The Long Way Home

Myrna snorted into her glass, sending tea onto her nose.

“I know,” said Clara. “I didn’t believe him either. And then we fought some more.” She sounded weary to the bone as she described it.

Gamache had been listening closely. “If he wasn’t jealous of your art, then what did he say was the problem?”

“Me, I was the problem,” said Clara. “He was jealous of me. Not that I painted friendship and love and hope, but that I felt them.”

“And he didn’t,” said Myrna. Clara nodded.

“He realized in the night that he’d been pretending all his life and that deep down there was nothing. Just a hole. Which was why his paintings had no substance.”

“Because he had no substance,” said Gamache.

Their little circle fell silent. Bees buzzed in and out of the roses and tall foxglove. Flies tried to drag crispy baguette shards off the empty plates. The Rivière Bella Bella bubbled by.

And they considered a man who had a hole where his core should have been.

“Is that why he left?” asked Myrna, finally.

“He left because I told him to. But…”

They waited.

Clara looked across the garden so that they could only see her in profile.

“I expected him back.” She smiled suddenly and looked at them. “I thought he’d miss me. I thought he’d be lonely and lost without me. And he’d realize what he had, with me. I thought he’d come home.”

“What did you say to him exactly?” asked Beauvoir. “The morning he left?”

His notebook had replaced the empty plate on the arm of the chair.

“I told him he had to go, but that he should come back in a year and we could see where we were each at.”

“Did you say a year exactly?”

Clara nodded.

“I’m sorry to keep going over this,” said Beauvoir, “but this is crucial. Did you set a date? You did say a year exactly?”

“Exactly.”

“And when was he supposed to come back?”

She told him and Beauvoir did a quick calculation.

“In your opinion, did Peter take that in?” Gamache asked. “His world was collapsing around him. Is it possible he was nodding and appearing to understand, but he was really in shock?”

Clara thought about that. “I suppose it’s possible, but we talked about having dinner together. We actually planned it. It wasn’t a passing comment.”

She fell silent. Remembering sitting in that very chair. The steaks ready. The salad made. The wine chilled.

The croissants in the paper bag on the kitchen counter.

Waiting.

“Where was he headed that day he left?” asked Gamache. “To Montréal? To his family?”

“I think that’s unlikely, don’t you?” said Clara, and Gamache, who’d met Peter’s family, had to agree. If Peter Morrow had a hole where his soul should be, his family had put it there.

“When he didn’t show up, did you get in touch with them?” asked Gamache.

“Not yet,” said Clara. “I’ve been saving that little treat.”

“Do you have any idea what Peter would’ve been doing in the past year?” Beauvoir asked.

“Painting probably. What else?”

Gamache nodded. What else? Without Clara, there was only one thing left in Peter Morrow’s life, and that was art.

“Where would he have gone?” Gamache asked.

“I wish I knew.”

“Was there some place Peter always dreamed of visiting?” he asked.

“Because of the kind of paintings he did, the location wasn’t important,” said Clara. “He could do them anywhere.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country.”

She turned to Gamache. “When I said that this morning, I wasn’t thinking of you, you know. I know you’re a brave man. I was thinking of Peter. I’ve prayed every day that he grows up. And becomes a brave man.”

Armand Gamache leaned back in his chair, the wooden slats warm against his shirt, and thought about that. And wondered where Peter had gone. And what he’d found.

And whether he’d had to be brave.





SEVEN


The ugliest man alive opened the door and gave Gamache a grotesque smile.

“Armand.” He held out his hand and Gamache took it.

“Monsieur Finney,” said the Chief.

Bowed by arthritis, the elderly man’s body was twisted and humped.

With effort, Gamache held Finney’s eyes, or at least one of them. And even that was no mean feat. Finney’s protruding eyes rolled in all directions, as though in perpetual disapproval. The only thing stopping them from rolling together was his bulbous purple nose, a venous Maginot Line, with vast trenches on either side from which a war on life was being waged and lost.

“Comment allez-vous?” asked Gamache, losing his hold on the wild eye.

“I’m doing well, merci. You?” Monsieur Finney asked. His eyes spun swiftly over the large man who towered over him. Scanning him. “You’re looking well.”

But before Gamache could answer, a pleasant singsong voice came down the hallway.