“But there is one thing…”
“You don’t have to tell us,” said Reine-Marie, laying her hand on Ruth’s.
“And have that thing”—she lifted her empty glass toward the village green—“follow me for the rest of my life? No, thank you.”
“You think it’s here for you?”
“It might be. Do you know why we moved to Three Pines when I was a child?”
“Your father got a job at the mill, didn’t he?” asked Gabri.
“He did. But do you know why he applied? He had a good job in Montréal with Canada Steamship Lines. A job he loved.”
Ruth stroked Rosa, who was bending her elegant neck in what was either pleasure or a drunken stupor.
The old poet took a breath, as a cliff diver might before the plunge.
“I was skating on the pond on Mont Royal. It was late March and my mother had warned me not to, but I did anyway. My cousin was with me. He didn’t want to do it, but I made him. I’m a natural leader.”
The friends exchanged glances but said nothing.
“We were late for lunch and my mother came up looking for us. When she saw us on the pond she yelled, and I started skating to the side, wanting to get to her first, to blame my cousin. I can be a little manipulative.”
Brows were raised again, but nothing was said.
“My cousin hadn’t seen her yet and I think his tuque must’ve muffled the sound of her shout. Or maybe I was just attuned to her voice. I can hear it still.”
The elderly woman cocked her head. Listening.
“I think you can guess what happened,” she said.
“He fell in?” Reine-Marie asked quietly.
“I fell in. Ice melts at the edges first, so just when you think you’re safe, that’s when you’re in the most danger. The ice cracked. I can still remember that moment. It was like I was suspended. I stared at my mother, who was still a distance away down the path. I remember every color, every tree, the sun on the snow. The look on her face. And then, I was underwater.”
“Oh God, Ruth,” whispered Gabri.
“It was so cold it was hot, you know?” She looked around her. Everyone there had been out in minus 40, with the wind howling, their cheeks burning in the bitter cold.
But to have the whole body scald in the freezing water?
“What happened?” whispered Gabri.
“I died,” she snapped, coming back to life. “What do you think happened, you knucklehead?”
“What happened, Ruth?” asked Reine-Marie.
“My cousin skated over to help me, and that’s when he fell in. My mother could save only one of us.”
“You?” asked Olivier, and braced for the caustic retort. That never came.
Instead the old woman nodded, her eyes focused on the distance.
She took a deep breath.
“She never forgave me. Long dead and buried in another town, / My mother hasn’t finished with me yet,” she quoted from her own poem. “I never forgave me.”
“Alas,” said Armand.
Ruth nodded. And Rosa nodded.
“We had to move here,” said Ruth. “Away from family and friends, who also blamed me. Blamed her. For saving the wrong one.”
Beside her, Olivier moaned and put his arm around the bony shoulder.
Ruth lowered her head. And tried to bring herself to say the next thing. The last thing.
But she couldn’t speak. Neither could she forget.
“I dropped a friend when he told me he was HIV positive,” said Gabri. “I was young and afraid.”
“I had a drug prescribed for a patient,” said Myrna. “A young mother. Depressed. It had a bad reaction. She called me, and I told her to come in first thing in the morning. But she killed herself that night.”
Clara took her hand.
“I disobeyed you,” said Clara, looking beyond Myrna to Armand. “I went looking for you and Peter, that day in the fishing village. You told me not to, and if I hadn’t…”
Gabri took her hand.
“I’ve lied and cheated old men and women out of their antiques,” said Olivier. “Giving them a fraction of what they were worth. I don’t do it anymore. But I did.”
He sounded amazed, as though describing a man who was unrecognizable.
“We knew about that, mon beau,” said Ruth, patting his hand. “You’re an asshole.”
Olivier grunted in near amusement.
A commotion, at first dull, reached them from the village green. A raising of voices that was growing louder. And then turned into shouting.
The friends stared at each other in surprise. Armand was out of his chair. Throwing open the front door, he saw what it was.
A crowd had gathered on the village green. He could just see the top of the cobrador’s head.
It was surrounded by people.
Armand ran out the door and the others followed, except Ruth, who was struggling to get up.
“Don’t leave me here.”
But they had.
And once again she saw the hand of her mother, plunging into the icy water. Reaching out. Desperate. Straining.
For her cousin.
But Ruth had gripped that hand instead, and risen. Unwanted.
Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again / or will it be, as always was, / too late?
“Alas,” she muttered.
“Come on, you old crone.”
Clara had returned, and now she reached out. Ruth looked at the hand for a moment, then gripped it.
And she was hauled out.
They rushed down the path and to the village green.
CHAPTER 9
“You fucker,” a large man was shouting.
He stood in the center of the circle and held up an iron rod, ready to swing.
“Stop,” Gamache shouted, breaking through the crowd and coming to a halt a few feet from the man.
He recognized him as a new member of Billy Williams’s road crew, but didn’t know his name.
The man either didn’t hear or didn’t care, so focused was he on his target. The cobrador. Who just stood there. Didn’t step away. Didn’t cringe. Didn’t brace itself.
“Do it,” someone yelled.
The crowd had turned into a mob.
Armand had run out of the house without sweater or coat, and now he stood, in shirtsleeves, in the cold drizzle. While surrounding him, surrounding the cobrador, were young parents. Grandparents. Neighbors. Men and women he recognized. Not any he’d call hooligans or troublemakers. But who had been infected by fear. Warped by it.
Gamache approached the man from the side. Carefully. Edging his way into the bell jar.
He didn’t want to surprise him, make him react. Lash out at the cobrador, easily within swinging distance.
“Get the fuck outta here,” the man screamed at the cobrador. “Or I’ll beat the crap out of you. I swear to God I will.”
The mob was egging him on, and the man tightened his grip and lifted what Armand could now see was a fireplace poker even higher.
The rod had a nasty hook, used to move logs about in the flames. It would kill someone, easily.
“Don’t, don’t,” Gamache said, moving forward, his voice calm but firm. “Don’t you do it.”
And then he saw movement. Someone else had come out from the crowd.
It was Lea Roux. And within a moment she’d stepped between the cobrador and the man.
The attacker, surprised, hesitated.