The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #10)

The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #10) Page 56

It would have been unnerving if he didn’t keep reminding himself it was just a duck. Just a duck. An unnerving duck.

“Well, you’re the one who said it.” Gamache tore his eyes from the watch duck.

“Did I?”

“You did.”

Ruth’s kitchen was filled with found objects, including the plastic chairs and table. Including the Scotch bottle, found in Gabri’s liquor cabinet. Including Rosa. Found as an egg, Gamache knew. Ruth had spotted the nest by the pond on the village green one Easter morning and had touched the two eggs inside. The touch had tainted them, and the eggs had been abandoned by their mother. So Ruth took them home. Everyone had naturally assumed she’d meant to make an omelet. But instead the old poet had done something unnatural, for her. She’d made a tiny incubator out of flannel, and warmed the eggs in the oven. She’d turned them, watched them, stayed up late into the night in case they started to hatch and needed her. Ruth paid her Hydro-Québec bill, to make sure her power wasn’t cut off. She paid it with money she’d found at Clara’s.

She prayed.

Rosa had hatched on her own but her sister, Flora, had fought to get out. So Ruth had helped. Peeling back the shell. Cracking it further.

And there, inside, was Flora. Looking up into those weary, wary old eyes.

Flora and Rosa had bonded with Ruth. And Ruth had bonded with them.

They followed her everywhere. But while Rosa thrived, Flora grew frail.

Because of Ruth.

Flora was meant to fight her way out of her shell. The struggle would make her strong. Ruth’s helping hand had weakened her. Until, late one night, Flora had died in that same helping hand.

It had confirmed all Ruth’s fears. Kindness killed. No good could come of helping others.

And so Ruth made it a policy to turn her back. Not for herself, but to protect those she loved.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat. A sense of wrong,” Gamache continued the quote. “A homesickness, a lovesickness.”

Ruth glared at him over the rim of her cut glass tumbler, one she’d found in the Gamaches’ home.

“You know the quote,” she said, cupping the glass between two scrawny hands. “Not one of mine, as you know.”

“Not even a poem,” said Gamache. “It’s from a letter Robert Frost wrote to a friend describing how he wrote.”

“Your point?”

“Is the same true for any work of art?” he asked. “A poem, a song, a book.”

“A painting?” she asked, her rheumy eyes sharp, as though a barracuda was staring at him from the bottom of a cold lake.

“Does a painting begin with a lump in the throat? A sense of wrong? A homesickness, a lovesickness?” he asked. In his peripheral vision he saw that Rosa was awake and watching her mother. Closely.

“How the hell should I know?”

But finally, under Gamache’s patient gaze, she gave one curt nod.

“The best ones do, yes. We express ourselves differently. Some choose words, some notes, some paint, but it all comes from the same place. But there’s something you need to know.”

“Oui?”

“Any real act of creation is first an act of destruction. Picasso said it, and it’s true. We don’t build on the old, we tear it down. And start fresh.”

“You tear down all that’s familiar, comfortable,” said Gamache. “It must be scary.” When the old poet was quiet he asked, “Is that the lump in the throat?”

*   *   *

“Can I ask you a question?” Clara asked.

Olivier was busy setting the bistro tables for dinner. One of the servers had called in sick and they were shorthanded.

“Can you fold napkins?” Without waiting for a response, he handed her a pile of white linen.

“Suppose,” said Clara uncertainly.

Olivier searched through his tray of antique silver knives and forks and spoons for sets that matched. And then he separated them. First he matched, then he mismatched.

“Do you know where Peter went?” Clara asked.

Olivier paused, a spoon in his hand, like a microphone. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Because you were good friends.”

“We all were. Are.”

“But I think you and he were especially close. I think if he was going to tell anyone, it’d be you,” said Clara.

“He’d have told you, Clara,” said Olivier, going back to setting the table. “What’s this about?”