He shook his head. “Not very reliable. The valley’s too deep.”
“Or the mountains too high,” said Thérèse with a smile. “Perspective.”
Gamache opened the fridge and found bacon and eggs. Thérèse brought a loaf out of the bread box and began slicing it while the Chief put bacon into a cast-iron skillet.
It sizzled and popped, while Gamache poked it and moved the slices around.
“Morning.” Jér?me entered the kitchen. “I smelled bacon.”
“Almost ready,” said Gamache from the stove. He cracked the eggs into the frying pan while Jér?me put preserves on the table.
A few minutes later they all sat in front of plates of bacon, eggs over easy and toast.
Through the back window, over the sink, Gamache could see Emilie’s garden and the forest beyond covered in snow so bright it looked more blue and pink than white. A more perfect place to hide would be impossible to find. A safer safe house did not exist.
They were safe, the Chief knew, but they were also stuck.
Like the Quints, he thought, as he took a sip of rich, hot coffee. While the rest of the world had been in the depths of the Depression, they’d been scooped up, taken away, and made safe. They were given everything they wanted. Except their freedom.
Gamache looked at his companions, eating bacon and eggs, and spreading homemade jam on homemade bread.
They too had everything they could want. Except their freedom.
“Jér?me?” he began, his voice uncertain.
“Oui, mon ami.”
“I have a medical question for you.” The thought of the Quints reminded him of his conversation the night before with Myrna.
Jér?me lowered his fork and gave Gamache his full attention.
“Go on.”
“Twins,” said Gamache. “Do they generally share the same amniotic sac?”
“In the womb? Identical twins do. Fraternal twins don’t. They have their own egg and their own sac.”
He was clearly curious, but didn’t ask why.
“Why?” But Thérèse did. “A happy announcement for you and Reine-Marie?”
Gamache laughed. “As wonderful as having twins at this stage in life would be, no. I’m actually interested in multiple births.”
“How many?” asked Jér?me.
“Five.”
“Five? Must’ve been IVF,” he said. “Fertility drugs. Multiple eggs so almost certainly not identical.”
“No, no, these are identical. Or were. And there was no IVF at the time.”
Thérèse stared at him. “Are you talking about the Ouellet Quintuplets?”
Gamache nodded. “There were five of them, of course. From a single egg. They split off into twos in the womb and shared amniotic sacs. Except one.”
“What a thorough investigator you are, Armand,” said Jér?me. “You go all the way back to the womb.”
“Well, no one suspects a fetus,” said Gamache. “That’s their great advantage.”
“Though there are a few disadvantages.” Jér?me paused to gather his thoughts. “The Ouellet Quints. We studied them in medical school. It was a phenomenon. Not simply a multiple birth, and identical at that, but the fact all five survived. Remarkable man, Dr. Bernard. I heard him lecture once, when he was a very old man. Still sharp, and still very proud of those girls.”
Gamache wondered if he should say something, but decided against it. There was no need to throw dirt on that idol. Yet.
“What was your question, Armand?”
“The one Quint who was alone in the womb. Would that have made any difference once they were born?”
“What sort of difference?”
Gamache thought about that. What did he mean?
“Well, she would have looked like her sisters, but would she have been different in other ways?”
“It’s not my specialty,” Jér?me qualified, then answered anyway. “But I think it couldn’t help but affect her. Not necessarily in a bad way. It could make her more resilient and self-reliant. The others would have a natural affinity for the girl they shared the sac with. Being that close physically, physiologically for eight months, they couldn’t help but bond in ways that go beyond personality. But the girl who developed on her own? She might have been less dependent on the others. More independent.”
He went back to spreading jam on his toast.
“Or not,” said Gamache, and wondered what life would have been like for a perpetual outsider in a closed community. Would she have yearned for that bond? Seen their closeness, and felt left out?
Myrna had described Constance as lonely. Is this why? Had she been alone and lonely all her life, from before her first breath even?
Sold by her parents, excluded by her sisters. What would that do to a person? Could it twist her into something grotesque? Pleasant, smiling, the same as all the others on the outside, but hollow on the inside?