The Long Way Home(8)

They chatted for a few minutes, not as father-in-law and son-in-law, but as colleagues. As survivors from the same wreck.

* * *

“Jean-Guy looks better every time we see him,” said Reine-Marie.

She could smell her daughter’s peppermint tisane and hear the flapping, tapping, of moth wings against the porch light.

The two women had moved to the front verandah, Annie on the swing and Reine-Marie in one of the chairs. The village of Three Pines was spread before them, amber lights at some of the homes, but most in darkness now.

The women talked not as mother and daughter, but as women who’d shared a life raft and were now, finally, on dry land.

“He’s going to his therapist,” said Annie. “And to his AA meetings. Never misses. I think he actually looks forward to it now but would never admit it. Dad?”

“He does his physio. We go for long walks. He can go farther every day. He’s even talking about taking up yoga.”

Annie laughed. She had a face, a body, made not for a Paris runway but for good meals and books by the fire and laughter. She was constructed from, and for, happiness. But it had taken Annie Gamache a long while to find it. To trust it.

And even now, in the still summer night, part of her feared it would be taken away. Again. By a bullet, a needle. A tiny painkilling pill. That caused so much pain.

She shifted her seat and shoved the thought aside. After spending most of her life scanning the horizon for slights and threats, genuine and imagined, she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it.

Her father had jokingly accused her of living in the wreckage of her future. Until one day she’d looked deep into his eyes and saw he wasn’t joking.

He was warning her.

But it was a hard habit to break, especially since she now had so much to lose. And had almost lost it all. To a bullet. A needle. A tiny pill.

As her mother had almost lost it all.

They’d both had the phone call in the middle of the night. Come quickly. Come now. Before it’s too late.

But it hadn’t been too late. Not quite.

And while her father and Jean-Guy might recover, Annie wasn’t sure she and her mother ever really would. From the ringing, the ringing in the night.

But for now they were safe. On the porch. Annie saw the rectangle of light through the sitting room window. Where her father and Jean-Guy sat. Also safe.

For now.

No, she warned herself. No. There is no threat.

She wondered when she’d actually believe it. And she wondered if her mother believed it.

“Can you see Dad on the village green doing the sun salutation every morning?”

Reine-Marie laughed. The funny thing was, she could see it. It wouldn’t be pretty, but she could imagine Armand doing it.

“Is he really okay?” Annie asked.

Reine-Marie turned in her seat to look at the porch light above the door. What had started as a gentle tapping of moth wings against the bulb had turned into near frantic beating as the moth rammed itself against the hot light on the cool night. It was getting on her nerves.

She turned back to Annie. She knew what her daughter was asking. Annie could see her father’s physical improvements—what concerned her now was what was unseen.

“He sees Myrna once a week,” said Reine-Marie. “That helps.”

“Myrna?” asked Annie. “Myrna?” She gestured toward the “financial district” of Three Pines, which was made up of the general store, the bakery, the bistro, and Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore.

Reine-Marie realized her daughter only knew Myrna from the shop. In fact, she only knew all the villagers from their lives here, not from their lives before. Annie had no idea that the large black woman who sold used books and helped them in the garden was Dr. Landers, a retired psychologist.

Reine-Marie now wondered how newcomers would view her and Armand. The middle-aged couple in the white clapboard house.

Would they be the slightly loopy villagers who made bouquets of weeds? Who sat on their porch with their day-old La Presse newspaper? Perhaps they’d only be known as Henri’s parents.

Would newcomers to Three Pines ever know that she’d once been a senior librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec?

Would it matter?

And Armand?

What life would a new villager think he’d left behind? A career in journalism perhaps, writing for the intellectual and almost indecipherable daily Le Devoir. Would they think he’d passed his days wearing a pilled cardigan and writing long op-ed pieces on politics?

The more astute might guess that he’d been a professor at the Université de Montréal. The kindly one who was passionate about history and geography and what happened when the two collided.

Would someone new to Three Pines ever suspect that the man tossing the ball to the shepherd, or sipping Scotch in the bistro, had once been the most celebrated cop in Québec? In Canada? Would they guess, could they guess, that the large man doing the sun salutation each morning had once hunted murderers for a living?

Reine-Marie hoped not.

She dared to think that that was behind them. Those lives now lived only in memory. They roamed the mountains that surrounded the village, but had no place here. Had no place now. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide for the S?reté du Québec, had done his job. It was someone else’s turn.