It was quiet now, and dark. Except for the buttery light from the sitting room window. As the silence grew, Reine-Marie wondered if she’d done the moth a favor. Had she saved its life, but taken away its purpose?
And then the beating started again. Flitting, desperate. Tiny, delicate, insistent. The moth had moved down the porch. Now it was beating against the window of the room where Armand and Jean-Guy sat.
It had found its light. It would never give up. It couldn’t.
Reine-Marie got up, watched by her daughter, and turned the porch light back on. It was in the moth’s nature to do what it was doing. And Reine-Marie could not stop it, no matter how much she might want to.
*
“How’s Annie?” Gamache asked. “She looks happy.”
Armand smiled as he thought of his daughter, and remembered dancing with her on the village green at her wedding to Jean-Guy.
“Are you asking if she’s pregnant?”
“Of course not,” snapped the Chief. “How could you think such a thing?” He picked up the paperweight on the coffee table, put it down, then picked up a book and fiddled with it as though he’d never held one before. “That’s none of my business.” He hiked himself up in the chair. “Do you think I think only a pregnancy would make her happy? What sort of man do you think I am? What sort of father?” He glared at the younger man across from him.
Jean-Guy simply stared back, watching the uncharacteristic bluster.
“It’s all right to ask.”
“Is she?” asked Gamache, leaning forward.
“No. She had a glass of wine at dinner. Didn’t you notice? Some detective.”
“Not anymore, I’m not.” He caught Jean-Guy’s eyes and they both smiled. “I really wasn’t asking, you know,” said Gamache truthfully. “I just want her to be happy. And you too.”
“I am, patron.”
The two men looked at each other, searching for wounds only they could see. Searching for signs of healing only they would know were genuine.
“And you, sir? Are you happy?”
“I am.”
Beauvoir didn’t need to probe. Having spent his career listening to lies, he recognized the truth when he heard it.
“And how’s Isabelle doing?” asked Gamache.
“Acting Chief Inspector Lacoste?” asked Beauvoir with a smile. His protégée had taken over as head of homicide for the S?reté, a job everyone had once assumed would be his on the Chief’s retirement. Though Jean-Guy knew it wasn’t accurate to describe what had happened as a retirement. That made it sound predictable. No one could have predicted the events that had caused the head of homicide to quit the S?reté and buy a home in a village so small and obscure it didn’t appear on any map.
“Isabelle’s doing fine.”
“You mean Ruth Zardo ‘fine’?” asked Gamache.
“Pretty much. With a little work she’ll get there. She had you as a role model, sir.”
Ruth had called her latest slim volume of poetry I’m FINE. Only people who read it realized that FINE stood for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.
Isabelle Lacoste called Gamache at least once a week, and they met for lunch in Montréal a couple times a month. Always away from S?reté headquarters. He insisted on that, so he wouldn’t undermine the new Chief Inspector’s authority.
Lacoste had questions only the former Chief could answer. Sometimes procedural issues, but often questions that were more complex and human. About uncertainties, about insecurities. About her fears.
Gamache listened and sometimes talked about his own experiences. Reassuring her that what she felt was natural, and normal, and healthy. He’d felt all those things almost every day of his career. Not that he was a fraud, but that he was afraid. When the phone rang, or there was a knock on the door, he worried there would be a life-and-death issue he could not resolve.
“I have a new trainee, patron,” Isabelle had told him over their lunch at Le Paris earlier in the week.
“Ah, oui?”
“A young agent just out of the academy. Adam Cohen. I think you know him.”
The Chief had smiled. “Merci, Isabelle.”
Young Monsieur Cohen had flunked out on his first try and had taken a job as a guard at a penitentiary. Gamache had met Cohen months ago, when almost everyone else was attacking the Chief. Professionally. Personally. And finally, physically. But Adam Cohen had stood beside him. Hadn’t run away, despite having every reason to. Including to save his own skin.
The Chief hadn’t forgotten. And when the crisis had passed, Gamache had approached the head of the S?reté academy and asked that Cohen be given a rare second chance. And then he’d tutored the young man, guided him. Encouraged him. And had stood at the back of the hall, during graduation, and applauded him.
Gamache had asked Isabelle to take Cohen on. To, essentially, take him under her wing. He could not imagine a better mentor for the young man.
The Long Way Home
Louise Penny's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- The Inquisitor's Key
- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Paris Architect: A Novel
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- Long Lost: A Kate Burkholder Short Story