“Let’s see. By pretending to be a stone?” asked Julia. Thomas shot her an angry look, then his face fell back to its attractive, easy expression.

“You haven’t forgotten the story, I see.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Thomas,” Julia said, and sat down. Gamache took it all in. The Finneys rarely spoke to each other, but when they did their words seemed laden, heavy with a meaning that escaped him.

Thomas hesitated, then turned back to Gamache who was longing for his bed, though mostly longing for this story to be over.

“It pretends to be a stone,” said Thomas, his eyes boring into Gamache. The large man stared back, suddenly aware there was a significance to what was being said. Something was being communicated to him. But what?

“In order to survive it must hide. Pretend to be something it isn’t,” said Thomas.

“It’s just a plant,” said Marianna. “It doesn’t do anything on purpose.”

“It’s cunning,” said Julia. “A survival instinct.”

“It’s just a plant,” repeated Marianna. “Don’t be foolish.”

Ingenious, thought Gamache. It doesn’t dare show itself for what it really is, for fear of being killed. What had Thomas just said?

Things aren’t as they seem. He was beginning to believe it.

FOUR

“I enjoyed this evening,” said Reine-Marie, slipping into the cool, crisp sheets beside her husband.

“So did I.” He took off his half-moon reading glasses and folded his book onto the bed. It was a warm evening. Their tiny back room had only one window, onto the kitchen garden, so there wasn’t much of a through draft, but the window was thrown open and the light cotton curtains were billowing slightly. The lamps on their bedside tables provided ponds of light and the rest was in darkness. It smelled of wood from the log walls and pine from the forest, and a hint of sweetness from the herb garden below.

“Four days and it’s our anniversary,” said Reine-Marie. “July first. Imagine, thirty-five years together. Were we so young?”

“I was. And innocent.”

“Poor boy. Did I scare you?”

“Maybe just a little. But I’m over it now.”

Reine-Marie leaned back on the pillow. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to meeting the missing Finneys tomorrow.”

“Spot and Claire. Spot must be a nickname.”

“Let’s hope.”

Picking up his book he tried to focus, but his eyes were growing heavy, flickering as he strained to keep them open. He gave up the fight, realizing it wasn’t one he could win or needed to. Kissing Reine-Marie, he burrowed into his pillow and fell asleep to the chorus of creatures outside and the scent of his wife beside him.

Pierre Patenaude stood at the door of the kitchen. It was clean and orderly, everything in its place. The glasses lined up, the silverware in its sleeves, the bone china carefully stacked with fine tissue between each plate. He’d learned that from his mother. She’d taught him that order was freedom. To live in chaos was to live in a prison. Order freed the mind for other things.

From his father he’d learned leadership. On rare days off school he’d been allowed to go to the office. He’d sat on his father’s lap, smelling cologne and tobacco, while his father made phone calls. Even as a child Pierre knew he was being groomed. Trimmed and shaped, buffed and burnished.

Would his father be disappointed in him? Being just a maître d’? But he thought not. His father had wanted only one thing for him. To be happy.

He turned out the light and walked through the empty dining room and into the garden to look once again at the marble cube.

Marianna unwrapped herself, veil after veil, humming. Every now and then she looked over to the single bed next to hers. Bean was either asleep or pretending to be.

“Bean?” she whispered. “Bean, kiss Mommy goodnight.”

The child was silent. Though the room itself wasn’t. Clocks filled almost every surface. Ticking clocks and digital clocks, electric clocks and wind-up ones. All set to go off at seven a.m. All moving toward that time, as they had every morning for months. There seemed to be more of them than ever.

Marianna wondered if it had gone too far. Whether she should do something. Surely it wasn’t normal for a ten-year-old to do this? What had started as one alarm clock a year ago had blossomed and spread like an invasive weed until Bean’s room at home was choked with them. The riot each morning was beyond belief. From her own bedroom she could hear her strange child clicking them all off, until the last tinny call to the day was silenced.