The Long Way Home

Reine-Marie shook her head and put down the printouts.

They’d exchanged material, in hopes the other would find something they’d missed.

“You?” she asked.

He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. But there’s something else that puzzles me about Peter’s travels.” Gamache sat forward at their table outside the bistro. “He went almost directly from here to Paris.”

Reine-Marie nodded. “Oui.”

“And found a place in the 15th arrondissement.”

Now Reine-Marie understood why Armand was perplexed. “Not exactly a haunt of artists.”

“We need a detailed map of Paris,” he said, getting up. “There’s one at home, but I bet the bookstore has one.”

He returned a few minutes later with an old map, an old guidebook, and an old poet.

Ruth sat in Gamache’s chair, grabbing his ginger beer with one hand and the last of the nuts with the other.

“Peter was last heard from in Quebec City,” she said. “So what does Clouseau here come looking for? A map of Paris. Christ. How many people did you have to poison to become Chief Inspector?”

“So many that one more wouldn’t matter,” he said, and Ruth snorted.

She shoved his drink back to him with a wince and flagged down Olivier.

“Pills,” she ordered. “Alcohol.”

Reine-Marie told her about Peter’s choice of neighborhood, and Ruth shook her head. “Crazy. But then, anyone who’d leave Clara must be. Don’t tell her I said that.”

The three of them went over the map and guidebook, scouring the 15th arrondissement for anything that would explain why Peter would stay there.

“Planning a trip?” asked Gabri. He put a small platter of pickles, cold cuts, and olives on their table, then joined them. “Can I come?”

When told what they were doing, he made a face. “The 15th? What was he thinking?”

Twenty minutes later they stared at each other. None the wiser.

What had Peter Morrow been thinking?

*

“And this is Bean,” said Marianna.

Standing in front of Clara and Myrna was a child of twelve or thirteen. In jeans and a bulky shirt, with shoulder-length hair.

“Hello,” said Myrna.

“Hi.”

“Bean, you remember Aunt Clara.”

“Sure. How’s Uncle Peter?”

“Well, he’s off painting,” said Clara, and felt the sharp eyes of Bean watching her.

There was a lot that was obvious about Bean. The child was polite, quiet, clever. Observant.

What was not clear was whether Bean was a boy or a girl.

Marianna Morrow, finding she couldn’t worry her parents into noticing her, had taken another route. She’d produced, out of wedlock, a child. She’d named that child Bean. And in a coup de grace, had not told her family if Bean was a boy or a girl. Marianna had produced both a child and a biological weapon.

Clara had assumed Bean’s sex would become obvious after a while. Marianna would either tire of the charade, or Bean her/himself would give it away. Or it would be clear as Bean matured.

None of those things had happened. Bean remained androgynous and the Morrows remained in the dark.

They ate dinner in near silence, Marianna apparently regretting her invitation almost as soon as it was issued. After dinner, Bean took them upstairs to show them the color wheel Uncle Peter had taught Bean how to make.

“Are you interested in art?” Myrna asked, following the child up the stairs.

“Not really.”

The door to Bean’s bedroom opened and Myrna’s eyebrows rose. “Good thing,” she whispered to Clara.

Bean’s walls, instead of being covered with posters of the latest pop idol or sports star, were covered with paintings, tacked up. It looked, and felt, like a neolithic cave in downtown Toronto.

“Nice paintings,” Aunt Clara said. Myrna shot her a warning look.

“What?” Clara whispered. “I’m trying to be encouraging.”

“You really want to encourage that?” Myrna jabbed a thick finger at the walls.

“They’re crap,” said Bean, sitting on the bed and looking around. “But I like them.”

Clara tried to suppress a smile. It was pretty much how she’d felt about all her early works. She knew they were crap. But she liked them. Though no one else did.

She looked around at the bedroom walls again, this time with an open mind. Determined to find something good in what Bean had done.

She moved from painting to painting. To painting. To painting.

She stood back. She stood close. She tipped her head from side to side.

No matter how she looked at them, they were awful.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to like them,” said Bean. “I don’t care.”

It was also what the young Clara had said, when watching the all-too-familiar sight of people struggling to say something nice about her early works. People whose opinions she valued. Whose approval she longed for. I don’t care, she’d said.

But she did. And she suspected Bean did too.

“Do you have a favorite?” Aunt Clara asked, side-stepping her own feelings.