Peter raised his eyes, defiant.
“My question stands, Peter. This isn’t a pleasant chat between friends. This is a murder investigation and I’ll know everything. Why do you refuse your mother’s offers of money?”
“Because I’m a grown man and I want to stand on my own. I’ve seen Thomas and Marianna tug their forelocks and bow and scrape for money. Mommy bought Thomas his home and gave Marianna the seed money for her business.”
“Why shouldn’t she? She has the money. I don’t understand the problem.”
“Thomas and Marianna are slaves to it, slaves to Mommy. They love luxury and ease. Clara and I live hand to mouth. For years we could barely pay for the heating. But we’re at least free.”
“Are you? Is it possible you’re as obsessed with money as they are?” He held up his hand to stop Peter’s angry interruption. “If you weren’t you’d accept it now and then. Thomas and Marianna want it. You don’t. But it still runs your life. She still does.”
“Oh, and you’re one to talk. Look at yourself why don’t you? How pathetic is it to be a cop, to carry a gun when that was the one thing your own father refused to do? Who’s compensating now? Your father was a coward, a famous one, and his son’s famous too. For courage. At least my mother’s alive. Your father’s long dead and still he controls you.”
Gamache smiled, which angered Peter even more. This was his coup de grâce, the final thrust he’d kept in abeyance to be brought out and used only if things got desperate.
Now he’d dropped his bomb but Hiroshima remained, untouched, even smiling.
“I love my father, Peter. Even if he was a coward, he was still a great father, a great man, in my eyes if in no one else’s. Do you know the story?”
“Mother told us,” he said sullenly.
“What did she say?”
“That Honoré Gamache rallied the French Canadians against the Second World War, forcing Canada to hesitate before entering and convincing thousands of young Quebecers not to sign up. He himself joined the Red Cross so he wouldn’t have to fight.”
Gamache nodded. “She’s quite right. Did she tell you what happened then?”
“No, you did. He and your mother were killed in a car accident.”
“But there were many years in between. Near the end of the war the British Army marched into a place called Bergen-Belsen. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
The two men were walking again, down the shady lane, through the sweet summer air.
Peter said nothing.
“My father was with the Red Cross division assigned to go into newly liberated prisons. No one was prepared for what they saw. In Bergen-Belsen my father saw the full horror of what man was capable of. And he saw his mistake. He met it in the eyes of the men and women who’d waited for help that didn’t come. From a world that knew what was happening and still didn’t hurry. I was eight when he started telling me the stories. He knew as soon as he walked into Bergen-Belsen he’d been wrong. He should never have spoken against this war. He was a man of peace, that was true. But he also had to admit he’d been afraid to fight. And when he stood face to face with the men and women of Bergen-Belsen he knew he’d been a coward. So he came home and apologized.”
Peter kept walking, the smug smile plastered on his face. Carefully kept there to conceal his shock. No one had told him this. His mother, in relating the story, hadn’t told them Honoré Gamache had changed his mind.
“My father got up in synagogues, churches, in public meetings, on the steps of the Assemblée Nationale, and he apologized. He spent years raising money and coordinating efforts to help refugees rebuild their lives. He sponsored a woman he’d met in Bergen-Belsen to come to Canada and live with us. Zora was her name. She became my grandmother, and raised me after my parents died. She taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained. I was fortunate to have a role model that I couldn’t squirm my way around. After all, how do you argue with the survivor of a death camp?”
Gamache actually chuckled, and Peter wondered at this man who’d lived every nightmare and was happy while Peter had every privilege and wasn’t.
They walked out of the tunnel of maple trees and into the light, dimmed by cloud. Both men stopped. Some fiddle music reached them.
“I don’t want to miss Reine-Marie,” said Gamache.
They started making their way back.
“You were right. I knew my father would see what I’d written in the men’s room. I knew he’d never use the first stall so I wrote it in the second. Not only did Father see it, but his friends did too.”