“What’d she say?” asked Ruth.

“She said you’re an old fuck,” said Gabri loudly.

Ruth gave a low, rumbling laugh. “She isn’t wrong there.” She turned to Clara and Clara leaned away from her. “But you’re wrong about the Salon. That’s where real artists want to be. With the rejects. You shouldn’t have been upset.”

“Tell that to my twenty-year-old self.”

“What would you rather be?” Ruth asked. “Successful in your twenties and forgotten in your fifties? Or the other way around?”

Like Peter, everyone thought. Including Clara.

“As we were leaving, Professor Massey mentioned Francis Bacon,” said Clara.

“The writer?” asked Reine-Marie.

“The painter,” Clara clarified. She explained the reference.

“Seems a cruel thing to say,” said Olivier.

“I don’t think he meant it that way,” said Clara. “Do you?”

Myrna shook her head. “He seems to care about Peter. I think he just wanted to prepare Clara…”

“For what, that Peter killed himself?” Ruth asked with a guffaw, then she looked around. “You don’t all think that, do you? That’s ridiculous. He has too high an opinion of himself. Loves himself too much. No, Peter might kill someone else, but never himself. In fact, I take that back. He’s much more likely to be the victim than the killer.”

“Ruth!” said Olivier.

“What? You all think it too. Who here hasn’t wanted to kill him, at least once? And we’re his friends.”

They protested perhaps a shade too passionately. Each outraged defense fueled by the memory of how good it would have felt to hit Peter with a frying pan. He could be so smug, so self-satisfied, so entitled, and yet so oblivious.

But he could also be loyal, and funny, and generous. And kind.

Which made his absence and silence so disconcerting.

“Look,” said Ruth. “It’s natural. I want to kill most of you most of the time.”

“You want to kill us?” asked Gabri, barely able to breathe for the unfairness of it. “You? Us?”

“Do you think he’s alive?” asked Clara, not able to word the question the other way.

Ruth stared at her, and they held their breaths.

“I think if I can win the Governor General’s award for poetry, and you can become a world-famous painter, and these two bumbling idiots can make a success of a bistro, and you”—her gesture took in Reine-Marie—“can love this lump of a man”—she turned to Gamache—“then miracles can happen.”

“But you think it would be a miracle?” asked Clara.

“I think you should leave well enough alone, child,” said Ruth quietly. “I’ve given you the best answer I can.”

They all knew the worst answer. And they all knew the most likely answer. That perhaps Three Pines had had more than its share of miracles.

Armand Gamache looked down at his plate. Empty. All the wonderful food gone. He was sure it must have been delicious, but he couldn’t remember eating a single bite.

After a dessert of raspberry and chocolate mousse they went home. Myrna up to her loft above the bookstore. Clara to her cottage. Gabri and Olivier checked that all was in order in the kitchen, then headed to their B and B. Beauvoir walked Ruth and Rosa home and then returned to the Gamaches’ house. They’d left the porch light on for him, and a light in the living room. But the rest of the home was dark and silent and peaceful.

After calling Annie, Jean-Guy lay in the darkness and thought about being rescued. While upstairs, Reine-Marie lay in the dark and thought about their peaceful life slipping away.

FOURTEEN

Clara took her morning toast and coffee into Peter’s studio. Crumbs fell to the concrete floor as she ate her breakfast while sitting on the stool in front of his unfinished painting.

She knew Peter would have howled, as though the crumbs were acid and the floor his skin.

Clara was perhaps not as careful as she should have been. As she could have been. Perhaps it was a mostly unconscious desire to wound Peter in his most private of parts. To hurt him, as he was hurting her. This was the only private part she still had access to. Peter should really have considered himself lucky.

Or maybe her messiness meant nothing. Though, as a blob of strawberry jam hit the floor, she doubted it.

Outside it was cloudy, muggy. Rain threatened, and would likely pour down before lunch. Even with its windows looking onto the Rivière Bella Bella, the studio was close and gloomy.