A Trick of the Light

Not once had she imagined herself collapsed on the floor. In terror. Longing to leave. To go back to the garden.

But Olivier was right. She wouldn’t return. Not yet.

Oh, no no no. She’d have to go through those doors. They were the only way home now.

“Deep breath out,” Olivier whispered, with a smile.

Clara laughed, and exhaled. “You’d make a good midwife.”

“What’re you two doing down there?” Gabri asked as he watched Clara and his partner. “I know what Olivier usually does in that position and I hope that isn’t it.” He turned to Peter. “Though that might explain the laughter.”

“Ready?” Olivier handed Clara her purse and they got to their feet.

Gabri, never far from Olivier’s side, gave Clara a bear hug. “You OK?” He examined her closely. He was big, though Gabri preferred to call himself “burly,” his face unscored by the worry lines of his partner.

“I’m fine,” said Clara.

“Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and egotistical?” asked Gabri.

“Exactly.”

“Great. So’m I. And so’s everyone through there.” Gabri gestured toward the door. “What they aren’t is the fabulous artist with the solo show. So you’re both fine and famous.”

“Coming?” asked Peter, waving toward Clara and smiling.

She hesitated, then taking Peter’s hand, they walked together down the corridor, the sharp echoes of their feet not quite masking the merriment on the other side.

They’re laughing, thought Clara. They’re laughing at my art.

And in that instant the body of the poem surfaced. The rest of it was revealed.

Oh, no no no, thought Clara. Still the dead one lay moaning.

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

*   *   *

From far off Armand Gamache could hear the sound of children playing. He knew where it was coming from. The park across the way, though he couldn’t see the children through the maple trees in late spring leaf. He sometimes liked to sit there and pretend the shouts and laughter came from his young grandchildren, Florence and Zora. He imagined his son Daniel and Roslyn were in the park, watching their children. And that soon they’d walk hand in hand across the quiet street in the very center of the great city, for dinner. Or he and Reine-Marie would join them. And play catch, or conkers.

He liked to pretend they weren’t thousands of kilometers away in Paris.

But mostly he just listened to the shouts and shrieks and laughter of neighborhood children. And smiled. And relaxed.

Gamache reached for his beer and lowered the L’Observateur magazine to his knee. His wife, Reine-Marie, sat across from him on their balcony. She too had a cold beer on this unexpectedly warm day in mid-June. But her copy of La Presse was folded on the table and she stared into the distance.

“What’re you thinking about?” he asked.

“My mind was just wandering.”

He was silent for a moment, watching her. Her hair was quite gray now, but then, so was his. She’d dyed it auburn for many years but just recently had stopped doing that. He was glad. Like him, she was in her mid-fifties. And this was what a couple of that age looked like. If they were lucky.

Not like models. No one would mistake them for that. Armand Gamache wasn’t heavy, but solidly built. If a stranger visited this home he might think Monsieur Gamache a quiet academic, a professor of history or literature perhaps at the Université de Montréal.

But that too would be a mistake.

Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Québec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and often several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache’s study, he might see the story the books in there told.

And he’d soon realize this was not the home of some retiring professor of French literature. The shelves were packed with case histories, with books on medicine and forensics, with tomes on Napoleonic and common law, fingerprinting, genetic coding, wounds and weapons.

Murder. Armand Gamache’s study was filled with it.

But still, even among the death, space was made for books on philosophy and poetry.

Watching Reine-Marie as they sat on the balcony, Gamache was once again struck by the certainty he’d married above himself. Not socially. Not academically. But he could never shake the suspicion he had gotten very, very lucky.

Armand Gamache knew he’d had a great deal of luck in his life, but none more than having loved the same woman for thirty-five years. Unless it was the extraordinary stroke of luck that she should also love him.

Now she turned her blue eyes on him. “Actually, I was thinking about Clara’s vernissage.”

“Oh?”

“We should be going soon.”