A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #7)

“It’s intimate without being sexual, it’s trusting without being a friendship. I want nothing from my sponsees. Nothing. Except honesty. All I want for them is that they get sober. I’m not their husband or wife, not their best friend or boss. They don’t answer to me for anything. I just guide them, and listen.”

“And what do you get out of it?” asked Beauvoir.

“My own sobriety. One drunk helping another. We can bullshit a lot of people, Inspector, and often do. But not each other. We know each other. We’re quite insane, you know,” Suzanne said with a small laugh.

This wasn’t news to Beauvoir.

“Was Lillian insane when you first met her?” Gamache asked.

“Oh, yes. But only in the sense that her perception of the world was all screwy. She’d made so many bad choices she no longer knew how to make good ones.”

“I understand that as part of this relationship Lillian told you her secrets,” said the Chief.

“She did.”

“And what were Lillian Dyson’s secrets?”

“I don’t know.”

Gamache stared at this fireplug. “Don’t know, madame? Or won’t say?”

FOURTEEN

Peter lay in bed, clutching the edge of their double mattress. The bed was too small for them, really. But a double had been all they could afford when they were first married and Peter and Clara had grown used to having each other close.

So close they touched. Even on the hottest, stickiest July nights. They’d lie naked in bed, the sheets kicked off, their bodies wet and slick from sweat. And still they’d touch. Not much. Just a hand to her back. A toe to his leg.

Contact.

But tonight he clung to his side of the bed, and she clung to hers, as though to dual cliff faces. Afraid to fall. But fearing they were about to.

They’d gone to bed early so the silence might feel natural.

It didn’t.

“Clara?” he whispered.

The silence stretched on. He knew the sound of Clara sleeping, and this wasn’t it. Clara asleep was almost as exuberant as Clara awake. She didn’t toss and turn, but she snorted and grunted. Sometimes she’d say something ridiculous. Once she mumbled, “But Kevin Spacey’s stuck on the moon.”

She hadn’t believed it when he’d told her the next morning, but he’d heard it clearly.

In fact, she didn’t believe it when he told her she snorted and hummed and made all manner of noises. Not loudly. But Peter was attuned to Clara. He heard her, even when she herself couldn’t.

But tonight she was silent.

“Clara?” he tried again. He knew she was there, and he knew she was awake. “We need to talk.”

Then he heard her. A long, long inhale. And then a sigh.

“What is it?”

He sat up in bed but didn’t turn the light on. He’d rather not see her face.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t move. He could see her, a dark ridge in the bed, shoved up at the very edge of the world. She couldn’t get further from him without falling out.

“You’re always sorry.” Her voice was muffled. She was speaking into the bedding, not even raising her head.

What could he say to that? She was right. As he looked back down their relationship it was a series of him doing and saying something stupid and her forgiving him. Until today.

Something had changed. He’d thought the biggest threat to their marriage would be Clara’s show. Her success. And his sudden failure. Made all the more spectacular by her triumph.

But he’d been wrong.

“We have to sort this out,” said Peter. “We have to talk.”

Clara sat up suddenly, fighting with the duvet, trying to get her arms clear. Finally she did, and turned to him.

“Why? So that I can just forgive you again? Is that it? You don’t think I know what you’ve been doing? Hoping my show would fail? Hoping the critics would decide my art sucks and you’re the real artist? I know you, Peter. I could see your mind working. You’ve never understood my art, you’ve never cared about it. You think it’s childish and simplistic. Portraits? How embarrassing,” she lowered her voice to mimic his.

“I never said that.”

“But you thought it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Peter. Not now.”

The warning in her voice was clear. And new. They’d had their fights before, but never like this.

Peter knew then their marriage was either over or soon would be. Unless he could find the right thing to say. To do.