* * *
“You haven’t got very far.”
Gamache closed the book and looked up over his glasses. Clara was standing in front of him holding two mugs of café au lait. And a bag of croissants.
“A peace offering,” she said.
“Like the Paris Conference,” he said, accepting it. “If this is about partition, I get Myrna’s bookstore and the bistro.”
“Leaving me with the bakery and the general store?” Clara considered. “I predict war.”
Gamache smiled.
“I’m sorry about last night.” She sat down. “I shouldn’t have said all that. You were kind to offer to help.”
“No, it was presumptuous. No one knows better than me that you can take care of yourself, and then some. You were right—I think I’m so used to being presented with problems that need solving, I just assume that’s what people want.”
“Must be difficult, being the oracle.”
“You have no idea.” He laughed and felt lighter. Maybe she did want him to simply listen. Maybe nothing more would be expected of him.
They ate their croissants, the flakes falling to the ground beneath their feet.
“What’re you reading?” she asked. It was the first time she’d been so clear in her questioning.
Gamache kept his large hand splayed over the cover of the book, forcing it shut as though trapping the story inside.
Then he lifted his hand and showed it to her, but when she reached out for it, Gamache drew it back. Not far, barely noticeable. But far enough.
“The Balm in Gilead,” she read the title, and searched her memory. “There’s a book called Gilead. I read it a few years ago. By Marilynne Robinson. Won the Pulitzer.”
“Not the same one,” Gamache assured her, and Clara could see that it wasn’t. The one that was in his hand, that he was now placing in his pocket, was thin and old. Worn. Read and reread.
“One of Myrna’s?” Clara asked.
“Non.” He examined her. “Do you want to talk about Peter?”
“No.”
The Paris Peace Conference had hit a stalemate. He sipped his coffee. The morning mist had almost burned away and the forest spread green as far as he could see. These were old-growth trees, not yet discovered and felled by the lumber industry.
“You never finish the book,” she said. “Is it difficult to read?”
“For me, yes.”
She was quiet for a moment. “When Peter left, I was sure he’d come back. I was the one who forced the issue, you know. He didn’t want to go.” She lowered her head and studied her hands. As hard as she scrubbed, she couldn’t seem to get the paint out of her cuticles. It was as though the paint was part of her. Had fused there. “And now, he doesn’t want to come home.”
“Do you want him back?”
“I don’t know. I won’t know until I see him, I think.” She looked at the book just poking out of his pocket. “Why’s it so difficult for you to read? It’s in English, but I know you read English as well as French.”
“C’est vrai. The words I understand, it’s the emotions in the book that I struggle with. Where it takes me. I find I need to tread carefully.”
Clara looked at him full on. “Are you all right?”
He smiled. “Are you?”
Clara pushed her large hands through her hair, leaving croissant flakes behind. “May I see it?”
Gamache hesitated, then tugged the book out of his pocket and gave it to her, watching closely, his body suddenly taut as though he’d handed her a loaded gun.
It was a slender hardback, the cover worn. She turned it over.
“There is a balm in Gilead,” she read from the back, “to make the wounded whole—”
“There’s power enough in Heaven / To cure a sin-sick soul.” Armand Gamache finished the phrase. “It’s from an old spiritual.”
Clara stared at the back cover. “Do you believe it, Armand?”
“Yes.” He took the book from her and grasped it so tightly in one hand she half expected words to squeeze out.
“Then what are you struggling with?”
When he didn’t answer, she had her answer.
The problem wasn’t with the words, it was with the wounds. Old wounds. And maybe a sin-sick soul.
“Where’s Peter?” she asked. “What’s happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know him. Is he the sort to just disappear?”