The Quints only existed in sepia photographs and newsreels. They lived in perfect little castles and wore impossibly frilly dresses. And came in a cluster of five.
Not three. Not one.
Five girls, forever children.
The Ouellet Quints weren’t real. They didn’t age, they didn’t die. And they sure didn’t sip lemonade in Pointe-Saint-Charles.
That’s why no one recognized them.
It helped, too, that they didn’t want to be recognized. As Ruth said, not everyone seeks attention.
“It’s the truth, alas,” Ruth had said.
Alas, thought Chief Inspector Gamache. He left the kitchen and began his own search.
*
Clara Morrow placed a bowl of fresh water on the floor but Henri was too excited to notice. He ran around the home, sniffing. Clara watched, her heart both swelling and breaking. It hadn’t been all that long ago that she’d had to put her golden retriever, Lucy, down. Myrna and Gabri had gone with them, and yet Clara felt she’d been alone. Peter wasn’t there.
She’d debated calling to tell him about Lucy, but Clara knew that was just an excuse to make contact.
The deal was, they’d wait a year, and it hadn’t been six months since he’d left.
Clara followed Henri into her studio, where he found an old banana peel. Taking it from him, she paused in front of her latest work, barely an outline so far.
This ghost on the canvas was her husband.
Some mornings, some evenings, she came in here and talked to him. Told him about her day. She even, sometimes, fixed dinner and brought a candle in and ate by candlelight, in front of this suggestion of Peter. She ate, and chatted with him, told him the events of her day. The little events only a good friend would care about. And the huge events. Like the murder of Constance Ouellet.
Clara painted and talked to the portrait. Adding a stroke here, a dab there. A husband of her own creation. Who listened. Who cared.
Henri was still sniffing and snorting around the studio. Having found one banana peel, there was reason to hope there’d be more. Pausing in her painting for a moment, Clara realized he wasn’t looking for a banana peel. Henri was looking for Armand.
Clara reached into her pocket for one of the treats Armand had left, then she bent down and called the dog over. Henri stopped his scurrying and looked at her, his satellite ears turning toward her voice, having picked up his favorite channel. The treat channel.
He approached, sat, and gently took the bone-shaped cookie.
“It’s okay,” she assured him, resting her forehead against his. “He’ll be back.”
Then Clara returned to the portrait.
“I asked Constance to sit for me,” she said to the wet paint. “But she refused. I’m not really sure why I asked. You’re right, I am the best artist in Canada, perhaps the world, so she should’ve been pleased.”
Might as well exaggerate—this Peter couldn’t roll his eyes.
Clara leaned away from the canvas and put the brush in her mouth, smearing raw umber paint on her cheek.
“I stayed over at Myrna’s last night.” She described for Peter how she’d pulled the warm duvet around her, rested the old Life magazine on her knees, and studied the cover. As she’d looked at it, the image of the girls moved from endearing, to uncanny, to vaguely unsettling.
“They were all the same, Peter. In expression, in mood. Not just similar, but exactly the same.”
Clara Morrow, the artist, the portraitist, had searched the faces for any hint of individuality. And found none. Then she’d sat back in bed and remembered the elderly woman she’d met. Clara didn’t ask many people to sit for a portrait. It demanded too much of her to be done on a whim. But, apparently on a whim, she’d popped the question to Constance. And been firmly rebuffed.
She hadn’t really exaggerated to Peter. Clara Morrow had become surprisingly famous for her portraits. At least, it surprised her. And it had sure surprised her artist husband.
She remembered what John Singer Sargent had said.
Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
Clara had lost her husband. Not because she’d painted him, but because she’d outpainted him. Sometimes, on dark winter nights, she wished she’d stuck to gigantic feet and warrior uteruses.
“But my paintings didn’t send you from our home, did they?” she asked the canvas. “It was your own demons. They finally caught up with you.”
She considered him closely.
“How much that must have hurt,” she said quietly. “Where are you now, Peter? Have you stopped running? Have you faced whatever ate your happiness, your creativity, your good sense? Your love?”
It had eaten his love, but not Clara’s.
Henri settled on the worn piece of carpet at Clara’s feet. She picked up her brush and approached the canvas.
“He’ll be back,” she whispered, perhaps to Henri.