The Long Way Home

And finally, when the alarms were dulled and his heart stopped pounding, pounding, he thought he could hear the forest itself. The leaves not rustling, but murmuring to him. Telling him he’d made it. Home. He was safe.

Gamache let go of the hard edge of the wooden bench and slid back, until he felt himself come to rest, against the wood. Against the words.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

He opened his eyes, and the village lay before him.

And once again he was saved. He was surprised by joy.

But what would happen if he left? And went back into that world he, better than most, knew was not just his imagination?

*   *   *

Myrna Landers turned slowly from the window.

Each morning she saw Armand read. And then she watched him put down the mysterious book and stare into space.

And each morning she saw the demons approach, and swarm and surround him until they found their way in. Through his head, through his thoughts. And from there they gripped his heart. She saw the terror possess him. And she saw him fight it off.

Each morning she got up, made a coffee, and stood looking through the pane. Only turning away when he was safely through his own.

*   *   *

Clara put down her coffee before she dropped it. She put the last bite of toast in her mouth, before she dropped it too.

And she stared at Peter’s painting. Letting her mind leap from image to image. From thought to thought. Until it came to the same conclusion her instincts had hit a few minutes earlier.

It wasn’t possible. She must have taken a leap in the wrong direction. Connected things that should not be put together. She sat back down on the stool and stared at the easel.

Had Peter been trying to tell them something?

*   *   *

Myrna spread a thick layer of brilliant gold marmalade on her English muffin. Then she dipped her knife into the raspberry jam and added it to the mix. Her own invention. Marmberry. It looked grotesque, but then great food so often did. Never mind what the chefs tell you, she thought, as she took a bite. All the best comfort food looked like someone had dropped the plate.

She smiled down at her own failed “color wheel,” and thought of Bean, and the paintings. That was what her English muffin looked like. The palette Bean had used to create those brilliant, and not in a good way, pictures.

What had Ruth called Clara’s first efforts? A dog’s breakfast.

“The dog’s breakfast.” Myrna raised the muffin in salute, and took a bite.

But her chewing slowed, slowed until it stopped. She stared into space.

Her thoughts, tentative at first, sped up. Finally racing along, racing toward a completely unexpected conclusion.

But it wasn’t possible. Was it?

She swallowed.

*   *   *

Perhaps the only good thing about the torment he experienced, thought Gamache, taking a deep breath of the sweet morning air, was that once it was gone he emerged into this.

He smiled at the sight of the stone and clapboard and brick cottages, radiating in circles from the village green.

And when the hell stopped, when he finally banished his demons, would heaven stop too?

Would he love this place less because he needed it less?

Again he looked at Three Pines, the little village lost in the valley, and felt the familiar lifting of his heart. But would it lift if there was no load?

Was the final fear that, in losing his fears, he would also lose his joy?

He’d been so worried about Jean-Guy and his addictions, what about his own? He wasn’t addicted to pain, to panic, but he might be addicted to the bliss of having them stop.

The mind, he knew, really was its own place. Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

Gamache was pretty sure that’s what Peter Morrow had done. He’d turned heaven into hell. And as a result, he’d been kicked out. Paradise Lost.

But Peter Morrow wasn’t Lucifer, the fallen angel. He was just a troubled man who lived in his head, not realizing that Paradise was only ever found in the heart. Unfortunately for Peter, feelings lived there too. And they were almost always messy. Peter Morrow did not like messes.

Armand laughed as he remembered the conversation from the night before.

It was how Clara had described her first attempt at a painting. No, not a mess, it was something else. A dog’s breakfast. Ruth had called it that and Clara had agreed. Ruth tried to capture feelings in her poetry. Clara tried with color and subject to give form to feelings.

It was messy. Unruly. Risky. Scary. So much could go wrong. Failure was always close at hand. But so was brilliance.