EIGHTEEN
“You lied to me.”
“You sound like a schoolgirl,” said Ruth Zardo. “Are your feelings all hurt? I know what’ll help. Scotch?”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“I was asking, not offering. Did you bring Scotch?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Well then, why’re you here?”
Armand Gamache was trying to remember that himself. Ruth Zardo had the strange ability to muddle even the clearest goal.
They sat in her kitchen, on white plastic preform chairs, at a white plastic table, all salvaged from a Dumpster. He’d been there before, including at the oddest dinner party he’d ever attended, where he’d been far from certain they’d all survive.
But this morning, while maddening, was at least predictable.
Anyone who placed himself within Ruth’s orbit, and certainly within her walls, and wasn’t prepared for dementia had only himself to blame. What often came as a surprise to people was that the dementia would be theirs, not Ruth’s. She remained sharp, if not clear.
Rosa slept in her nest made from an old blanket, on the floor between Ruth and the warm oven. Her beak was tucked into her wing.
“I came for the Bernard book, on the Quints,” he said. “And for the truth about Constance Ouellet.”
Ruth’s thin lips pursed, as though stuck between a kiss and a curse.
“Long dead and buried in another town,” Gamache quoted, conversationally, “my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.”
The lips unpursed. Flatlined. Her entire face went limp, and for a moment Gamache was afraid she was having a stroke. But the eyes remained sharp.
“Why did you say that?” she asked.
“Why did you write that?” He brought a slim volume out of his satchel and placed it on the plastic table. Her eyes rested on it.
The cover was faded and torn. It was blue. Just blue, no design or pattern. And on it was written Anthology of New Canadian Poetry.
“I picked this up from Myrna’s store last night.”
Ruth lifted her eyes from the book to the man. “Tell me what you know.”
He opened the book and found what he was looking for. “Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair that you would greet each overture / with curling lip? You wrote those words.”
“Yes, so? I’ve written a lot of words.”
“This was the first poem of yours to be published, and it remains one of your most famous.”
“I’ve written better.”
“Perhaps, but few more heartfelt. Yesterday, when we were talking about Constance’s visit, you said she told you who she was. You also said you didn’t ask her any more questions. Alas.”
She met his eyes, then her face cracked into a weary smile. “I thought maybe you’d picked up on that.”
“This poem is called ‘Alas.’” He closed the book and quoted by heart, “Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again / or will it be, as always was, / too late?”
Ruth held her head erect as though facing an attack. “You know it?”
“I do. And I think Constance knew it too. I know the poem because I love it. She knew it because she loved the person who’d inspired it.”
He opened the book again and read the dedication, “For V.”
He carefully placed it on the table between them.
“You wrote ‘Alas’ for Virginie Ouellet. The poem was published in 1959, the year after her death. Why did you write it?”
Ruth was quiet. She bent her head and looked at Rosa, then she dropped her thin, blue-veined hand and stroked Rosa’s back.
“They were my age, you know. Almost exactly. Like them, I grew up in the Depression and then the war. We were poor, my parents struggled. They had other things on their mind than an awkward, unhappy daughter. So I turned inward. Developed a rich imaginary life. In it, I was a Quint. The sixth quint,” she smiled at him, and her cheeks reddened a bit. “I know. Six quints. Didn’t make sense.”
Gamache chose not to point out that that wasn’t the only leap of logic.
“They always seemed so happy, so carefree,” Ruth went on.
Her voice became distant and her face took on an expression Gamache had never seen before. Dreamy.