges D’Anjou—Roger Bolduc

Georges D’Anjou—Roger Bolduc is a relationship between a powerful family patriarch and the son-in-law he never fully trusts. It is shaped first by the D’Anjou–Bolduc feud, then by Roger’s secret journey to New York and the simultaneous disappearance of Roger and the family cameo. Georges’s efforts to discover what happened are inseparable from his efforts to keep the family’s secrets out of public view; suspicion grows, but the evidence never establishes Roger’s fate or proves what he did with the jewel.

A marriage across a family feud

Roger entered the D’Anjou family through his marriage to Isabelle D’Anjou, the youngest and indulged daughter of Georges and Lucille D’Anjou. Isabelle’s attachment to Roger, the younger son of Romuald Bolduc, caused turmoil because the Bolducs were the D’Anjous’ sworn enemies in Touladi. Lucille supported her daughter without reservation, but Georges’s consent came only after Isabelle’s prolonged campaign. The marriage was thus accepted, but it remained marked by the family hostility that had made the match seem almost an alliance with the opposing camp.

That history colors Georges’s response when Roger disappears. At a family gathering, Isabelle’s brother Alain openly disparages the Bolducs, and the D’Anjous recall the resistance that preceded the marriage. The family’s old grievance gives Roger’s absence an immediate interpretation: his Bolduc identity becomes a reason for suspicion before the facts of his New York trip are clear. Georges is not simply dealing with a missing son-in-law; he is confronting a marriage that had never settled the feud around it.

The disappearance and the missing cameo

Georges informs Loïc that Isabelle is in no condition to speak after learning that Roger was in New York on the day of the September 11 attacks. Roger had originally been traveling toward Toronto, but changed direction in Montreal and took the overnight bus to New York. His reason for going was unknown. The investigation could not establish whether he had been at the World Trade Center complex that morning, and it remained open. Georges stresses that the matter is strictly confidential, revealing how quickly the private crisis has also become a problem of family control.

The family later learns that Roger’s computer, opened with police assistance, contained an appointment in New York for September 11 with a man named Patrice Desbois. The listed telephone number began with France’s country code, but a call reached an automated message saying the number was no longer in service. No meeting place was recorded, and the name did not appear on the list investigators checked. Georges’s further inquiry reveals that the cell phone was registered to Roger himself, making the supposed contact no clearer. The evidence confirms a planned meeting, not its purpose or location.

The New York journey takes on greater significance because the family cameo has also disappeared. Georges says that he transferred the jewel after changing his bank safe-deposit box the previous spring, and that no one had touched it at that point. With Roger missing since the attacks and the cameo gone, the family concludes that the two disappearances occurred together and that Roger probably took the stone. This is a strong suspicion, not a demonstrated account: the family does not know how the cameo was removed from the bank box, where Roger went, or whether he survived.

Isabelle between husband and father

As the family considers the evidence, attention shifts to Isabelle. Her pale, lowered face is read as suspicious, and the gathering’s looks make her seem accused before anyone has established her involvement. Georges says he has already spoken to her at length and that she told him everything she knew. He also explains that Roger concealed much of his business and his schemes from her, as well as from the rest of the family. His account partly shields his daughter from direct blame, yet it confirms the central divide in the marriage: Roger kept important parts of his life from her, leaving her unable to explain his actions.

The strain deepens when the family’s speculation about Roger and the cameo becomes explicit. Isabelle, who has held back her tears, finally breaks down. Georges’s position is consequently double-edged. He speaks for his daughter and manages the family inquiry, but his role as head of the family requires him to expose the possibility that her husband betrayed them. The marriage that once tested his loyalty to the D’Anjou name now places Isabelle at the center of a crisis in which her husband’s disappearance implicates her by association.

Family secrets and managed silence

The missing cameo is more than valuable property to the D’Anjous. In another account of the family’s past, Marthe recalls that the Founder described a precious stone from the United States that troubled him because it came from his country of origin. He had been adopted, knew nothing of his birth family, feared the object as malign, and eventually hid it in his scapular, intending to be buried with it. The later discovery of the Founder’s own adoption and the jewel’s connection to his origins makes the cameo a carrier of family history as well as an object of suspicion. Georges and Roger’s conflict therefore reaches beyond a missing bank deposit: it touches secrets the family has preserved across generations.

Georges’s response is to limit who can know those secrets. As judge and family head, he ensures that the authorities in New York receive photographs and detailed descriptions of the cameo, along with the information already sent about Roger, including his genetic fingerprints. At the same time, Georges works almost fiercely to prevent the disappearance from reaching the press. He fears that publicity could expose the family to scandal and invite reporters to investigate the cameo’s mysterious history. His silence does not resolve the relationship with Roger; it preserves the family’s control over an uncertainty that threatens both its reputation and its account of itself.

That control proves incomplete. Later public speculation about the D’Anjous’ conduct and the death of Lucille D’Anjou brings Roger’s New York disappearance back into the news, adding another scandal to a family already under scrutiny. The original uncertainty remains: Roger was in New York on September 11, had arranged a meeting under circumstances that led nowhere, and vanished as the cameo did. Georges’s son-in-law is consequently remembered within the family both as the man who married Isabelle across a bitter feud and as the unresolved center of a suspected theft that Georges could neither prove nor safely discuss.