Glass Houses

CHAPTER 5

Jacqueline kneaded the dough, leaning into it. Feeling it both soft and firm beneath her hands. It was meditative and sensual, as she rocked gently back and forth, back and forth.

Her eyes closed.

She kneaded and rocked. Kneaded and rocked.

Other hands, older, colder, plump, were laid on top of hers.

“I think that’s enough, ma belle,” said Sarah.

“Oui, madam.”

Jacqueline blushed, realizing she’d overworked the baguette yet again.

If she didn’t get this right, she’d lose her job. No matter how well she baked brownies and pies and mille-feuilles, if you couldn’t do a baguette in Québec, you were useless to a small boulangerie. Sarah wouldn’t want to let her go, but she’d have no choice.

All depended on this. And she was blowing it.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” said Sarah, her voice reassuring. “Why don’t you finish your petits fours? Madame Morrow has ordered two dozen. She says they’re for guests, but…”

Sarah laughed. It was full-bodied and wholehearted. An antidote to Jacqueline’s fears.

She wondered if Anton was next door, cooking. Trying to come up with a dish to impress Olivier. To convince the bistro owner to elevate him to chef. Or even sous chef. Or to a prep station even.

Anything other than dishwasher.

But she suspected his heart wasn’t in cooking anymore. Not since the robed figure appeared.

If she lived to be a hundred, Jacqueline would not forget the look on Anton’s face when they’d discussed the thing on the village green. When she’d suggested approaching Gamache. Telling the Sûreté officer that they both knew what it was.

“Are you all right?” asked Sarah.

“I was just thinking,” said Jacqueline.

“Maybe that’s the problem. When you make baguette, you should clear your mind. Open your mind. You’d be surprised, all the beautiful things that appear when you let your mind go.”

“When you go out of your mind, you mean?” asked Jacqueline.

Sarah looked at her for a moment. Then laughed again.

It wasn’t often the serious, almost glum young woman made a joke.

Maybe she wasn’t so serious after all, thought Sarah. There were glimmers almost of giddiness. And she also wasn’t all that young. Young compared to Sarah, but her young apprentice would be in her mid-thirties.

Still, the beauty of baking. You only got better as you got older. More patient.

“You certainly have to be out of your mind to run a bakery,” Sarah agreed. “If you need any help, ma belle, just ask Tante Sarah.”

And Sarah headed off to check on the pies in the ovens.

Jacqueline couldn’t help but smile.

Sarah wasn’t really her aunt, of course. It had become a thing between the older woman and the younger. A joke, but not really. Both had discovered they quite liked the idea that they were family.

In that laugh, in that moment, no dark thing existed. But then the mist of laughter dissipated and it reappeared.

And her mind went to Anton.

Tante or not, if she didn’t learn to make baguette, Sarah would eventually have to fire her ass. Replace her with someone who could.

And then she’d lose Anton.

Jacqueline threw out the overworked dough and started again. Her fourth try that day, and it wasn’t yet noon.

Armand and Reine-Marie had returned home.

She was in the living room, going through a box from the archives.

Armand had fed the photocopy he’d made of the original cobrador into the scanner and emailed it off to Jean-Guy. He’d received a slightly rude reply, asking if he was bored. Or drunk.

Gamache had picked up the phone and called. Getting his daughter Annie first, who handed the phone off to Jean-Guy.

“What’s with the weird photos, patron?” he asked.

Gamache could hear chewing and imagined Jean-Guy with a huge sandwich, like Dagwood. A reference that would be lost on his son-in-law.

When he’d explained, Jean-Guy, his mouth no longer clogged with food, said, “I’ll get right back to you.”

And Gamache knew he meant it.

He’d known Jean-Guy long before he’d become his son-in-law, having hired Agent Beauvoir away from a dead-end job guarding evidence. He’d taken a young man no one else wanted and made him an inspector in homicide, to everyone’s surprise.

But it had seemed natural, to Gamache. He barely had to think about it.

They were chief and agent. Patron and protégé. They were the head and the heart. Now father-in-law and son-in-law. Father and son.

They had been thrown together, joined together, it seemed, for this lifetime, and many past.

One evening, during a dinner at Clara’s, they’d all got to talking about life. And death. And the afterlife.

“There’s a theory,” said Myrna. “Not sure if it’s Buddhist or Taoist or what, that says that there are certain people we meet time and again, in different lifetimes.”

“I believe it’s ridiculous-ist,” said Ruth.

“The same dozen or so people,” Myrna continued, running over the verbal speed bump that was the old poet. “But in different relationships. In this life you might be partners,” she looked at Gabri and Olivier, “but in another life you were brothers, or husband and wife, or father and son.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabri. “Are you saying that Olivier might’ve once been my father?”

“Or your mother.”

The two men grimaced.

“We change roles, but what stays the same is the love,” said Myrna. “That is absolute and infinite.”

“Fucking nuts,” said Ruth, stroking Rosa.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, agreed the duck.

There was a growing resemblance between Ruth and Rosa. Both had scrawny necks. Their heads white. Their eyes beady. They waddled when they walked. They shared a vocabulary.

If it wasn’t for Ruth’s cane they’d be almost indistinguishable.

Armand had looked across at Reine-Marie, her face glowing in the light from the log fire. She was listening, smiling. Taking it in.

If what Myrna said was true, then he’d known all these people before. It would explain his almost immediate attraction to them, and the village. The trust and comfort he felt in their company. Even mad old Ruth. With her doppelgänger. The duck who might have been her child, in a past life.

Or the other way around.

But Reine-Marie. His daughter, or mother, or brother?

Non.

She had always been his wife. He’d known that the first moment he’d seen her. He knew her, that first moment.

Through the ages. Through the lifetimes. Every other relationship might change, flow, morph into another guise, but his relationship with Reine-Marie was absolute and eternal.

She was his wife. And he was her husband. Forever.

Now, Jean-Guy was another matter. Armand had long felt there was something ancient there too. A very old camaraderie. A tie that didn’t bind, but strengthened. And Reine-Marie could see it as well. Which is why she’d put only one proviso on his becoming the top cop in Québec.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir must join him. As he had through time.

And now Armand, reflecting on that, waited for a response from Jean-Guy and looked out his window at something that seemed to have also stepped from time.

And he wondered, if love followed them through lifetimes, did hate also follow?

“Anton?”

There was no reply.

“Anton!”

Olivier turned off the water. Suds had cascaded out of the deep sink onto the floor.

“People are ordering the soup special,” said Olivier. “And we need more pans. You okay?”

“Désolé, patron. I was just thinking.”

He wondered if Olivier, or anyone, understood what had appeared on their pretty village green.

“Please,” said Olivier, and circled his hand in the signal to hurry up. “And when you’ve finished that, can you take a couple bowls out to table three?”

“Oui.”

The pans were washed, quickly dried, handed to the chef. Anton ladled out two bowls of celeriac and quince soup, topping them with crème fraîche and dill, and took them out to table three.

“Merci,” said the woman.

“Un plaisir, madam,” said Anton, glancing at her politely before shifting his eyes out the window.

He had the vague impression he knew this woman. Had seen her before. Not a villager. A visitor. But his attention was now totally focused on the green.

As he watched, the thing moved. Very, very slightly. Perhaps just an inch. A millimeter.

Toward him.

“Did it just move?” Reine-Marie asked.

She’d come into the study to find a book, and now stood behind Armand’s chair, looking out the window.

“It was slight,” said Armand. “But I think so. Might’ve been just the breeze ruffling his robes.”

But they both knew the dark thing had indeed moved. Just a little. It was almost imperceptible, except to someone who happened to be looking, and who had been watching it for a while.

The thing had turned, slightly. Toward the bistro.

“Did you know then,” the Crown asked, “who it was looking at?”

“Non. It could have been any one of a dozen people. Or more.”

“But most likely someone at a table in the window, non?”

“Objection, leading the witness.”

“Sustained.”

“What happened then?” asked the Crown.