A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(3)

“There’s something that’s bothering me about this file and I don’t know what it is.”

Reine-Marie picked it up and read. It didn’t take long. After a few minutes she closed the cover, laying a hand softly on top as a mother might on the chest of a sick child. Making sure of the heartbeat.

“She’s an odd one, I’ll give her that.” She looked at the red dot in the corner. “You’re rejecting her, I see.”

Armand lifted his hands in a noncommittal gesture.

“You’re considering accepting her?” she asked. “Even if it’s true that she reads ancient Greek and Latin, that’s not much use in the job. They’re dead languages. And she might very well be lying.”

“True,” he admitted. “But if you’re going to lie, why do it about that? Seems an odd sort of fabrication.”

“She’s not qualified,” said Reine-Marie. “Her high school marks are abysmal. I know it’s difficult to choose, but surely there are other applicants who deserve the spot more.”

Their breakfast came, and Armand placed the file on the pine floor beside Henri.

“I can’t tell you how often I’ve changed that dot,” he said with a smile. “Red, green. Green, red.”

Reine-Marie took a forkful of the moist scrambled eggs. A long thin string of Brie clung to the plate and she lifted her fork above her head for amusement, to see how long the string could stretch before it broke.

Longer than her arm, it seemed.

Armand, smiling and shaking his head, pulled it apart with his fingers.

“There, madame, I set you free.”

“From the bondage of cheese,” she said. “Oh, thank you, kind sir. But I’m afraid the attachment goes deeper than that.”

He laughed.

“Do you think it’s her name?” asked Reine-Marie. Her husband was rarely so indecisive, though she knew he also took his decisions seriously. They would affect people for the rest of their lives.

“Amelia?” he asked. And frowned. “I wondered the same thing. But it seems a huge overreaction on my part, don’t you think? My mother’s been gone for almost fifty years. I’ve met other Amelias—”

“Not many.”

“Non, c’est vrai. But some. And while the name will always remind me of my mother, the fact is I didn’t think of her as Amelia. She was Maman.”

He was right, of course. And he didn’t seem at all embarrassed to be a grown man talking about “mommy.” She knew he was simply referring to the last time he saw his mother and father. When he was nine. When they weren’t Amelia and Honoré but Mommy and Daddy. Going out for dinner with friends. Expected back to kiss him good night.

“It could be her name,” said Armand.

“But you doubt it. You think it’s something else.”

“Oh God,” said Olivier, coming over to check on them and looking out the window. “I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Neither are we,” admitted Reine-Marie, following his gaze to the snowy village green, now white. “You think you are, but it always comes as an unpleasant surprise.”

“And arrives earlier and earlier,” said Armand.

“Exactly. And seems more and more bitter,” said Olivier.

“Still, there’s beauty,” said Armand, and received a stern look from Olivier.

“Beauty? You’re kidding, right?” he said.

“No, it’s there. Of course, it can stick around far too long,” said Armand.

“You’re telling me,” said Olivier.

“It gets old,” said Reine-Marie.

“Gets old?” asked Olivier.

“But having the right tires helps,” she said.

Olivier put the empty croissant basket back down on the table. “What’re you talking about?”

“Winter, of course,” said Reine-Marie. “The first snow.”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Armand.

“Ruth,” said Olivier, pointing out the window at the elderly woman with a cane, and a duck, approaching the bistro. Old, cold and bitter.

She stepped inside and scanned the room.

“Yes,” said Olivier. “The right tires would solve that problem.”

“Fag,” muttered Ruth as she limped by them.

“Hag,” muttered Olivier as they watched the elderly poet take her usual seat by the fireplace. She opened the pine blanket box used as a coffee table and took out a handful of papers.

“She’s helping me sort through the stuff we found in the walls when we renovated,” said Olivier. “You remember?”

Armand nodded. Olivier and his partner, Gabri, had turned an abandoned hardware store into the bistro many years ago, and in updating the electricity and plumbing, they’d opened the walls and found all sorts of things. Mummified squirrels, clothing. But mostly they’d found papers. Newspapers, magazines, advertisements, catalogues used as insulation as though words could keep winter at bay.

Enough heated words had been hurled at the Québec winter, but all had failed to stop the snow.

In the chaos of the renovations, the papers had simply been dumped in the pine blanket box and forgotten. The box had sat in front of the hearth for years, unopened. Countless cafés au lait, and glasses of wine, and plates of regional cheese and paté and baguette, and feet, had rested on top of it, until the papers had been rediscovered a few months earlier.