A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(136)

“To be cleansed?” asked Clara.

“To be punished.”

“You think his grief was real? It sure seemed real. Fooled everyone, including Armand.”

“I don’t think anyone was fooled. I think Vivienne’s death destroyed Homer. I doubt it was on purpose. I want to believe he went to the bridge to try to make amends.”

“I don’t understand,” said Clara. “He beat her. His own daughter. A child. God knows what else he did to her. And now what? You’re saying he really did love her?”

“I’m saying people change.” She held up her hands to ward off Clara’s protests. “I know, it’s easy to say. And it doesn’t undo the damage. But we’ve seen changes of heart. Changes of perception. It happens. Racists, homophobes, misogynists, they can change. And some do.”

“Truth and reconciliation,” said Clara.

“Yes. The truth must come first. And then, maybe, reconciliation. Maybe.”

“You think Vivienne and her father might’ve reconciled?”

“Maybe. I think getting the courage to confront him was the first step. If not to forgiveness, at least to healing. And I think Homer’s willingness to meet her, and to take the money, shows that maybe he wanted that, too. Maybe.”

“He killed her,” Clara reminded Myrna. “Then he was willing to see Carl Tracey tried and convicted for something he himself did. Hardly the acts of a contrite man.”

“True.” Myrna pushed herself out of the sofa. “I guess I just want to believe.”

Just as she’d wanted to believe, desperately, that Clara’s miniatures were brilliant.

But that had proved a delusion. Dominica Oddly had made that clear. And had, with a few well-turned phrases on her site, destroyed Clara’s credibility as an artist.

Her gallery had dropped her. Collectors were returning paintings. Social media was on a feeding frenzy.

Myrna looked at the tiny paintings, nailed to the wall where Clara had put them. Where she could always see them. A reminder. A warning.

Oddly had been right about them. But she’d also been wrong. She might have a duty to tell the truth, but there was no need to be so cruel.

“Are you going to do a portrait of her?” asked Myrna.

“Her who? Vivienne? I never met her.”

“No, you know who I mean.”

Myrna waited for the answer. That would reveal so much about her friend’s state of mind.

But Clara didn’t answer. Or maybe she did, thought Myrna, as she watched her friend stare into the vast, white, empty expanse of canvas in front of her. And put down her brush.



* * *



Jean-Guy Beauvoir pulled the car in to the now-familiar yard, and he and Armand got out.

The donkeys noticed first. Coming over to the fence to greet them.

“What do you want?” demanded Carl Tracey, once again standing at the barn door with a pitchfork. “Come to arrest me? I keep telling you, I didn’t kill Vivienne.”

Jean-Guy looked at the man and felt a wave of revulsion. He might not have killed his wife, but he beat her. Isolated her. Tormented her.

But Carl Tracey had also done something else.

“Non,” said Beauvoir. “I’ve come to thank you. For saving my life.”

He didn’t offer his hand. Couldn’t take it that far. But he did look Carl Tracey, his unexpected savior, in the eyes. And saw there surprise. And even, maybe, a softening? A hint of what this man could have been, might still become. Might actually be, deep inside.

Carl Tracey’s actions on the bridge had been instinctive. Maybe, below all the rot, there existed some timid decency.

“Yeah, well, a blow to the head’ll do that.”

Was there, as he said it, the smallest possible smile?

“And I came to apologize,” said Gamache. “For having you arrested, charged. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

“You’re kidding,” said Tracey, scanning the woods, the road, behind the S?reté officers. “This’s a trap, right?”

Did Carl Tracey go through life looking for, seeing, manufacturing traps set by others, for him? How, Gamache wondered, must that affect how he sees the world?

It didn’t forgive the abuse, the violence. It wasn’t Gamache’s to forgive. But it might help explain it.

“No, no trap. An apology.”

While Jean-Guy backed the car up, Armand watched through the windshield as Tracey fed the donkeys carrots and scratched their long noses.



* * *



Superintendent Lacoste crossed her legs and smoothed her slacks. And looked across the coffee table at Chief Superintendent Toussaint.

It had been a week since the events in Three Pines, and her leave was coming to an end.

She was meeting with Toussaint to tell the head of the S?reté which job she’d accept.

“I saw your tweets, Isabelle,” said Madeleine Toussaint as they settled into the comfortable armchairs in the sitting area of the office. “Defending Chief Inspector Gamache. You didn’t hide your identity.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you used your rank. You were posting not as a private citizen but as a senior officer in the S?reté. Making it look like the official S?reté position.”