“I guess it was a swipe at Peter,” said Myrna. “Saying he was more interested in art than in his brother.”
“And he’d have been right,” said Clara.
“Let’s get a beer,” said Myrna, and headed straight for the bar.
TEN
Reine-Marie tucked the heavy book under her arm and stepped into the glare of the day.
“Inside or out, ma belle?” Olivier asked.
She looked around and decided a table on the terrasse, under one of the large Campari umbrellas, would be perfect.
Olivier returned a few minutes later with a tall ginger beer, already beading in the heat, and a bowl of assorted nuts.
“Parfait,” said Reine-Marie. “Merci.”
She took a sip and opened the book, only looking up twenty minutes later when a head dropped into her lap.
Henri.
She kneaded his extravagant ears, and felt a kiss on the top of her head.
“I hope that’s you, Sergio.”
“Sorry, only me,” said Armand with a laugh.
He pulled up a chair and nodded to Olivier, who disappeared inside.
“The History of Scotland,” Gamache read the cover of Reine-Marie’s book. “A sudden passion?”
“Why Dumfries, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.
“I’ve been trying to figure that out as well. Went on the Internet to look it up.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “I printed out some of what I found.” He put the sheets on the table. “You?”
“I’ve just started reading.”
“Where’d you get it?” he asked. “Ruth?”
He looked over at Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore.
“Rosa. Ruth was asleep in the philosophy section.”
“Asleep or passed out or …”
“Dead?” asked Reine-Marie. “No, I checked.”
“No farmhouse on top of her?” Olivier asked, placing Gamache’s ginger beer on the table.
“Merci, patron,” Armand said.
They sipped their drinks, absentmindedly ate the nuts, and read about a town in Scotland.
*
“Oh, my God,” said Myrna, looking around.
She was stopped dead in the doorway of the Royal York bar, causing a bit of a jam behind her.
“How many?” the young woman asked.
“Three,” said Clara, looking around the stationary bulk of Myrna.
“Follow me.”
The two perspiring women followed the cool, slender maitre d’.” Myrna felt like a giant. All big and galumping, disheveled, and fictional. Not really there at all. Invisible behind the siren showing them to their table.
“Merci,” said Clara out of force of habit, forgetting she was in English Ontario and not French Québec.
“Oh, my God,” Myrna whispered again as she dropped into the plush wing chair, upholstered in rose-colored crushed velvet.
The bar was, in fact, a library. A place Dickens would have been comfortable in. Where Conan Doyle might have found a useful volume. Where Jane Austen could sit and read. And get drunk, if she wanted.
“A beer, thank you,” said Myrna.
“Two,” said Clara.
It felt like they’d stepped out of the glare and throbbing heat of twenty-first-century Toronto into a cool nineteenth-century country house.
They might be giants, but this was their natural habitat.
“Do you think Peter had an appointment in Samarra?” asked Clara.
Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane.
But Clara’s eyes betrayed her. Begging Myrna for reassurance.
Peter was alive. Painting. He’d simply lost track of time.
There was nothing to worry about. He was nowhere near Samarra.
“I’m sorry I said that,” said Myrna, smiling at the waiter who brought their drinks. Everyone else in the bar seemed to be having some sort of smart cocktail.
“But did you mean it?” Clara asked.
Myrna considered for a moment, looking at her friend. “I think the story isn’t so much about death as fate. We all have an appointment in Samarra.”
She put down her beer and leaned across the mahogany table, lowering her voice so that Clara had to lean forward to hear her.
“What I do know for sure is that Peter’s life is his. Stay in the marketplace. Go to Samarra. His fate. Not yours. Would you take credit for anything wonderful Peter’s done in this past year?”
Clara shook her head.
“And yet you think it’s your fault if something bad happens.”
“Do you think something bad has happened?”
Myrna was about to say, slightly exasperated, that that wasn’t her point. But looking at Clara she knew it wouldn’t matter. Clara needed only one thing, and it wasn’t logic.
“No.” Myrna took her hand. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Clara took a deep breath, squeezed Myrna’s hand, then leaned back in the wing chair.
“Really?” She searched Myrna’s eyes, but not too deeply and not long.
“Really.”
They both knew Myrna had just lied.
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