Clarisse

Clarisse is Delphine’s childhood friend, a vivid presence in Delphine’s memories and an absence that continues to shape her life after leaving Argus. Her departure follows the death of Sheriff Hock; although Cyprian brings Delphine a final message from her, neither he nor Delphine can say where Clarisse went. The uncertainty preserves her independence while making her absence an enduring part of Delphine’s emotional landscape.

Identity and remembered character

Delphine recalls Clarisse as someone whose response to early spring contrasted sharply with her own. While Delphine found March’s unsettled weather hopeful, Clarisse tended toward a severe, mysterious mood. At school she wore black, traced her eyes with soot from a burnt match, and sometimes rouged her cheeks in a way that made her look deliberately strange. The contrast presents the two friends as differently attuned to the same world: Delphine was cheered by change and expectation, while Clarisse cultivated a darker, more theatrical self-presentation.

Clarisse is also remembered as part of Delphine’s social past that Delphine would prefer to keep separate from respectable employment. When she considers applying for a bookkeeper’s job at the lumberyard, Delphine hopes to appear dependable and ordinary, not like someone who has lived with a vaudeville performer, has a talkative alcoholic father, or counts a murderer among her closest friends. Her thoughts place Clarisse within a history Delphine fears employers might judge, even as their friendship remains important to her.

Departure from Argus

After Sheriff Hock’s death, Cyprian parts company with Clarisse. When Delphine presses him for what happened to her, he says that he did not know about Hock. Delphine insists that she is asking about Clarisse, not about Hock, and Cyprian gives her the only direct report he has of Clarisse’s intentions: she said, “I’ll go where my work is necessary, and appreciated.” The words suggest a purposeful departure, but do not specify a destination or explain what work she expected to find.

Cyprian adds that he separated from Clarisse during the trip to Minneapolis, partly because he feared that people might connect them and assume he had been involved in Hock’s death. His account establishes a practical reason for their parting, without resolving Clarisse’s fate. When Cyprian later returns to Argus, he says he is only passing through and has come to find out whether Delphine loves Fidelis. His return brings Clarisse’s absence back into the conversation, but does not turn him into a source of further news about her.

Delphine’s continuing attachment

Delphine hears Clarisse’s reported words as characteristic of her. She speculates that Clarisse might have gone south—to New Orleans, the Yucatán, or Brazil—but these are Delphine’s imaginings, not confirmed destinations. She immediately recognizes the limits of that picture: she cannot actually see where Clarisse is. The passage leaves Clarisse beyond the reach of certainty, rather than converting Delphine’s guesses into a resolution.

Missing Clarisse has become a daily habit for Delphine, as familiar as making coffee or turning on the radio. The feeling no longer requires her to stop and brood; she misses her, then carries on with the next task. Delphine understands this reduced sharpness not as forgetfulness but as time’s kindness. Clarisse remains emotionally present precisely through this ordinary recurrence: her absence has become woven into Delphine’s routines.

Relationships and narrative significance

Clarisse’s friendship with Delphine is revealed indirectly, through memory, loyalty, and the urgency of Delphine’s questions. Delphine demands that Cyprian tell her what happened to Clarisse, distinguishes that question from the separate matter of Hock, and listens closely to the one sentence Clarisse left behind. The scene makes clear that Delphine’s concern is not merely curiosity about a crime or a departure; it is concern for a friend whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Clarisse’s story is consequently defined by both agency and incompletion. She chooses a direction in principle—going where her work is needed and appreciated—but the narrative offers no confirmed account of what follows. Her absence gives Delphine a durable, quietly changing form of grief, while the unverified southern destinations preserve the sense that Clarisse may still be moving through a life of her own.