The Long Way Home(9)

But her heart tightened as Reine-Marie remembered the door to the sitting room closing. And clicking.

The moth still fluttered around the light, butting and bumping against the bulb. Was it warmth it wanted, Reine-Marie wondered, was it light the moth sought?

Does it hurt? Reine-Marie wondered. The singeing of the wings, the little legs, like threads, landing on the white-hot glass, then pushing away. Does it hurt that the light doesn’t give the moth what it so desperately desires?

She got up and turned the porch light off, and after a few moments the beating of the wings stopped and Reine-Marie returned to her peaceful seat.

It was quiet now, and dark. Except for the buttery light from the sitting room window. As the silence grew, Reine-Marie wondered if she’d done the moth a favor. Had she saved its life, but taken away its purpose?

And then the beating started again. Flitting, desperate. Tiny, delicate, insistent. The moth had moved down the porch. Now it was beating against the window of the room where Armand and Jean-Guy sat.

It had found its light. It would never give up. It couldn’t.

Reine-Marie got up, watched by her daughter, and turned the porch light back on. It was in the moth’s nature to do what it was doing. And Reine-Marie could not stop it, no matter how much she might want to.

* * *

“How’s Annie?” Gamache asked. “She looks happy.”

Armand smiled as he thought of his daughter, and remembered dancing with her on the village green at her wedding to Jean-Guy.

“Are you asking if she’s pregnant?”

“Of course not,” snapped the Chief. “How could you think such a thing?” He picked up the paperweight on the coffee table, put it down, then picked up a book and fiddled with it as though he’d never held one before. “That’s none of my business.” He hiked himself up in the chair. “Do you think I think only a pregnancy would make her happy? What sort of man do you think I am? What sort of father?” He glared at the younger man across from him.

Jean-Guy simply stared back, watching the uncharacteristic bluster.

“It’s all right to ask.”

“Is she?” asked Gamache, leaning forward.

“No. She had a glass of wine at dinner. Didn’t you notice? Some detective.”

“Not anymore, I’m not.” He caught Jean-Guy’s eyes and they both smiled. “I really wasn’t asking, you know,” said Gamache truthfully. “I just want her to be happy. And you too.”

“I am, patron.”

The two men looked at each other, searching for wounds only they could see. Searching for signs of healing only they would know were genuine.

“And you, sir? Are you happy?”

“I am.”

Beauvoir didn’t need to probe. Having spent his career listening to lies, he recognized the truth when he heard it.

“And how’s Isabelle doing?” asked Gamache.

“Acting Chief Inspector Lacoste?” asked Beauvoir with a smile. His protégée had taken over as head of homicide for the S?reté, a job everyone had once assumed would be his on the Chief’s retirement. Though Jean-Guy knew it wasn’t accurate to describe what had happened as a retirement. That made it sound predictable. No one could have predicted the events that had caused the head of homicide to quit the S?reté and buy a home in a village so small and obscure it didn’t appear on any map.

“Isabelle’s doing fine.”

“You mean Ruth Zardo ‘fine’?” asked Gamache.

“Pretty much. With a little work she’ll get there. She had you as a role model, sir.”

Ruth had called her latest slim volume of poetry I’m FINE. Only people who read it realized that FINE stood for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.

Isabelle Lacoste called Gamache at least once a week, and they met for lunch in Montréal a couple times a month. Always away from S?reté headquarters. He insisted on that, so he wouldn’t undermine the new Chief Inspector’s authority.

Lacoste had questions only the former Chief could answer. Sometimes procedural issues, but often questions that were more complex and human. About uncertainties, about insecurities. About her fears.

Gamache listened and sometimes talked about his own experiences. Reassuring her that what she felt was natural, and normal, and healthy. He’d felt all those things almost every day of his career. Not that he was a fraud, but that he was afraid. When the phone rang, or there was a knock on the door, he worried there would be a life-and-death issue he could not resolve.

“I have a new trainee, patron,” Isabelle had told him over their lunch at Le Paris earlier in the week.

“Ah, oui?”

“A young agent just out of the academy. Adam Cohen. I think you know him.”

The Chief had smiled. “Merci, Isabelle.”

Young Monsieur Cohen had flunked out on his first try and had taken a job as a guard at a penitentiary. Gamache had met Cohen months ago, when almost everyone else was attacking the Chief. Professionally. Personally. And finally, physically. But Adam Cohen had stood beside him. Hadn’t run away, despite having every reason to. Including to save his own skin.

The Chief hadn’t forgotten. And when the crisis had passed, Gamache had approached the head of the S?reté academy and asked that Cohen be given a rare second chance. And then he’d tutored the young man, guided him. Encouraged him. And had stood at the back of the hall, during graduation, and applauded him.