The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11)

“I was asking you, Clara. Who hurt you once?” Ruth gestured to the easel. “What’re you waiting for?”

“Waiting?” asked Clara. “Nothing.”

“Then why’re you stuck? Like the characters in that goddamned play. Are you waiting for someone, something to save you? Waiting for Peter to tell you it’s okay to get on without him? You’re looking for milk in the wrong place.”

“I just want to paint,” said Clara. “I don’t want to be saved, I don’t want to be forgiven. I don’t even want milk. I just want to paint.”

Ruth struggled out of the sofa. “I did.”

“You did what?” asked Clara.

“The answer to that question. All those years when I couldn’t write, I blamed John Fleming. But I was wrong.”

Clara watched Ruth and Rosa waddle away. She had no idea what the crazy old woman was talking about. But sitting in front of the canvas, it slowly sank in.

Who could do such damage? Who knew where the weaknesses, the fault lines lay? Who could cause all that internal bleeding?

Clara turned back to the portrait of Peter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking into his faded face. “Forgive me.”

She placed it carefully against a wall, and put up a fresh canvas.

She knew now why she was blocked. She was trying to do the wrong painting. Trying to make amends by turning painting into penance.

Clara picked up her brush and contemplated the empty canvas. She would do a portrait of the person who had hurt her once, beyond repair.

With one bold stroke after another she painted. Capturing the rage, the sorrow, the doubt, the fear, the guilt, the joy, the love, and finally, the forgiveness.

It would be her most intimate, most difficult painting yet.

It would be a self-portrait.

*   *   *

Evelyn Lepage sat in her kitchen contemplating the gas oven. Trying to get up the strength to turn it on. But all the bones of her body had finally dissolved. And she couldn’t move. Not to save her life, and not to take it.

Out the window she saw a car pull up. Two elderly people got out.

“We’ve come to take you home, Evie,” came the elderly woman’s thin voice from the other side of the door. It was almost unrecognizable for its gentleness. “If you don’t mind living with a broken-down old poet and her duck.”

*   *   *

Jean-Guy held the phone to his ear and looked out the window of the Gamaches’ study, to the quiet village. Then he turned from the window to the papers, neatly stacked, on his father-in-law’s desk.

All the offers. The answer to “What next?” was in there.

And then the phone was answered.

“Oui, allô?” came Annie’s cheerful voice.

*   *   *

“Armand,” said Reine-Marie, as they finished the breakfast dishes. “Are you ever going to tell me what John Fleming did?”

Armand put the dish down and dried his hands on the towel.

“What John Fleming did is in the past. It’s over, gone.”

She studied him closely. “Is it?”

“Oui. But if, after this phone call, you still want to know about Fleming, I’ll tell you.”

Reine-Marie turned around and saw Jean-Guy in the doorway holding out the phone. She took it, perplexed. And listened.

As the two men watched, the lines of her face re-formed, and her eyes filled with wonder. And all thought of John Fleming, of the Supergun, of the Whore of Babylon vanished, overwhelmed by a far greater force.

Reine-Marie looked at Jean-Guy, who was overcome with emotion. Then she turned to Armand, who was smiling, his eyes glistening. Then Reine-Marie sat down at the old pine table, and wept.