The Long Way Home

“Sometimes there’s no choice,” he said softly.

“There is a choice, Armand. There’s always a choice.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Are you saying that you can’t refuse to help Clara?”

“I’m saying that sometimes refusing does more damage.”

He let that sit there between them.

“Why did you help me, months ago?” he asked. “You knew the danger. You knew to help could bring terrible consequences to you, to the village. In fact, it almost certainly would. But still you did it.”

“You know why.”

“Why?”

“Because my life and this village would lose all meaning, if we turned our backs.”

He smiled. “C’est ?a. The same for me now. What’s the use of healing, if the life that’s saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There’s a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.”

“So you have to leave sanctuary in order to have it?” she asked.

“You did,” he said.

She watched him walk back across the kitchen. The limp barely noticeable anymore. The tremble in his right hand all but gone.

Gamache joined Clara and Reine-Marie.

“Anything?”

But he could tell by their expressions they’d found nothing else in the paintings.

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t something there…” Clara’s voice trailed off.

The odd thing was, Gamache realized as he stared at the other two canvases on the floor, that while there was no overt image that evoked a feeling, he actually did feel something as he looked at them.

They were, as far as he could tell, simply tangles of clashing paint.

Why had Peter sent these as well as the joyous lip painting? What did Peter see in them that escaped Gamache? And escaped Clara? Escaped them all?

What was escaping from these paintings, undetected?

“Jean-Guy?” Gamache called, and the younger man put down the bread knife and joined him.

“Oui?”

“Can you help me?”

Gamache picked one of the canvases off the floor.

“Clara, can we put this up on the wall?”

Jean-Guy held one corner, Gamache the other, while Clara nailed it into place. Then they nailed the others. Three crimes against art, nailed to the wall.

Once again, they all stepped back to better consider the paintings.

Then they stepped back again. Considered. Stepped. Considered. Like a very, very slow retreat. Or a dirge.

They stopped when their backs hit the far wall. Distance and perspective had not improved the paintings.

“Well, I’m hungry.”

Beauvoir walked over to the kitchen island and picked up the platter of sandwiches he’d made. Myrna got the pitcher of lemonade she’d refilled, and together they made for the garden door, drawing the others to them. Away from the paintings and into the warm summer day.

*

Flies rested on Clara’s ham sandwich. She didn’t bat them away. They could have it.

She wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was upset. Not nauseous exactly. Nothing she’d eaten. More like something she’d seen.

Those paintings were upsetting her. As her friends ate and talked, she thought about the pictures.

When she’d first seen them, in Bean’s bedroom, she’d been amused. Especially by the lips. But seeing them in her own home had made her queasy. It was a sort of seasickness. The horizon was no longer steady. Some shift, some upheaval, had occurred.

Was she jealous? Was that possible? Was she worried that these paintings by Peter really did signal an important departure for him as an artist? While laughable right now, might they actually lead to genius? And at the pointy end of that thought, another thought perched. A genius greater than hers?

After feeling quietly smug about Peter and his petty jealousy, was she no better? Worse, in fact? Jealous and hypocritical and judgmental. Oh, my.

But there was more. Somewhere else her thoughts were leading. Something else was running for cover.

Her friends were in an animated discussion about the paintings and why Peter had mailed them to Bean.

“I asked that an hour ago,” Jean-Guy protested. “And no one listened. Myrna asks it now and suddenly it’s a brilliant question?”

“The cruel fate of the avant-garde, mon beau,” said Reine-Marie, then turned back to Myrna.

“So what do you think?”

As they discussed it, Clara held her lemonade, the glass slippery with condensation, and examined her feelings.

“Clara?”

“Huh?”

She looked at Myrna, who was smiling at her in obvious amusement.

“Where’d you go?” Myrna asked.

“Oh, just enjoying the garden. Wondering if I should put up more sweet pea on that trellis.”

Myrna now looked at Clara with less amusement. Like most people, Myrna Landers did not like being lied to. But unlike most people, she was willing to call them on it.

“What were you really thinking?”

Clara took a deep, deep breath. “I was thinking about Peter’s paintings and how they made me feel.”

“And how was that?” Reine-Marie asked.

Clara looked at the faces watching her.