After ordering cheeseburgers with melted brie and fries, Harriet and Fiona told Sam about the discovery.
“Are you kidding?”
“No, it’s true.”
“So someone put that painting up there and made it look like the old painting? Then bricked it up with other stuff, including a book on witchcraft? Well, that’s just weird. This’s all your fault,” he said to Harriet.
“Mine?”
“You started it, with the talk of the hidden room.” He was clearly teasing her, and she responded. Laughing. Teasing back.
Sam playfully nudged her, then grabbed a spicy fry off her plate.
“Oh,” said Sam. “Sorry. Better be careful or the big tough cop’ll throw me in jail for stealing. Wouldn’t put it past him. Though that asshole seems to prefer picking on children.”
“Monsieur Gamache?” asked Harriet, surprised.
“You don’t know him like we do,” said Sam, looking at his sister.
“But you’re staying with him, them, aren’t you?” Harriet said to Fiona. She knew in broad strokes, as did everyone else, about Fiona’s past. But she also knew that the Gamaches had all but adopted her. “They’re friends of yours.”
“Of hers, yes,” said Sam. “But not me. He thinks I killed my mother and framed my own sister for it.”
“Sam!” said Fiona.
“Well, he does. He’s obsessed with me. He even told Fiona I wasn’t allowed in their house. How crazy is that? That scar he has? I think he walked into a tree and it’s made him soft in the head.”
He made a circular motion with his finger around his temple.
There was the scraping of a chair behind them and the clearing of a throat.
“I’m sorry.” The minister, Robert Mongeau, was standing by their table. “But what you’re saying is not only unkind, it’s untrue.”
His voice was soft, but his eyes were shrewd as he looked at Sam.
“Armand Gamache is a good man,” Mongeau continued. “A decent man. You could do worse than learn from him.”
“Oh, I’ve learned from him,” said Sam. “You want to know what? I learned not to trust anyone. I learned that cops are cruel. I learned to swallow my feelings, to hide my thoughts. To not tell the truth because it’ll bite you in the ass. I learned that the world is filled with terrible people, and the worst, the very worst, are the ones who should protect us. Who we turn to for help. That’s what I learned from Armand fucking Gamache.”
Sam took a few deep breaths to steady himself.
“He saved you from terrible abuse,” said Mongeau, gently.
“Saved us? We’d already saved ourselves. He ruined our lives.” Sam softened his voice. “We were children, and he made us the guilty ones, for trying to survive. Do you know what that does to a kid? To be made to feel all the abuse was our fault?”
“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” said Mongeau. “But I do know that holding on to resentments only binds you to the person you hate. You need to let go of it. For your own sake, not Monsieur Gamache’s. Not anyone else’s. For yourself.”
He paused and studied Sam for so long it was just on the verge of awkward when the minister finally spoke again.
“There’s goodness in you. I see it.” Then Mongeau turned to Fiona. As he looked at her, his brows dropped very slightly, then he looked away.
“You have no idea what we’ve been through.” Sam’s voice was small, shaky, and he seemed unable to look up from the table.
“Robert?” said Sylvie, from the next table.
He stepped away then paused. “I’m sorry to have interfered. It’s none of my business. But please, I’m at the church most days if you want to talk. No lecturing. No judgment. I promise. Though I do want to just say that the scar you mentioned”—Robert brought his finger up to trace where the scar was, deep and jagged, by Gamache’s temple—“was made by a bullet. Armand was shot while trying to save a young man, about your age.”
“Did he?” asked Sam.
“Save him?” said Robert. “No.”
Sam snorted. “Of course not.”
“At least he tried,” said Robert. He looked at his wife, then spoke softly, softly to the immortal young people. “Now here’s a good one: You’re lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?”
The minister stared at Sam for a beat. Two. Then turned and returned to his wife.
“Well,” said Sam. “That was weird.”
“That was from one of Ruth’s poems,” said Harriet.
“That crazy old woman? She’s a poet?” said Sam.
“Won the Governor General’s Award.”
Fiona was watching Mongeau, then turned to her brother. It was a good question.
Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?
“After lunch I’d like to go over to your old house,” said Armand. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yes, but why?” asked Billy. “I don’t know what they can tell us. This’s all strange, but it’s not criminal.”
“I think it’s a little more than strange.”
“Okay, I agree. But no crime has been committed. Nothing’s been stolen. In fact, we have more than we started with. I know you said you don’t think it’s a joke, Armand, but what else could it be?”
“What happened to her?” asked Gabri, waving at the grimoire as though it was the woman.
“Anne Lamarque?” said Ruth. “She was accused of witchcraft.”
“Why? Did they find the book?” asked Clara.
“They heard about it,” said Ruth. “But never found it. If they had, it wouldn’t be sitting here now. They didn’t need the grimoire. They didn’t need proof. All a woman had to be was alive. Just being a woman was, in the church’s eyes, evil.”
“But there must’ve been a reason,” said Gabri.
“Is there a reason gay, lesbian, and transgender people are attacked?” asked Ruth. “Is there a reason Black men are shot? Is there a reason women are raped, abused, refused abortions, groomed and sold as sex slaves?”
“Murdered,” said Myrna, looking at the bouquet of white roses on the kitchen island.
“I was hanged for living alone,” said Ruth. It was rare, almost unheard of, that she quoted her own poem, but they heard it now. “For having a weedy farm in my own name / And a surefire cure for warts.”
The old woman looked at the book on Reine-Marie’s lap, in which, they were certain, was a surefire cure for warts.
“Oh yes,” she continued, “and breasts / And a sweet pear hidden in my body. / Whenever there’s talk of demons, those come in handy.”
It was the poem Ruth had written for the women murdered in the Polytechnique.
They were silent for a moment, before Reine-Marie spoke.
“Anne Lamarque was one of the Filles du roi. One of the women recruited by the King to help colonize New France. But rather than be subservient, as expected, she stood out.”
“How?” asked Clara.
“Well, among other things, she wore glasses and could read,” said Reine-Marie.
“You’d have been screwed,” Ruth said to Reine-Marie. “All of you. All of us. We’d be witches.”
Myrna laughed. Then grew serious, realizing Ruth was right. They’d have been screwed. They’d have been witches.
“It went beyond the fact she could read,” said Reine-Marie.
“True,” said Ruth. “She pissed off the authorities by owning and running a business. A successful inn in the seedier part of town, back when Montréal was little more than a puddle of shit and broken promises.”
“The church wanted to exert control, so they imposed a curfew,” said Reine-Marie. “And banned alcohol.”