A Trick of the Light

And love. No, not just love. Adoration. This child, this woman, was adored.

Beauvoir felt something stir inside. Something that seemed to have crawled into him while he’d lain in his own blood on the floor of that factory.

Sorrow.

Since that moment death had never been the same, and neither, it must be said, had life.

He didn’t like it.

He tried to remember Lillian Dyson forty years after this picture was taken. Too much makeup, hair dyed a straw blond. Bright red look-at-me dress. Almost a mockery. A parody of a person.

But try as Beauvoir might it was too late. He saw Lillian Dyson now as a young girl. Adored. Confident. Heading into the world. A world her parents knew needed to be kept out, with chains.

But still, they’d opened the door a crack, and a crack was enough. If there was something malevolent, malicious, murderous on the other side, a crack was all it needed.

“Bon,” came the Chief’s voice behind him and Beauvoir turned to see Gamache carrying a tin tray with a teapot, some milk, sugar and fine china cups. “Where would you like me to put this?”

He sounded warm, friendly. But not jovial. The Chief wouldn’t want to trick them. Would not want to give the impression they were there with riotous good news.

“Just here, please.” Madame Dyson hurried to clear the TV guide and remote off a faux-wood table by the sofa, but Beauvoir got there first, scooping them up and handing them to her.

She met his eyes and smiled. Not a wide smile, but a softer, sadder version of her daughter’s. Beauvoir knew now where Lillian had gotten her smile.

And he suspected these two elderly people knew why they were there. Probably not the exact news. Not that their only daughter was dead. Murdered. But the look Madame Dyson had just given him told Jean Guy Beauvoir that she knew something was up. Amiss.

And she was being kind anyway. Or was she just trying to keep whatever news they had at bay? Keep them silent for one more precious minute.

“A bit of milk and sugar?” she asked the puppet.

Monsieur Dyson sat forward.

“This is a special occasion,” he pretended to confide in their visitors. “Normally she doesn’t offer milk.”

It broke Beauvoir’s heart to think these two pensioners probably couldn’t afford much milk. That what little they had was being offered now, to their guests.

“Gives me gas,” explained the old man.

“Now, Papa,” said Madame Dyson, handing the cup and saucer to the Chief to hand to her husband. She too pretended to confide in their company. “It is true. I figure you have about twenty minutes from the first sip.”

Once they all had their cups and were seated Chief Inspector Gamache took a sip and placed the delicate bone china cup on its saucer and leaned toward the elderly couple. Madame Dyson reached out and took her husband’s hand.

Would she still call him “Papa” after today, Beauvoir wondered. Or was that the very last time? Would it be too painful? That must have been what Lillian called him.

Would he still be a father, even if there were no more children?

“I have some very bad news,” said the Chief. “It’s about your daughter, Lillian.”

He looked them in the eyes as he spoke, and saw their lives change. It would forever be dated from this moment. Before the news and after the news. Two completely different lives.

“I’m afraid she’s dead.”

He spoke in short, declarative sentences. His voice calm, deep. Absolute. He needed to tell them quickly, not drag it out. And clearly. There could be no doubt.

“I don’t understand,” said Madame Dyson, but her eyes said she understood fully. She was terrified. The monster every mother feared had squirmed in through that crack. It had taken her child, and was now sitting in her living room.

Madame Dyson turned to her husband, who was struggling to sit further forward. Perhaps to stand up. To confront this news, these words. To beat them back, out of his living room, out of his home, away from his door. To beat those words until they were lies.

But he couldn’t.

“There’s more,” said the Chief Inspector, still holding their eyes. “Lillian was murdered.”

“Oh, God, no,” said Lillian’s mother, her hand flying to her mouth. Then it slipped to her chest. Her breast. And rested there, limp.

Both of them stared at Gamache, and he looked at them.

“I’m very sorry to have to bring you this news,” he said, knowing how weak it sounded but also knowing to not say it would be even worse.

Madame and Monsieur Dyson were gone now. They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs.

And they knew something the rest didn’t. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.

“How?” Madame Dyson whispered. Beside her her husband was enraged, so angry he couldn’t speak. But his face was contorted and his eyes blazed. At Gamache.