A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(32)

“I thought you couldn’t come,” Godin said, turning to Gamache. “That there were more important things—”

He stopped here. Unable to go on.

“There’s nothing more important to us, Monsieur Godin,” said Gamache, “than finding your daughter. There is, though, that state of emergency I mentioned. We are, for now, the only ones assigned to the search.”

Godin looked at the three of them, with new eyes. An accountant. A woman with a cane. A man covered in mud and smelling like—“You’re not needed?”

“Non.”

With some surprise Gamache realized he had become part of the refuse he’d spent his career salvaging.

But that didn’t mean he was useless. Just, maybe, repurposed.

“Come inside, out of the weather,” said Godin. “I’m sure this’s nothing. I’m sure Vivienne’s off with girlfriends, having fun, and I’m worrying for nothing. She’ll call soon.”

He searched their faces. Trying to find some reason to hope that what he’d just said could possibly be true. A patient in a doctor’s office, self-diagnosing the lump as a cyst. The confusion as exhaustion. The numbness as a pinched nerve.

The missing daughter on holiday. Soon to call. Full of apologies.

Gamache recognized the natural, and probably necessary, delusion. That allowed parents, children, spouses, to go on. At least temporarily.

“I’m sure that’s true,” said Cloutier, as they followed Homer through the neat house and into the kitchen.

But Vivienne’s father was watching Gamache.

“What do you think has happened to her?” Homer asked, sitting at the kitchen table.

Gamache, taking a seat across from Homer, could hear the fear creeping back into his voice. The dread. A frost quake, approaching.

“We don’t know. We’ve just come from her home—”

“That was never her home. This’s her home.”

And it felt like a home. Smelled like a home. It was modest in size, comfortable and welcoming, with slightly worn furniture. A La-Z-Boy was close to the woodstove, positioned perfectly to see the television.

One chair. This was a man who not only lived alone but didn’t often have company.

Fred lay on the floor, his head on Monsieur Godin’s feet.

“Has he done something to her?”

Again the eyes were pleading with Gamache for reassurance. But there was, in them, more desperation than conviction.

“We don’t know,” said Cloutier. “We—”

“That bastard’s done something, hasn’t he.”

It was a statement now, not a question.

“Why do you say that, sir?” asked Gamache.

“Because she’d have called me. I know my Vivienne. She’d know I was worried. She’d never—”

He stopped and looked down. Breathing heavily from the strain of carrying such terror.

Gamache watched as Vivienne’s father groped his way forward. Into a terrible new world. Stumbling over shards of words he dared not say. Falling into emotions he dared not admit. Picking himself up. Moving forward.

Walking that tightrope of needing to push for action while not yet admitting the reason.

“Is there someplace you think she could have gone?” asked Gamache.

“I’ve called all her old friends. No one’s seen her. They haven’t even heard from her in a long time.”

“How about friends she made since moving away?”

“If she had any, she never mentioned them. But I haven’t seen her for a while myself.”

“Why not?”

“He wouldn’t let her come here, and I knew I wasn’t welcome there. I tried a few times, but he wouldn’t even let me on the porch. Said some terrible things.”

“Like what?”

Homer paused, clearly unhappy with the question—and the answer. “That Vivienne didn’t want to see me. That she hated me. That I was a terrible father.”

He hung his head, his mouth falling open. After an excruciating few seconds, a thin line of spittle dropped from his parted lips.

His huge hands were trembling in his lap, and his breath came in short, sharp inhales and exhales. Panting. Like a wild animal in pain.

Lysette Cloutier reached out toward him, but Gamache put his hand on her arm and stopped her.

The man needed his space. His illusion of privacy.

Having seen more than his share of grief, Gamache knew that Vivienne’s father must be allowed to cry, without well-meaning people trying to stop it. An act that looked like mercy but was more about their own extreme discomfort than any comfort they could offer him.

“He wasn’t wrong,” said Godin at last, his voice squeezing through his throat. “I wasn’t a good father.”

“What do you mean?” Gamache asked. “You said something similar when we arrived. You said it was all your fault.”

“Did I? I meant that I should’ve said something. Done something. Way back even when they got engaged. I knew he was trouble. But I didn’t want her to think, after her mother died, that I was jealous or anything. And I wasn’t even sure if that’s why I hated Tracey so much. It was confusing. But I could see, I could just see, that he wasn’t good for her. But I never thought”—he paused to take some more breaths—“he’d hurt her. Not at first, anyway. Not like this.”