Ruth glared at him, but a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
“Come along, Rosa,” she said to the quacking duck. “He drinks, you know.”
“Good to be back?” Olivier passed Gamache and Reine-Marie an iced tea.
Gamache smiled. “Always.”
They wandered the village, finally stopping at the café tables on the sidewalk outside the bistro to watch the children’s races.
Peter and Clara joined them for a drink. Already Peter looked more composed.
“Happy anniversary,” said Clara, raising her glass of ginger beer. They all clinked.
“I have something I’ve been dying to ask,” said Reine-Marie, leaning over the table and laying a warm hand on Clara’s. “Is it possible to see your latest work? The one of Ruth?”
“I’d love to show it to you. When?”
“Why not right now, ma belle?”
The two women emptied their glasses and went off, Peter and Gamache watching them walk through the gate and up the winding path to the cottage.
“I have a question for you, Peter. Shall we walk?”
Peter nodded, suddenly feeling as though he’d been called into the principal’s office. Together the two men walked across the village green, then by unspoken consent they climbed rue du Moulin and wandered along the quiet dirt road, a canopy of green leaves overhead.
“Do you know which stall that graffiti about your sister was written on?”
The question should have come out of the blue, but Peter had been expecting it. Waiting for it. For years. He knew eventually someone would ask.
He walked in silence for a few paces until the laughter from the village all but disappeared behind them.
“I believe it was the second stall,” said Peter at last, watching his feet in their sandals.
Gamache was silent for a moment, then spoke.
“Who wrote that graffiti?”
It was the hole Peter had skirted all his life. It had grown into a chasm and still he’d avoided it, taken the long way round so as not to look in, to fall in. And now it had opened up right in front of him. Yawning and dark, and everywhere. Instead of going away it had simply grown.
He could have lied, he knew. But he was tired.
“I did.”
For most of his life he’d wondered how this moment would feel. Would he be relieved? Would the admission kill him? Not physically, perhaps, but would the Peter he’d carefully constructed die? The decent, kind, gentle Peter. Would he be replaced by the wretched, hateful thing that had done that to his sister?
“Why?” asked Gamache.
Peter didn’t dare stop, didn’t dare look at him.
Why? Why had he done it? It was so long ago. He could remember sneaking into the stall. Could remember the clean, green metal door, the disinfectant smell that still made him gag. He’d brought his Magic Marker, and with that marker magic he’d done. He’d made his sister disappear. And he’d changed all their lives forever with five simple words.
Julia Morrow gives good head.
“I was angry at Julia, for sucking up to my father.”
“You were jealous of her. It’s natural. It would pass.”
But somehow the reassurance made it worse. Why hadn’t anyone told him that decades ago? That there was nothing wrong with hating a sibling? That it would pass.
Instead, it stayed. And grew. The guilt had festered and turned rotten and had eaten a hole deep inside him. And finally, now, he could feel himself falling.
“Did Julia realize what you’d done, Peter? Is that what she was about to tell everyone?”
Peter stopped and looked at the Chief Inspector. “Are you suggesting I killed my sister so she wouldn’t tell?”
He tried to sound incredulous.
“I think you’d do just about anything to keep that secret. If your mother had found out that you were responsible for an act that left your family ridiculed and ruptured, well, God knows what she’d have done. Might have even written you out of her will. In fact, I think that’s a distinct possibility. That mistake thirty years ago could cost you millions.”
“And you think I care about that? My mother’s been throwing money at me for years and I send it all back, all of it. Even my inheritance from Father. I want none of it.”
“Why?” asked Gamache.
“What do you mean, why? Would you keep accepting money from your parents well into your adulthood? But, no, I forgot. You had no parents.”
Gamache stared at him, and after a moment Peter dropped his eyes.
“Be careful,” Gamache whispered. “You’re making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won’t lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.”