“Why don’t we give him another couple of minutes.”
Gamache nodded and picked up the magazine, then he lowered it slowly.
“Is there something else?”
Reine-Marie hesitated then smiled. “I was just wondering how you’re feeling about going to the vernissage. And wondering if you’re stalling.”
Armand raised his brow in surprise.
Jean Guy Beauvoir rubbed Henri’s ears and stared at the young woman across from him. He’d known her for fifteen years, since he was a rookie on homicide and she was a teenager. Awkward, gawky, bossy.
He didn’t like kids. Certainly didn’t like smart-ass teenagers. But he’d tried to like Annie Gamache, if only because she was the boss’s daughter.
He’d tried and he’d tried and he’d tried. And finally—
He’d succeeded.
And now he was nearing forty and she was nearing thirty. A lawyer. Married. Still awkward and gawky and bossy. But he’d tried so hard to like her he’d finally seen beyond that. He’d seen her laugh with real gaiety, seen her listen to very boring people as though they were riveting. She looked as though she was genuinely glad to see them. As though they were important. He’d seen her dance, arms flailing and head tilted back. Eyes shining.
And he’d felt her hand in his. Only once.
In the hospital. He’d come back up from very far away. Fought through the pain and the dark to that foreign but gentle touch. He knew it didn’t belong to his wife, Enid. That bird-like grip he would not have come back for.
But this hand was large, and certain, and warm. And it invited him back.
He’d opened his eyes to see Annie Gamache staring at him with such concern. Why would she be there, he’d wondered. And then he knew why.
Because she had nowhere else to be. No other hospital bed to sit beside.
Because her father was dead. Killed by a gunman in the abandoned factory. Beauvoir had seen it happen. Seen Gamache hit. Seen him lifted off his feet and fall to the concrete floor.
And lie still.
And now Annie Gamache was holding his hand in the hospital, because the hand she really wanted to be holding was gone.
Jean Guy Beauvoir had pried his eyes open and seen Annie Gamache looking so sad. And his heart broke. Then he saw something else.
Joy.
No one had ever looked at him that way. With unconcealed and unbound joy.
Annie had looked at him like that, when he’d opened his eyes.
He’d tried to speak but couldn’t. But she’d rightly guessed what he was trying to say.
She’d leaned in and whispered into his ear, and he could smell her fragrance. It was slightly citrony. Clean and fresh. Not Enid’s clinging, full-bodied perfume. Annie smelled like a lemon grove in summer.
“Dad’s alive.”
He’d embarrassed himself then. There were many humiliations waiting for him in the hospital. From bedpans and diapers to sponge baths. But none was more personal, more intimate, more of a betrayal than what his broken body did then.
He cried.
And Annie saw. And Annie never mentioned it from that day to this.
To Henri’s bafflement, Jean Guy stopped rubbing the dog’s ears and placed one hand on the other, in a gesture that had become habitual now.
That was how it had felt. Annie’s hand on his.
This was all he’d ever have of her. His boss’s married daughter.
“Your husband’s late,” said Jean Guy, and could hear the accusation. The shove.
Very, very slowly Annie lowered her newspaper. And glared at him.
“What’s your point?”
What was his point?
“We’re going to be late because of him.”
“Then go. I don’t care.”
He’d loaded the gun, pointed it at his head, and begged Annie to pull the trigger. And now he felt the words strike. Cut. Travel deep and explode.
I don’t care.
It was almost comforting, he realized. The pain. Perhaps if he forced her to hurt him enough he’d stop feeling anything.
“Listen,” she said, leaning forward, her voice softening a bit. “I’m sorry about you and Enid. Your separation.”
“Yeah, well, it happens. As a lawyer you should know that.”
She looked at him with searching eyes, like her father’s. Then she nodded.
“It happens.” She grew quiet, still. “Especially after what you’ve been through, I guess. It makes you think about your life. Would you like to talk about it?”
Talk about Enid with Annie? All the petty sordid squabbles, the tiny slights, the scarring and scabbing. The thought revolted him and he must have shown it. Annie pulled back and reddened as though he’d slapped her.
“Forget I said anything,” she snapped and lifted the paper to her face.
He searched for something to say, some small bridge, a jetty back to her. The minutes stretched by, elongating.
“The vernissage,” Beauvoir finally blurted out. It was the first thing that popped into his hollow head, like the Magic Eight Ball, that when it stopped being shaken produced a single word. “Vernissage,” in this case.
The newspaper lowered and Annie’s stone face appeared.
“The people from Three Pines will be there, you know.”
Still her face was expressionless.
“That village, in the Eastern Townships,” he waved vaguely out the window. “South of Montréal.”
“I know where the townships are,” she said.
“The show’s for Clara Morrow, but they’ll all be there I’m sure.”
She raised the newspaper again. The Canadian dollar was strong, he read from across the room. Winter potholes still unfixed, he read. An investigation into government corruption, he read.
Nothing new.
“One of them hates your father.”
The newspaper slowly dropped. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” he realized by her expression he might have gone too far, “not enough to harm him or anything.”
“Dad’s talked about Three Pines and the people, but he never mentioned this.”
Now she was upset and he wished he hadn’t said anything, but it at least did the trick. She was talking to him again. Her father was the bridge.
Annie dropped her paper onto the table and glanced beyond Beauvoir to her parents talking quietly on the balcony.
She suddenly looked like that teenager he’d first met. She was never going to be the most beautiful woman in the room. That much was obvious even then. Annie was not fine-boned or delicate. She was more athletic than graceful. She cared about clothes, but she also cared about comfort.
Opinionated, strong-willed, strong physically. He could beat her at arm-wrestling, he knew because they’d done it several times, but he actually had to try.
With Enid he would never consider trying. And she would never offer.
Annie Gamache had not only offered, but had fully expected to win.
Then had laughed when she hadn’t.
Where other women, including Enid, were lovely, Annie Gamache was alive.
Late, too late, Jean Guy Beauvoir had come to appreciate how very important it was, how very attractive it was, how very rare it was, to be fully alive.
Annie looked back at Beauvoir. “Why would one of them hate Dad?”
Beauvoir lowered his voice. “OK, look. This’s what happened.”
Annie leaned forward. They were a couple of feet apart and Beauvoir could just smell her scent. It was all he could do not to take her hands in his.
“There was a murder in Clara’s village, Three Pines—”
“Yes, Dad has mentioned that. Seems like a cottage industry there.”
Despite himself, Beauvoir laughed. “There is strong shadow where there is much light.”