The Long Way Home

She’d smiled, and traced his arm, from shoulder to elbow, with her finger.

For most of his adult life, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had dated bodies. He’d married Enid for her breasts, her legs, her delicate face. Her ability to make his friends weak at the knees.

But when his own body had been battered and bruised and the life almost taken from it, only then did Jean-Guy discover how very attractive a heart and mind could be.

A coy smile could capture him, but it was finally a hearty laugh that had freed him.

No knees would buckle for Annie Gamache. No eyes would follow her substantial body. No wolf calls for her pretty plain face. But she was by far the most attractive woman in any room.

Late into his thirties, with a broken body and a shattered spirit, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had been seduced by happiness.

“I want to go back with you,” he said, and meant.

“And I want you to,” she said, and meant. “But someone needs to find Peter Morrow, and you owe Clara. Dad owes her. You need to help.”

That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.

They curled toward each other and he held her fingers, intertwined in his, in the space between their naked bodies.

“You’re on partial leave,” said Annie. “Will Isabelle agree?”

Beauvoir was still unused to asking a S?reté agent who was once his subordinate for permission. But he called Chief Inspector Lacoste first thing in the morning and she’d agreed. He could stay and help find Peter Morrow.

Isabelle Lacoste also owed Clara.

Annie had left. And now, at the edge of the day, Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in the garden listening to the conversation and allowed himself a moment to drift from his head to his heart. He unconsciously held out his right hand, palm up, as though waiting for Annie’s hand.

“LaPorte?” asked Clara, straightening up after bending close to the map. “The Door? The place Frère Albert created?”

“Oui,” said Gamache. “I might be wrong, but that’s what I think.”

Like most people who admitted the possibility of being wrong, they knew he knew he probably wasn’t. But Clara was far from convinced. And Myrna didn’t seem any closer.

“Why would Peter go to LaPorte?” Myrna asked, sitting back down. She was disappointed. It was hardly a breakthrough.

“Why did Vincent Gilbert?” asked Jean-Guy, joining the conversation.

Myrna thought about that. “He’d had a successful career,” she said, remembering her conversations with the asshole saint. “But then his marriage fell apart.”

Gamache nodded. “Go on.”

Myrna thought some more.

“It wasn’t just the end of his marriage that did it,” she said, thinking out loud. “Lots of people get separated or divorced without having to hare off to a commune in France.”

Myrna lapsed into silence and thought about the missing piece. What would prompt a successful middle-aged man to give up his career and live in a community created by a humble priest, to serve children and adults with Down’s syndrome?

That was LaPorte’s vocation. It was to open a door for these people, after so many doors had been shut in their unusual faces. Frère Albert’s LaPorte offered not simply, though crucially, a place to live, but mostly it offered dignity. Equality. Belonging.

Frère Albert’s brilliance was in knowing that a community created to help others would never thrive. But one created for equal benefit would. He knew he too was flawed. Perhaps not in ways as obvious as someone with Down’s syndrome. But in ways more subtle, yet equally challenging.

The great genius of LaPorte was the absolute knowledge that everyone there had something to learn from, something to give to, the other. There was no distinction between the Down’s syndrome member and anyone else.

“Dr. Gilbert went there to volunteer as the community’s medical director,” said Myrna. “Not because he could heal them, but because he needed to be healed.”

“Exactly,” said Gamache. “We all need to be healed at some time in our lives. We’ve all been deeply hurt. His hurt was, I think, the same as Peter’s. Not physical, but spiritual. They both had a hole. A tear.”

This was met with silence.

Everyone around that table knew how that felt. The horror of realizing all the toys, all the success, all the powerful boards and new cars and accolades hadn’t filled the hole. They’d actually made it bigger. Deeper.

There was nothing wrong with success, but it had to have meaning.

“Vincent Gilbert knocked on LaPorte hoping to find himself,” said Gamache.

“And you think Peter did too?” asked Clara.

“Do you?” he asked her.

“I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” Clara said.

“I will pray you find a way to be useful,” Gamache completed the quote.