Gabri was mostly curious to meet the saint. Vincent Gilbert. Myrna was in awe of him, and she wasn’t in awe of many people. Old Mundin and The Wife said he’d changed their lives with his book Being, and his work at LaPorte. And by extension, he’d changed little Charlie’s life.
“Bonsoir,” said Gabri, nervously. He looked over to Vincent Gilbert. Growing up in the Catholic Church he’d spent endless hours staring at the gleaming windows showing the wretched lives and glorious deaths of the saints. When Gabri had wandered from the Church he’d taken one thing with him. The certainty that saints were good.
“What do you want?” Marc Gilbert asked. He stood with his wife and mother by the sofa. Forming a semicircle. His father a satellite off to the side. Gabri waited for Vincent Gilbert to calm his son, to tell him to greet their guest nicely. To invite Marc to be reasonable.
Gilbert said nothing.
“Well?” said Marc.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been up sooner to welcome you.”
Marc snorted. “The Welcome Wagon’s already left us our package.”
“Marc, please,” said Dominique. “He’s our neighbor.”
“Not by choice. If he had his way we’d be long gone.”
And Gabri didn’t deny it. It was true. Their troubles arrived with the Gilberts. But here they were and something had to be said.
“I came to apologize,” he said, standing to his full six foot one. “I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel more welcome. And I’m very sorry about the body.”
Yes, that definitely sounded as lame as he’d feared. But he hoped it at least sounded genuine.
“Why isn’t Olivier here?” Marc demanded. “You didn’t do it. It’s not up to you to apologize.”
“Marc, really,” said Dominique. “Can’t you see how difficult this is for him?”
“No, I can’t. Olivier probably sent him hoping we won’t sue. Or won’t tell everyone what a psycho he is.”
“Olivier’s not a psycho,” said Gabri, feeling a kind of trill inside as his patience unraveled. “He’s a wonderful man. You don’t know him.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t know him if you think he’s wonderful. Does a wonderful man dump a body at a neighbor’s home?”
“You tell me.”
The two men advanced on each other.
“I didn’t take the body into a private home to scare the occupants half to death. That was a terrible thing to do.”
“Olivier was pushed to it. He tried to make friends when you first arrived but then you tried to steal our staff and open this huge hotel and spa.”
“Ten guest rooms isn’t huge,” said Dominique.
“Not in Montreal, but out here it is. This’s a small village. We’ve been here for a long time living quietly. You come here and change all that. Made no effort to fit in.”
“By ‘fit in’ you mean tug our forelocks and be grateful you’ve allowed us to live here?” Marc demanded.
“No, I mean being respectful of what’s here already. What people’ve worked hard to establish.”
“You want to raise the drawbridge, don’t you?” said Marc in disgust. “You’re in and you want to keep everyone else out.”
“That’s not true. Most of the people in Three Pines have come from somewhere else.”
“But you only accept people who follow your rules. Who do as you say. We came here to live our dream and you won’t let us. Why? Because it clashes with yours. You’re threatened by us and so you need to run us out of town. You’re nothing but bullies, with big smiles.”
Marc was almost spitting.
Gabri stared at him, amazed. “But you didn’t really expect us to be happy about it, did you? Why would you come here and deliberately upset people who were going to be your neighbors? Didn’t you want us as friends? You must’ve known how Olivier would react.”
“What? That he’d put a body in our home?”
“That was wrong. I’ve already said that. But you provoked him. All of us. We wanted to be your friends but you made it too difficult.”
“So, you’ll be friends with us as long as what? We’re just a modest success? Have a few guests, a couple of treatments a day? Maybe a small dining room, if we’re lucky? But nothing to compete with you and Olivier?”
“That’s right,” said Gabri.
That shut Marc up.
“Listen, why do you think we don’t make croissants?” Gabri continued. “Or pies? Or any baking? We could. It’s what I love to do. But Sarah’s Boulangerie was already here. She’d lived in the village all her life. The bakery belonged to her grandmother. So we opened a bistro instead. All our croissants, and pies, and breads are baked by Sarah. We adjusted our dreams to fit the dreams already here. It’d be cheaper and more fun to bake ourselves but that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” asked Vincent Gilbert, speaking for the first time.
“The point isn’t to make a fortune,” said Gabri, turning to him gratefully. “The point is to know what’s enough. To be happy.”
There was a pause and Gabri silently thanked the saint for creating that space for reason to return.
“Maybe you should remind your partner of that,” said Vincent Gilbert. “You talk a good line but you don’t live it. It suits you to blame my son. You dress up your behavior as moral and kindly and loving, but you know what it is?”
Vincent Gilbert was advancing, closing in on Gabri. As he neared he seemed to grow and Gabri felt himself shrink.
“It’s selfish,” Gilbert hissed. “My son has been patient. He’s hired local workers, created jobs. This is a place of healing, and you not only try to ruin it, you try to make him out to be at fault.”
Vincent stepped next to his son, having finally found the price of belonging.
There was nothing more to say, so Gabri left.
Lights glowed at windows as he made his way back into the village. Overhead ducks flew south in their V formation, away from the killing cold that was gathering and preparing to descend. Gabri sat on a tree stump by the side of the road and watched the sun set over Three Pines and thought about les temps perdus and felt very alone, without even the certainty of saints for comfort.