‘Oh, you don’t really want me to answer that, do you, Spot? You stole them. They were in my room before you visited and now they’re gone.’
‘Is this true?’ a voice behind Peter demanded.
Peter’s expression went from rage to resignation and he closed his eyes slowly. Then he turned and faced his mother.
‘I don’t have them.’
Mrs Finney stared at him then slowly shook her head. ‘Why? Why would you do this to us, Peter? I don’t know how much more I can take. I’ve just lost my daughter and all you can think to do is fight with Thomas?’
‘Mother.’ Peter started forward then stopped.
‘You’re in my prayers.’
It was the insult she reserved for people beyond hope, and Peter knew it.
‘Leave it, Thomas. If the cuffs are more important to him than family let him have them. I’ll get you new ones.’
‘That wasn’t the point, Mother,’ said Thomas, joining her.
‘Not for you, no.’ Mrs Finney walked back up to the Manoir, her husband on one side, her son on the other. And Peter left behind.
He tried to readjust his clothes then gave up and stopped moving completely. He seemed almost catatonic.
‘We need to talk,’ said Gamache, leading him by the elbow to a grove of trees and into the cool and restful shade. He sat Peter on a bench then sat beside him. ‘You threw them into the lake.’
It wasn’t a question, and Peter seemed almost relieved not to have to lie yet again.
‘Why?’
Peter shook his head and shrugged. Words seemed too heavy, too much of a burden to produce. But Gamache waited. He was a patient man. His father had taught him that. Poetry and patience, and much else beside.
‘Thomas always wore them,’ said Peter finally, speaking to his hands clasped weakly between his knees. ‘Clara once said that they were like Wonder Woman’s bracelets, you know?’
Gamache actually did know. Another perk of having a daughter. He brought his arms up and crossed his wrists. Peter smiled a little.
‘Power and protection was Clara’s theory. She says everyone has them, but none more obviously than the Morrows. Mariana wears her shawls, Thomas has his cufflinks, Clara repeats her mantras, Mother wears her makeup, her “mask” as she calls it.’
‘And you?’
Peter raised his hands. ‘Did you not think it strange that this paint wouldn’t come off?’
Gamache hadn’t even thought about it, but now that he did it was true. All paint would come off skin, if you tried hard enough. None would stain permanently.
‘When a family reunion comes along I stop scrubbing with turpentine and use normal soap. The oil paint stays on. After the reunion, when I’m back in Three Pines, I wash it off.’
Back in Three Pines, thought Gamache, picturing the peaceful village. Safe.
‘Power and protection?’
Peter nodded. ‘When Thomas or Mariana or Mother or anyone is getting at me I just look down at my hands,’ he did so now, ‘and I’m reminded that there’s one thing I do well. Do better than anyone else in the family.’ Except, came the whisper in his head, Clara. Now Clara is a better artist than you. ‘I think maybe it’s stopped working.’
‘And you wanted to get rid of Thomas’s charms too?’
Peter said nothing. It was close enough to the truth.
Gamache reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and carefully unfolded an old piece of paper. Peter reached out but Gamache withdrew it, not trusting the man with something so precious.
Peter’s hand hovered in the air.
‘Where’d you get that?’
Far from being angry or accusatory, his voice was full of wonder. He sounded like a little boy shown a pirate’s treasure map, one hunted for and dreamed of for weeks and months, or, in the case of a grown man, years.
‘From the artist who sculpted your father.’
Peter was barely listening, riveted on the drawing. It showed a noble, lively bird, its head cocked at an impertinent angle, its eyes gleaming. It threatened to fly off the yellowed page. Yet for all its vitality it was unfinished. It had no feet.
‘You drew this,’ said Gamache softly, not wanting to break too far into Peter’s reverie.
Peter seemed to have entered the drawing and disappeared completely. Wherever it had taken him, it seemed a good place. Peter was smiling, his face relaxed for the first time in days.
‘You must have been young when you drew this,’ Gamache prompted.
‘I was,’ agreed Peter at last. ‘I was maybe eight. I did it for Dad’s birthday.’
‘You were eight when you did this?’ Now it was Gamache’s turn to stare at the drawing. It was simple, elegant, not unlike Picasso’s iconic dove. Almost a single line. But he’d captured flight, and life and curiosity.
‘Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,’ whispered Gamache.
Freedom.
Once, Peter knew, he had flown. Before the world grew too heavy. Now his art, instead of taking flight, did the opposite.
He looked again at the bird. The very first drawing he’d done on his own, without tracing. He’d given it to his father and his dad had picked him up and hugged him, and taken him all round the restaurant where they were eating, and shown the drawing to perfect strangers. Mother had made him stop but not before Peter had developed two addictions, to art and to praise. And specifically to the praise and approval of his father.
‘When my father died I asked Mother if I could have that back,’ said Peter, gesturing to the drawing. ‘She told me he’d thrown it away.’ Peter looked into Gamache’s eyes. ‘Where did you say you found this?’
‘The sculptor, the one who did the statue of your father. Your father kept it. What is it?’
‘It’s just a bird. Nothing special.’
‘It has no feet.’
‘I was eight, what do you want?’
‘I want the truth. I think you’re lying to me.’
Gamache rarely lost his temper, and he didn’t now, but his voice held an edge and a warning that even a Morrow couldn’t miss.
‘Why would I lie about a forty-year-old drawing of a bird?’
‘I don’t know, but I know you are. What kind of a bird is it?’
‘A sparrow, a robin, I don’t know.’
Peter was sounding exasperated. Gamache stood up abruptly and refolding the paper he placed it carefully back in his breast pocket.
‘You know I’ll find the truth. Why are you trying to stop me?’
Peter shook his head and remained seated. Gamache started to walk away then remembered a question he’d meant to ask.
‘You say you all have your talismans or mantras. What Clara called your power and protection. You didn’t tell me what Julia’s was.’
Peter shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘For God’s sake, Peter.’
‘Really.’ Peter stood and faced Gamache. ‘I didn’t know her well enough. She hardly ever came back to reunions. This was unusual.’
Gamache continued to stare at him, then turned and walked out of the cool shade.
‘Wait,’ Peter called after him. Gamache stopped and let him catch up. ‘Look, I have to tell you. I stole those cufflinks and threw them into the lake because my father gave them to Thomas. They went from first son to first son. I always thought maybe he’d give them to me. I know, it was stupid, but I’d hoped. Anyway, he didn’t. I knew how much the cufflinks meant to Thomas.’
Peter hesitated, but plunged ahead anyway. It felt like walking off a cliff.
‘They were the most important thing he has. I wanted to hurt him.’
‘The way you wanted to hurt me just now when you talked about my own father?’
‘I’m sorry I did that.’
Gamache stared at the dishevelled man in front of him. ‘Be careful, Peter. You have a good spirit, but even good spirits stumble, and sometimes they fall. And sometimes they don’t get up.’