“And how would he react, if he knew?”
She thought. “I don’t know. I think enough time’s gone by that it wouldn’t bother him. And honestly, when he was in high school? He’d have been terrified to hear that the girlfriend he’d just dumped was pregnant. It was the right decision, and Katie didn’t regret it. But neither was she proud of it. And she sure didn’t feel the need to broadcast it. I think that’s why after graduation she went to Pittsburgh. Fresh start.”
“Why Pittsburgh?” asked Beauvoir.
“She took a fine arts course in the summer at Carnegie Mellon University, but realized fairly quickly that she wanted to be an architect. They wouldn’t let her transfer, so she applied to the Université de Montréal and got into their program.”
“How would you describe your sister? For real, now. This’s important.”
Beth wiped her face and blew her nose, and thought. “She was kind. Mothering. Maybe that’s why she was attracted to Patrick. If a man ever wanted mothering, it’s him. Though I’m not sure she was doing him any favors. If a man ever needed to grow up, it’s him.”
“Why didn’t she and Patrick have children?”
“Well, there’s still time, you know,” said Beth, without thinking.
In the dark car, he heard the tapping of ice pellets, and the groaning silence. And then the sobs.
He waited until they’d passed.
“Her plan, her hope, was to get the business up and then start having children. She isn’t, wasn’t, even thirty-five. Plenty of time,” she said in a whisper.
They went into the home, and Beth turned on the lights.
It was a surprise. From the outside it looked like any other house on the street. Fairly nondescript. But inside it was completely redone. The colors were muted, but not washed out. Calming, warm. Almost pastel, but not quite that feminine.
“Cheerful” was the word. Homey. The bookcases had books. The closets had organizers, and were organized. The kitchen smelled of herbs and spices and he could see implements in jugs, and a coffeemaker, and a teapot. None of it placed for effect.
This kitchen was used.
It was open to the living room, and the ceiling was beamed.
It was a home, Jean-Guy knew, he could easily and happily see his own family living in.
It took half an hour to search the place. There was nothing that screamed, or even whispered, a secret, or a double life. There was some erotic literature. Some cigarettes. He sniffed them to make sure that’s all they were. They smelled and felt stale.
On the dresser in the bedroom, he picked up a photo. Four of the people he recognized. The fifth he did not.
“From the Université de Montréal,” said Beth. “First year. Lifelong friends. Hard to believe she met Patrick that long ago. So young.”
“Do you mind if I keep this?” Beauvoir asked.
He wrote out a receipt. It was the only thing he took.
They headed slowly over to Katie’s parents. He was about to tell them when Beth broke in. And broke the news. And when it was over for him, but just beginning for them, he drove home. To hug Annie and kiss Honoré and read him to sleep, before returning to Three Pines.
CHAPTER 24
Patrick Evans was rocking back and forth, back and forth, on the sofa of the B&B.
What had been a chilly November day had become a cold November night.
“I don’t understand,” he kept repeating. “I don’t understand.”
At first the words were said as a statement, an appeal. But as time had gone by and no explanations came, and all efforts to comfort him had failed, the words and the rocking became simply rote. A primal whisper.
Matheo had tried to comfort Patrick. His instincts were good, but his technique was lacking.
“Shove over,” Lea had said. “He’s got grief, not gas. You look like you’re burping him.”
Matheo had been patting Patrick on the back and repeating, “It’ll be all right.”
“And by the way”—Lea leaned over and lowered her voice—“it won’t be all right.”
Matheo watched as his wife took Patrick’s hand. Patrick looked at Lea, his focus still hazy after the pills and the sleep.
Matheo felt a pang of the old jealousy.
What was it about Patrick that brought out the mother in women? Whatever it was, it brought out the bully in Matheo. All he wanted to do was kick the guy in the ass.
Even now. He knew it was unreasonable, even cruel, but he wanted to scream at him to get a grip. Sit up straight. Do something besides rock and cry. They had to talk. They had to work this out. And Patrick, once again, was no use at all.
Matheo got up and walked to the fireplace, taking his frustrations out on the logs. Hitting them with the poker.
This was first-year university all over again. Lord of the Flies all over again.
When they’d all intertwined. And never really disentangled.
That first year, when they met. When this all began. The events that had brought them to this terrible place in a beautiful spot.
“I thought you might like something,” said Gabri, standing in the archway between the dining and living room of the B&B, holding a tray with a teapot. “I’ll have dinner ready before long. I didn’t think you’d want to go to the bistro.”
“Merci,” said Matheo, taking the tray from him and setting it on the coffee table beside the brownies he and Lea had bought at the bakery.
Gabri returned a minute later with another tray. Of booze. And put it on a sideboard by the crackling fireplace.
Then, bending over the grieving man, he whispered, “I don’t understand either, but I do know they’ll find out who did this.”
But the words didn’t comfort Patrick. He seemed to collapse more into himself.
“Do you think so?” Patrick mumbled.
“I do.”
As Gabri straightened up, he wondered if the lament, I don’t understand, was about more than his wife’s murder.
He also wondered why he had the insane desire to slap the man.
Gabri returned to his kitchen and poured himself a bulbous glass of red wine. And sat on a stool by the counter, looking out the back window into the darkness.
Getting up to prepare the shepherd’s pie, comfort food for their dinner, Gabri suspected his guests would find very little peace in whatever Gamache discovered. And probably no comfort in the food.
As the kitchen filled with the aromas of sautéing garlic and onions and gravy and ground meat browning, he thought about the four friends and the close bond they shared. It had been obvious from that first visit, years earlier.
It had always seemed such a wonderful thing, this friendship. This camaraderie. This trust.
Until this visit.
Something had been off, from the start. And not just the timing of it. Late October instead of August, which itself was baffling. Why come when it was cold and gray and the world was going to sleep or going to die?
Why now?