A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(111)

Not this muted reply.

She looked over at Reine-Marie, whose head was tilted, as though maybe that would help. There was a strained look on her face, like a child with the beginnings of indigestion.

“These are the ones that didn’t make the cut, right? The ones you were less happy with?” Reine-Marie asked, barely meeting Clara’s eyes.

“Yes,” she said. She lied.

The tiny oils on the easel in her studio were almost exact replicas of the series she’d sent to the collective show in New York.

The critics, the other artists, even the gallery owners could all be dismissed. The crap on social media certainly could be. Or if not outright dismissed, at least explained.

Jealousy. Nothing more.

But now her own friends, her cheering section, were tilting their heads, squinting their eyes, and offering faint praise.

Damn, thought Clara. Damn.

That Oddly woman had poisoned the well. Turned even her most ardent supporters against her. Or, at least, against her art. Which was almost the same thing, so deeply intertwined were the woman and her creations. An attack on one felt like an attack on the other.

She felt her world sinking, and Clara Morrow was far from certain she could keep her head above the swiftly rising tide of opinion.



* * *



Ruth put a thin, veined hand on Armand’s. “You did your best, you know.”

He looked down at her hand, then into her rheumy eyes.

“But he got away. Thanks in large part to me.”

“Not on purpose.”

“Does it matter?”

“You’re a cop, doesn’t intent always matter? If you didn’t intend to hurt…”

He wondered if this was Ruth’s way of apologizing for posting that video. Knowing now the pain she’d caused.

“That could be true,” he said. “But Vivienne is dead, and her killer is free.”

“Not for long. Homer’s going to kill the man who killed his daughter, isn’t he?”

“He’s going to try.”

“Will you stop him?”

“I’ll try.”

“In a halfhearted way?”

Armand turned to her in surprise. “No. With all my heart.”

“Why?”

She looked at him with genuine curiosity. As did the duck. But then, ducks were often curious.

Why would he stop Homer?

“Because it’s not for us to be judge, jury, and executioner.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cliché. And in the real world, when the system fails?”

“Then we have to look somewhere else for a solution.”

“You mean revenge.”

“For some, yes.”

“And others?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“You mean giving up? Just”—she waved her hand—“letting it go and getting on with life?”

“I mean grabbing hold of something other than rage and revenge. You came over to the house this afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Ruth. “What of it?”

“You said something to Homer.”

“So?”

“I think that’s why you visited him. To offer Homer that option, a way out. If not to forgiveness, perhaps to peace. It was a quote from St. Francis, to a woman who’d lost her child in a river. The thing is, I looked it up, or tried, and couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, does it exist?”

“Does it matter? Isn’t the power in the belief and not the proof?” She looked at him, hard. “Wouldn’t you want to believe, Armand? If it had been Annie?”

In the silence that followed, he met her eyes.

“Clare, Clare,” she said, her voice shaky and her eyes steady, “do not despair. Between the bridge and the water, I was there.”



* * *



“Does she always carry the duck around?” Dominica Oddly asked Reine-Marie as they left to walk home.

The cold April night air seeped past Dominica’s light coat and into her bones. She wrapped her arms around herself.

“Always,” said Reine-Marie. “Would you leave your child behind?”

“Child…?” Dominica began to dismiss the statement but then heard Rosa muttering and saw the resemblance between mother and duck.

They took a few steps in silence before Reine-Marie spoke again.

“You do know how much your review hurt Clara, don’t you?”

“It was brutal,” said Olivier.

“I was just telling the truth.”

“All truth with malice in it,” said Ruth.

“But it’s still the truth.”

“Maybe,” said Reine-Marie. “But you need to also own the malice.”



* * *



Jean-Guy dropped back to where Armand and Isabelle were walking, a few paces behind the others.

Isabelle was tired, and her limp was more pronounced.

“I asked her”—Jean-Guy indicated Dominica Oddly—“about Tracey’s pottery. She said it was quite good. Showed actual promise.”

“Jesus,” said Isabelle, “don’t tell Clara that. Her head’ll explode.”