The Long Way Home (6 page)

“Yes.” He took the book from her and grasped it so tightly in one hand she half expected words to squeeze out.

“Then what are you struggling with?”

When he didn’t answer, she had her answer.

The problem wasn’t with the words, it was with the wounds. Old wounds. And maybe a sin-sick soul.

“Where’s Peter?” she asked. “What’s happened to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you know him. Is he the sort to just disappear?”

Gamache knew the answer to that, had known since the day before when Clara had brought her problem to him.

“No.”

“So what happened to him?” she pleaded, searching his face. “What do you think?”

What could he say? What should he say? That Peter Morrow would have come home if he could? That for all his faults, Peter was a man of his word, and if he couldn’t for some reason show up in person he’d have called, or emailed, or written a letter.

But nothing had come. Not a word.

“I need to know, Armand.”

He looked away from her, across the forest that went on and on forever. He’d come here to heal and, perhaps, to hide. Certainly to rest.

To garden, and walk, and read. To spend time with Reine-Marie and their friends. To enjoy Annie and Jean-Guy’s weekend visits. The only problem he wanted to solve was how to hook up the garden hose. The only puzzle was whether to have the cedar plank salmon or the Brie and basil pasta for dinner at the bistro.

“Do you want my help?” he asked at last, not daring to look at her in case his face betrayed his offer.

He saw Clara’s shadow on the ground. It nodded.

He lifted his eyes to hers. And nodded. “We’ll find him.”

His voice was reassuring, confident.

Clara knew she was hearing the same voice, seeing the same face, so many others had. As the large, calm man had stood before them. And handed them their worst fears. And assured them he’d find the monster who had done it.

“You can’t know that. I’m sorry, Armand, I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but you don’t know for sure.”

“
C’est vrai
,” Gamache conceded. “But I’ll do my best. How’s that?”

He didn’t ask if she was prepared for the answer to her question. He knew that while Clara wanted Peter, she also wanted peace. She was as prepared as she could be.

“You don’t mind?” she asked.

“I don’t mind at all.”

She studied him. “I think you’re lying.” Then she touched his large hand. “Thank you for that.” She got up, and he rose with her. “A brave man in a brave country.”

He was unsure what to say to that.

“It’s a prayer, from the other
Gilead,”
Clara explained. “It’s a dying father’s prayer for his young son.” She thought for a moment, remembering. Then she recited, “
I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.
”

Clara smiled.

“I hope I’m useful,” he said.

“You already have been.”

“Who do you want to know about this?”

“Might as well tell everyone now,” she said. “What do we do first?”

“First? Let me think about that. We can probably find out a lot and not even leave home.” He hoped his relief at that wasn’t too obvious. He watched her closely. “You can stop it at any time, you know.”

“
Merci,
Armand. But if I’m ever going to get on with my life, I need to know why he didn’t come home. I’m not expecting to like the answer,” she assured him. She left and walked down the hill.

He sat back down and thought about a dying father’s prayer for a young son. Had his own father thought of him, at the moment of impact? At the moment he knew he was dying? Did he think of his young son, at home, waiting for headlights that would never, ever arrive?

Was he still waiting?

Armand Gamache did not want to have to be brave. Not anymore. Now all he wanted was to be at peace.

But, like Clara, he knew he could not have one without the other.

SIX

“The first thing we need to know is why Peter left.”

Gamache and Beauvoir sat on one side of the pine table in Clara’s kitchen, and Clara and Myrna were across from them. Gamache’s large hands were folded together on the table. Beside him, Jean-Guy had his notepad out and a pen at the ready. They’d unconsciously slipped right back into their old roles and habits, from more than a decade investigating together.

Beauvoir had also brought his laptop and connected to the Internet over the phone line, in case they needed to look anything up. The laborious musical tones for each number it dialed filled the kitchen. And then the shriek, as though the Internet was a creature and connecting to it hurt.

Beauvoir shot Gamache a cautionary glance.
Don’t, for God’s sake, not again
.

Gamache grinned. Each time they used dial-up in Three Pines—the only way to connect since no other signal reached this hidden village—the Chief would remind Jean-Guy that once even dial-up had seemed a miracle. Not a nuisance.

“I remember…” the Chief began, and Beauvoir’s eyes widened. Then Gamache caught the younger man’s eyes and smiled.

But when the Chief turned to Clara, his face was serious.

She took a deep breath, and took the plunge.

It had begun. The search for Peter had started.

“You know why,” Clara said. “I kicked him out.”

“
Oui,
” agreed Gamache. “But why did you do that?”

“Things hadn’t been good between us for a while. As you know, Peter’s career sort of plateaued, while mine…”

“… took off,” said Myrna.

Clara nodded. “I knew Peter was struggling with that. I’d thought he’d get over his jealousy eventually and be happy for me, like I’d been happy for his success. And he tried to be. He pretended to be. But I could tell he wasn’t. Instead of getting better it was getting worse.”

Gamache listened. Peter Morrow had long been the more prominent artist in the family. Indeed, one of the most prominent artists in Québec. In Canada. His income was modest, but it was enough for them to live on. He supported the family.

He painted very slowly in excruciating detail, while Clara seemed to slap together a work daily. Whether or not it was art was open for debate.

Where Peter’s creations were beautiful studies in composition, there was nothing studied about what his wife produced in her studio.

Clara’s works were exuberant. Vital, alive, often funny, often just plain baffling. Her
Warrior Uteruses,
her series of rubber boots, her whore televisions.

Even Gamache, who loved art, had difficulty fathoming much of it. But he recognized joy when he saw it, and Clara’s creations were filled with it. The pure joy of creation. Of striving. Of striding forward. Searching. Exploring. Pushing.

And then, the breakthrough.
The Three Graces.

One day Clara had decided to try something different, yet again. A painting this time, and her subject would be three elderly neighbors. Friends.

Beatrice, Kaye, and Emilie. Emilie, who had saved Henri. Emilie who had owned the Gamaches’ home.

The Three Graces. Clara had invited them into her home to paint them.

“May I?” Gamache asked, and gestured toward her studio.

Clara got up. “Of course.”

They all walked across the kitchen and into her studio. It smelled of overripe bananas and paint and the strangely evocative and attractive scent of turpentine.

Clara turned the lights on and the room came alive with faces. People looked at them from the walls and easels. One of the canvases was draped in a sheet, like a child’s idea of a ghost. She’d covered her latest work.

Gamache made his way past it and straight across the studio, trying not to be distracted by the other works that seemed to be watching him.

He stopped at the large canvas on the far wall.

“Everything changed with this, didn’t it?” he said.

Clara nodded, also staring at it. “For better, and for worse. It was Peter’s idea, you know. Not the subject matter, but he kept at me to stop doing installations and to try painting. Like him. So I did.”

The four of them stared at the three elderly women on the wall.

“I decided to paint them,” said Clara.

“
Oui,
” said Gamache. That much was obvious.

“No,” Clara said, smiling. “My plan was to actually paint them. Put paint right on them. They’d be nude. Beatrice was going to be green. The heart chakra. Kaye was going to be blue. The throat chakra. She talked a lot.”

“A blue streak,” confirmed Myrna.

“And Emilie would be violet,” said Clara. “The crown chakra. Oneness with God.”

Beauvoir made a slight squeal, as though he’d just connected to the Internet. Gamache ignored him, though he could sense the rolling eyes.

Clara turned to Beauvoir. “I know. Nuts. But they were willing to try it.”

“And did you paint them?” Beauvoir asked.

“Well, I would have, but I realized I didn’t have enough violet, and I couldn’t really leave Emilie half finished. I was going to send them home, when Emilie suggested just doing their portrait. I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I’d never done portraits.”

“Why not?” Gamache asked.

Clara thought about that. “I guess because it seemed so old-fashioned. Not avant-garde. Not creative.”

“So you’d paint the person, but not their portrait?” asked Beauvoir.

“Exactly. Pretty creative, no?”

“That’s one word for it,” he said, and then mumbled something that sounded like “
merde.
”

Gamache turned back to the canvas. He’d met all three women, but Clara’s painting of them always stunned him. They were old. Worn. Lined. Creviced. Their clothes were comfortable, sensible. Taken in parts there was nothing remotely remarkable about them in this painting.

But the whole? What Clara had captured? It was breathtaking.

Emilie, Beatrice, and Kaye reached out to each other. Not grasping. These women weren’t drowning. They weren’t clinging to each other.

All three were laughing, with open-faced pleasure in each other’s company.

In her first portrait Clara had captured intimacy.

“It had been a mistake, then?” asked Beauvoir, pointing to the painting.

“Well, that’s one word for it,” said Clara.

“And what did Peter say when he saw it?” asked Gamache.

“He said it was very good, but that I might have to work on perspective.”

Gamache felt a spike of anger. This was a form of murder. Peter Morrow had tried to kill not his wife, but her creation. He’d clearly recognized a work of genius and had tried to ruin it.

“Do you think he knew then what was going to happen?” Beauvoir asked.

“I don’t think anyone could have known what would happen,” said Clara. “I sure didn’t.”

“But I think he suspected,” said Myrna. “I think he looked at
The Three Graces
and saw the Visigoths on the seventh hill. He knew his world was about to change.”

“Why wasn’t he happy for Clara?” Gamache asked Myrna.

“Have you ever been jealous?”

Gamache thought about that. He’d been passed over for promotions. In his youth girls he’d had crushes on had turned him down, only to date one of his friends. Which somehow made it worse for his young heart. But the closest he’d come to consuming, corroding jealousy was seeing other kids with their parents.

He’d hated them for that. And, God help him, he’d hated his parents. For not being there. For leaving him behind.

“It’s like drinking acid,” said Myrna, “and expecting the other person to die.”

Gamache nodded.

Is that how Peter had felt, looking at this painting? Had Peter taken his first gulp of acid? Had he felt his insides curdle when he saw
The Three Graces
?

Gamache knew Peter Morrow well and had no doubt even now that he loved Clara with all his heart. And that must have made it worse. To love the woman but hate and fear what she’d created. Peter didn’t want Clara to die, but he’d almost certainly wanted her paintings to die. And he’d do what he could to kill them. With a quiet word, an insinuation, a suggestion.

“May I?” Gamache pointed out the door of the studio to the closed door across the hall.

“Yes.” Clara led the way.

Peter’s studio was tidy, organized, calm. It felt serene, to Clara’s disorder. It smelled of paint, with a slight undertone of lemon. Pledge, thought Gamache. Or lemon meringue pie.

The walls were covered with studies for Peter’s careful, brilliantly executed creations. Early on in his career, Peter had discovered if he took a simple object and magnified it, it looked abstract.

And that’s what he painted. He loved the fact that something banal, often natural, like a twig or a leaf, could look abstract and unnatural when examined closely.

At first it had been exciting. Fresh and new, his paintings had taken the art world by storm. But after ten, twenty years of essentially the same thing, over and over …

Gamache looked at Peter’s works. They were spectacular. At first glance. And then they faded. They were, finally, examples of great draftsmanship. There was no mistaking a work by Peter Morrow, you could spot one a mile away. Admire it for a minute, then move on. There was a center, maybe even a message, but no soul.

Though the studio walls were covered with his works, the space felt cold and empty.

Gamache considered the canvas in front of him, and found himself still consumed by Clara’s painting. The actual image of
The Three Graces
might fade a little in memory, but how the work made him feel would not.

And that wasn’t even Clara’s best painting. Her works since had only grown in their power and depth. In all they evoked.

But these? Peter’s canvases made him feel nothing.

Peter’s career would have languished all by itself, eventually, independent of what happened to Clara. But her unexpected and spectacular ascent made his decline seem all the sharper.

What did flourish, though, what grew and grew, was his jealousy.

As Gamache followed Clara from the studio, he found his anger toward Peter had been replaced by a sort of pity. The poor sod hadn’t stood a chance.