Armand Gamache watched Peter Morrow drive slowly along du Moulin, and out of Three Pines.
As he turned back to the village he saw Ruth get to her feet. She was staring into the distance. And then he heard it. A far cry. A familiar cry.
Ruth searched the skies, a veined and bony hand at her throat clutching the blue cardigan.
The sun broke through a small crack in the clouds. The embittered old poet turned her face to the sound and the light. Straining to see into the distance, something not quite there, not quite visible.
And in her weary eyes there was a tiny dot. A glint, a gleam.
Excerpt from “Up” from
Morning in the Burned House
by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1995. Published by McClelland & Stewart in Canada, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company in the United States. Used with permission of the author and her publishers (in their respective territories) and the author’s agent, Curtis Brown Group Ltd., London, acting on behalf of Margaret Atwood. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from page 82 of the book
Alcoholics Anonymous,
copyright 1939, is used by kind permission of AA World Services.
“Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith from
Collected Poems of Stevie Smith,
copyright 1957 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.