Loïc Bolduc and Rodrigo Lerbier’s Distant Cousinship

Loïc Bolduc and Rodrigo Lerbier’s distant cousinship links two men who would otherwise have remained strangers: Rodrigo says the caméo’s passage through the United States and into the orbit of the Satanist Sect was what allowed him to learn that he had relatives in Quebec. The novel does not specify the exact genealogical line between them. Instead, their connection emerges alongside a family history shaped by adoption, concealed origins, and the caméo’s movement across borders.

A Kinship Without a Complete Genealogy

The relationship is stated plainly but left genealogically unresolved. Rodrigo identifies Loïc as distant kin, yet the account supplies no intervening names or documented chain that would establish exactly how the two men are related. That omission matters in a story where family belonging is repeatedly complicated by adoption and secrets: the bond is real within the narrative, even though its precise pedigree remains unstated.

The D’Anjou family’s own history shows why ancestry cannot be treated as simple or fully known. Marthe reveals that the Founder had told her he was adopted, knew nothing about his birth family, and feared a valuable stone kept in his safe because it came from the United States, his country of origin. He eventually hid the stone in his scapular and sewed it into his clothing, intending to be buried with it. The disclosure unsettles his descendants, while the stone’s concealed history suggests that the family’s past contains connections its members did not understand.

A separate archival account Loïc later considers describes the rescue and adoption of an infant in 1842. The baby, found with a finely made jewel in a silk purse attached to the swaddling, was baptized as Éloi and adopted by a French-Canadian couple from Saint-Louis. Loïc reasons that an unclear entry in the baptismal register may have turned Éloi into Élie, the name of the future Founder. This evidence illuminates the D’Anjou family’s history of adopted identity, but the novel does not identify it as the specific genealogical route connecting Loïc and Rodrigo.

The Cameo Brings the Cousins Together

Their kinship becomes consequential through the caméo’s journey. Loïc imagines that, had the FBI intercepted it before it left the United States, it would never have reached the Satanist Sect in Florida. Rodrigo answers that without this chain of events he would not have met Loïc or discovered his Quebec relatives. The object’s route thus acts as an unlikely bridge: a family connection that had remained unknown becomes visible through the investigation surrounding the stone.

The discovery also places the cousins on opposite sides of a wider geography that Loïc understands symbolically. He thinks of Quebec and Cuba as opposing poles of American anglophone power. Their relationship therefore carries more than private genealogical significance in the novel: it joins distant kin across a politically and culturally charged distance, while the caméo makes that connection part of a much larger transnational story.

Kinship and Shared Exposure to Danger

The bond is not merely a revelation about ancestry. Rodrigo says that, without the caméo, he would not have fallen into its malevolent wake. By the time this conversation takes place, he has suffered a serious injury to his right eye after a fall against a cactus. He suspects that the injury may be punishment for distancing himself from Santería and abandoning his magical ministry, though he does not know whether he will lose the eye. Loïc, for his part, interprets the caméo’s passage through these events as evidence of occult forces at work.

Rodrigo’s later message to Loïc confirms the practical weight of their cousinship. After Rodrigo’s friend Aurelio is found murdered near the cathedral, with his throat cut, Rodrigo and Loïc suspect vengeance by the sect. Loïc has never met Aurelio, but grieves for the young man as another victim of the cursed stone and worries that his already injured distant cousin may be next. Their newly recognized family tie gives Loïc a personal stake in Rodrigo’s safety, even as the exact ancestry joining them remains unexplained.