“Peter told me about that. He still remembers those times.”
“Peter’s an ungrateful man. I heard what he told you. That I’d be better off dead.”
“He didn’t say that. We were talking about family dynamics and whether the children would continue to see each other after you’re gone. He said it was possible they’d grow even closer.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
She snapped it out, but Gamache thought he detected genuine curiosity.
“Because now they come to see you, and only you. They see each other as competition. But when you go—”
“Die, Chief Inspector. Don’t you mean die?”
“When you die, they’ll have to find a reason to see each other, or not. The family will either disappear or they’ll grow even closer. That’s what Peter meant.”
“Julia was the best of them, you know.” She was gliding the bowl back and forth across the spilled sugar as she spoke, not looking at him. “Kind and gentle. She asked for almost nothing. And she was always such a lady. Her father and I tried to teach all of them that, to be little ladies and gentlemen. But only Julia understood. Beautiful manners.”
“I noticed that too. My father always said a gentleman puts others at ease.”
“Funny thing for a man who hurt so many people to say. He sure put himself at ease, letting others do the fighting. How does it feel to have a father so vilified?”
Gamache held her gaze then stared at the lawn sloping to the golden lake, and the dock. And the ugly old man doing his sums. The man who’d known his father. He longed to ask Finney about him. Gamache had been eleven when the police car had pulled up. He’d been staring out of the window, his soft cheek on the prickly back of the sofa. Waiting for his parents. Every other time they’d come home. But they were late.
He’d seen the car and known it wasn’t theirs. Was it a slight difference in the sound? The tilt of the headlights? Or did something else tell him this wasn’t them? He’d watched the Montreal police get out, put their hats on, pause, then start up the walk.
All very slowly.
His grandmother had also seen the car arrive, the headlights gleaming through the window, and had gone to the door to greet his parents.
Slowly, slowly he saw her walk, her hand outstretched for the doorknob. He tried to move, to say something, to stop her. But while the world had slowed, he had stopped.
He simply stared, his mouth open.
And then the knock. Not a sharp rap but something more ominous. It was almost a scratch, a gentle rub. He saw his grandmother’s expression change in the instant before she opened the door. Surely his parents wouldn’t knock? He’d run to her then, to stop her from letting this thing into the house. But there was no stopping it.
Before the officer had even spoken she’d shoved Armand’s face into her dress, so that to this day when he smelled mothballs it made him gag. And he felt her large, strong hand on his back still, as though to keep him from falling.
All his childhood, all his teen years and into his twenties Armand Gamache had wondered why God had taken them both. Couldn’t He have left one, for him? It wasn’t a demand on his part or an accusation against a clumsy and thoughtless God, more of a puzzle.
But he’d found his answer when he’d found Reine-Marie, had loved and married her and loved her more each day. He knew then how kind God had been not to take one and leave the other. Even for him.
His eyes looked away from the lake and returned to the elderly woman in front of him, who’d just spewed her hurt all over him.
He looked at her with kindness. Not because he knew it would confuse or anger her further, but because he knew he’d had time to absorb his loss. And hers was fresh.
Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorrow she’d added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she’d fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward. At Armand Gamache.
“I loved my father then and I love him now. It’s pretty simple,” he said.
“He doesn’t deserve it. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth, and I have to speak it. The truth will set you free.” She seemed almost sorry.
“I believe it,” he said. “But I also believe it’s not the truth about others that will set you free, but the truth about yourself.”
Now she bristled.