A Trick of the Light

FOURTEEN

Peter lay in bed, clutching the edge of their double mattress. The bed was too small for them, really. But a double had been all they could afford when they were first married and Peter and Clara had grown used to having each other close.

So close they touched. Even on the hottest, stickiest July nights. They’d lie naked in bed, the sheets kicked off, their bodies wet and slick from sweat. And still they’d touch. Not much. Just a hand to her back. A toe to his leg.

Contact.

But tonight he clung to his side of the bed, and she clung to hers, as though to dual cliff faces. Afraid to fall. But fearing they were about to.

They’d gone to bed early so the silence might feel natural.

It didn’t.

“Clara?” he whispered.

The silence stretched on. He knew the sound of Clara sleeping, and this wasn’t it. Clara asleep was almost as exuberant as Clara awake. She didn’t toss and turn, but she snorted and grunted. Sometimes she’d say something ridiculous. Once she mumbled, “But Kevin Spacey’s stuck on the moon.”

She hadn’t believed it when he’d told her the next morning, but he’d heard it clearly.

In fact, she didn’t believe it when he told her she snorted and hummed and made all manner of noises. Not loudly. But Peter was attuned to Clara. He heard her, even when she herself couldn’t.

But tonight she was silent.

“Clara?” he tried again. He knew she was there, and he knew she was awake. “We need to talk.”

Then he heard her. A long, long inhale. And then a sigh.

“What is it?”

He sat up in bed but didn’t turn the light on. He’d rather not see her face.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t move. He could see her, a dark ridge in the bed, shoved up at the very edge of the world. She couldn’t get further from him without falling out.

“You’re always sorry.” Her voice was muffled. She was speaking into the bedding, not even raising her head.

What could he say to that? She was right. As he looked back down their relationship it was a series of him doing and saying something stupid and her forgiving him. Until today.

Something had changed. He’d thought the biggest threat to their marriage would be Clara’s show. Her success. And his sudden failure. Made all the more spectacular by her triumph.

But he’d been wrong.

“We have to sort this out,” said Peter. “We have to talk.”

Clara sat up suddenly, fighting with the duvet, trying to get her arms clear. Finally she did, and turned to him.

“Why? So that I can just forgive you again? Is that it? You don’t think I know what you’ve been doing? Hoping my show would fail? Hoping the critics would decide my art sucks and you’re the real artist? I know you, Peter. I could see your mind working. You’ve never understood my art, you’ve never cared about it. You think it’s childish and simplistic. Portraits? How embarrassing,” she lowered her voice to mimic his.

“I never said that.”

“But you thought it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Peter. Not now.”

The warning in her voice was clear. And new. They’d had their fights before, but never like this.

Peter knew then their marriage was either over or soon would be. Unless he could find the right thing to say. To do.

If “I’m sorry” didn’t work, what would?

“You must’ve been thrilled when you saw the Ottawa Star review. When it called my art an old and tired parrot mimicking actual artists. Did that give you pleasure, Peter?”

“How can you think that?” Peter asked. But it had given him pleasure. And relief. It was the first really happy moment he’d had in a very long time. “It’s the New York Times review that matters, Clara. That’s the one I care about.”

She stared at him. And he felt cold creeping down his fingers and toes and up his legs. As though his heart had weakened and couldn’t get the blood that far anymore.

His heart was only now catching up with what the rest of him had known all his life. He was weak.

“Then quote me from the New York Times review.”

“Pardon?”

“Go on. If it made that big an impression, if it was that important to you, surely you can remember a single line.”

She waited.

“A word?” she asked, her voice glacial.

Peter scanned his memory, desperate for something, anything from the New York Times. Something to prove to himself, never mind Clara, that he’d cared in any way.

But all he remembered, all he saw, was the glorious review in the Ottawa paper.

Her art, while nice, was neither visionary nor bold.

He’d thought it was bad when her paintings were simply embarrassing. But it was worse when they were brilliant. Instead of reflected glory, it just highlighted what a failure he was. His creations dimmed as hers brightened. And so he’d read and re-read the parrot line, applying it to his ego as though it was an antiseptic. And Clara’s art was the septic.

But he knew now it wasn’t her art that had gone septic.

“I thought not,” snapped Clara. “Not even a word. Well let me remind you. Clara Morrow’s paintings are not just brilliant, they are luminous. She has, in an audacious and generous stroke, redefined portraiture. I went back and memorized it. Not because I believe it’s true, but so that I have a choice of what to believe, and it doesn’t always have to be the worst.”

Imagine, thought Peter, as the cold crept closer to his core, having a choice of things to believe.

“And then the messages,” said Clara.

Peter closed his eyes, slowly. A reptilian blink.

The messages. From all of Clara’s supporters. From gallery owners and dealers and curators around the world. From family and friends.

He’d spent most of the morning, after Gamache and Clara and the others had left, after Lillian’s body had left, answering the phone.

Ringing, ringing. Tolling. And each ring diminished him. Stripped him, it felt, of his manhood, his dignity, his self-worth. He’d written out the good wishes, and said nice things to people who ran the art world. The titans. Who knew him only as Clara’s husband.

The humiliation was complete.

Eventually he’d let the answering machine take over and had hidden in his studio. Where he’d hidden all his life. From the monster.

He could feel it in their bedroom now. He could feel its tail swishing by him. Feel its hot, fetid breath.

All his life he knew if he was quiet enough, small enough, it wouldn’t see him. If he didn’t make a fuss, didn’t speak up, it wouldn’t hear him, wouldn’t hurt him. If he was beyond criticism and hid his cruelty with a smile and good deeds, it wouldn’t devour him.

But now he realized there was no hiding. It would always be there, and always find him.

He was the monster.

“You wanted to see me fail.”

“Never,” said Peter.

“I actually thought deep down you were happy for me. You just needed time to adjust. But this is really who you are, isn’t it.”

A denial was again on Peter’s lips, almost out his mouth. But it stopped. Something stopped it. Something stood between the words in his head and the words out his mouth.

He stared at her, and finally, nails ripping and bloody from a lifetime clinging on, he lost his grip.

“The portrait of the Three Graces,” the words tumbled from his mouth. “I saw it, you know, before it was finished. I snuck into your studio and took the sheet off your easel.” He paused to try to compose himself. But it was way too late for that. Peter was plummeting. “I saw—” He searched for the right word. But finally he realized he wasn’t searching for it. He was hiding from it. “Glory. I saw glory, Clara, and such love it broke my heart.”

He stared at the bed sheets, twisted in his hands. And sighed.

“I knew then that you were a far better artist than I could ever be. Because you don’t paint things. You don’t even paint people.”

He saw again Clara’s portrait of the three elderly friends. The Three Graces. Émilie and Beatrice and Kaye. Their neighbors in Three Pines. How they laughed, and held each other. Old, frail, near death.

With every reason to be afraid.

And yet everyone who looked at Clara’s painting felt what those women felt.

Joy.

Looking at the Graces Peter had known at that moment that he was screwed.

And he knew something else. Something people looking at Clara’s extraordinary creations might not consciously realize, but feel. In their bones, in their marrow.

Without a single crucifix, or host, or bible. Without benefit of clergy, or church. Clara’s paintings radiated a subtle, private faith. In a single bright dot in an eye. In old hands holding old hands. For dear life.

Clara painted dear life.

While the rest of the cynical art world was painting the worst, Clara painted the best.

She’d been marginalized, mocked, ostracized for it for years. By the artistic establishment and, privately, by Peter.

Peter painted things. Very well. He even claimed to paint God, and some dealers believed it. Made a good story. But he’d never met God so how could he paint Him?

Clara not only met Him, she knew Him. And she painted what she knew.

“You’re right. I’ve always envied you,” he said, looking at her directly. There was no fear now. He was beyond that. “From the first moment I saw you I envied you. And it’s never left. I tried, but it’s always there. It’s even grown with time. Oh, Clara. I love you and I hate myself for doing all this to you.”

She was silent. Not helping. But not hurting either. He was on his own.

“But it’s not your art I’ve envied. I thought it was, and that’s why I ignored it. Pretended to not understand. But I understood perfectly well what you were doing in your studio. What you were struggling to capture. And I could see you getting closer and closer over the years. And it killed me. Oh, God, Clara. Why couldn’t I just be happy for you?”

She was silent.

“And then, when I saw The Three Graces I knew you were there. And then that portrait. Ruth. Oh, God.” His shoulders slumped. “Who else but you would paint Ruth as the Virgin Mary? So full of scorn and bitterness and disappointment.”

He opened his arms, then dropped them and exhaled.

“And then that dot. The tiny bit of white in her eyes. Eyes filled with hatred. Except for that dot. Seeing something coming.”

Peter looked at Clara, so far away across the bed.

“It’s not your art I envy. It never was.”

“You’re lying, Peter,” whispered Clara.

“No, no, I’m not,” said Peter, his voice rising in desperation.

“You criticized The Three Graces. You mocked the one of Ruth,” yelled Clara. “You wanted me to screw them up, to destroy them.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t the paintings,” Peter shouted back.

“Bullshit.”

“It wasn’t. It was—”

“Well?” yelled Clara. “Well? What was it? Let me guess. It was your mother’s fault? Your father’s? Was it that you had too much money or not enough? That your teachers hurt you, and your grandfather drank? What excuse are you dreaming up now?”

“No, you don’t understand.”

“Of course I do, Peter. I understand you too well. As long as I was schlepping along in your shadow we were fine.”

“No.” Peter was out of bed now, backing up until he was against the wall. “You have to believe me.”

“Not anymore I don’t. You don’t love me. Love doesn’t do this.”

“Clara, no.”

And then the dizzying, disorienting, terrible plummet finally ended. And Peter hit the ground.

“It was your faith,” he shouted, and slumped to the floor. “It was your beliefs. Your hope,” he choked out, his voice a croak amid gasps. “It was far worse than your art. I wanted to be able to paint like you, but only because it would mean I’d see the world as you do. Oh, God, Clara. All I’ve ever envied you was your faith.”

He threw his arms around his legs and drew them violently to his chest, making himself as tiny as he could. A small globe. And he rocked himself.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

On the bed Clara stared. Silenced now not by rage, but by amazement.

Jean Guy Beauvoir picked up an armful of dirty laundry and threw it into a corner.

“There,” he smiled, “make yourself at home.”

“Merci,” said Gamache, sitting down. His knees immediately and alarmingly bounced up almost around his shoulders.

“Watch out for the sofa,” Beauvoir called from the kitchen. “I think the springs are gone.”

“That is possible,” said Gamache, trying to get comfortable. He wondered if this was what a Turkish prison felt like. While Beauvoir poured them each a drink, the Chief looked around the furnished efficiency apartment right in Montréal’s downtown core.

The only personal touches seemed to be the stack of laundry now in the corner, and a stuffed animal, a lion, just visible on the unmade bed. It looked odd, infantile even. He’d not have taken Jean Guy for a man with a stuffed toy.

They’d strolled the three blocks from the coffee shop to his apartment, comparing notes in the clear, cool night air.

“Did you believe her?” Beauvoir had asked.

“When Suzanne said she couldn’t remember Lillian’s secrets?” Gamache considered. The trees lining the downtown street were in leaf, just turning from bright, young green to a deeper more mature color. “Did you?”

“Not for a minute.”

“Neither did I,” said the Chief. “But the question is, did she lie to us intentionally, to hide something, or did she just need time to gather her thoughts?”

“I think it was intentional.”

“You always do.”

That was true. Inspector Beauvoir always thought the worst. It was safer that way.

Suzanne had explained that she had a number of sponsees, that each told her everything about their lives.

“It’s step five in the AA program,” she’d said, then quoted. “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I’m the ‘other human being.’”

She laughed again and made a face.

“You don’t enjoy it?” Gamache asked, interpreting the grimace.

“At first I did, with my first few sponsees. I was honestly kinda curious to find out what sort of shenanigans they’d gotten up to in their drinking careers and if they were at all like mine. It was exciting to have someone trust me like that. Hadn’t happened much when I was drinking, I’ll tell ya. You’d have had to be nuts to trust me then. But it actually gets boring after a while. Everyone thinks their secrets are so horrible, but they’re all pretty much the same.”

“Like what?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“Oh, affairs. Being a closeted gay. Stealing. Thinking horrible thoughts. Getting drunk and missing big family events. Letting down loved ones. Hurting loved ones. Sometimes it’s abuse. I’m not saying what they did was right. It’s clearly not. That’s why we buried it for so long. But it’s not unique. They’re not alone. You know the toughest part of step five?”

“‘Admitted to ourselves’?” asked Gamache.

Beauvoir was amazed the Chief had remembered the wording. It seemed just a big whine to him. A bunch of alcoholics feeling sorry for themselves and looking for instant forgiveness.

Beauvoir believed in forgiveness, but only after punishment.

Suzanne smiled. “That’s it. You’d think it’d be easy to admit these things to ourselves. After all, we were there when it happened. But of course, we couldn’t admit what we’d done was so bad. We’d spent years justifying and denying our behavior.”

Gamache had nodded, thinking.

“Are the secrets often as bad as Brian’s?”

“You mean killing a child? Sometimes.”

“Have any of your sponsees killed someone?”

“I’ve had some sponsees admit to killing,” she finally said. “Never intentionally. Never murder. But some accident. Mostly drunk driving.”

“Including Lillian?” Gamache asked quietly.

“I can’t remember.”

“I don’t believe you.” Gamache’s voice was so low it was hard to hear. Or perhaps it was the words Suzanne found so difficult to hear. “No one listens to a confession like that and forgets.”

“Believe what you want, Chief Inspector.”

Gamache nodded and gave her his card. “I’ll be staying in Montréal tonight but we’ll be back in Three Pines after that. We’ll be there until we find out who killed Lillian Dyson. Call me when you’ve remembered.”

“Three Pines?” Suzanne asked, taking the card.

“The village where Lillian was killed.”

He rose, and Beauvoir rose with him.

“You said your lives depend on the truth,” he said. “I’d hate for you to forget that now.”

Fifteen minutes later they were in Beauvoir’s new apartment. While Jean Guy opened and closed cupboards and mumbled, Gamache hauled himself out of the torturous sofa and strolled around the living room, looking out the window to the pizza place across the way advertising the Super Slice, then he turned back into the room, looking at the gray walls and Ikea furniture. His gaze drifted over to the phone and the pad of paper.

“You’re not just eating at the pizza place, then,” said Gamache.

“What d’you mean?” Beauvoir called from the kitchen.

“Restaurant Milos,” Gamache read from the pad of paper by the phone. “Very chic.”

Beauvoir looked into the room, his eyes directly on the desk and the pad, then up to the Chief.

“I was thinking of taking you and Madame Gamache there.”

For a moment, the way the bare light in the room caught his face, Beauvoir looked like Brian. Not the defiant, swaggering young man at the beginning of his share. But the bowed boy. Humbled. Perplexed. Flawed. Human.

Guarded.

“To thank you for all your support,” said Beauvoir. “This separation from Enid, and the other stuff. It’s been a difficult few months.”

Chief Inspector Gamache looked at the younger man, astonished. Milos was one of the finest seafood restaurants in Canada. And certainly one of the most expensive. It was a favorite of his and Reine-Marie’s, though they only went on very special occasions.

“Merci,” he said at last. “But you know we’d be just as happy with pizza.”

Jean Guy smiled and taking the pad from the desk he slid it into a drawer. “So no Milos. But I will spring for the Super Slice, and no arguments.”

“Madame Gamache will be pleased,” laughed Gamache.

Beauvoir walked into the kitchen and returned with their drinks. A micro-brewery beer for the Chief and water for himself.

“No beer?” asked the Chief, raising his glass.

“All this talk of booze turned me off it. Water’s fine.”

They sat again, Gamache this time choosing one of the hard chairs around the small glass dining table. He took a sip.

“Does it work, do you think?” Beauvoir asked.

It took a moment for the Chief to figure out what his Inspector was talking about.

“AA?”

Beauvoir nodded. “Seems pretty self-indulgent to me. And why would spilling their secrets stop them from drinking? Wouldn’t it be better to just forget instead of dredging all that stuff up? And none of these people are trained. That Suzanne’s a mess. You can’t tell me she’s much help to anyone.”

The Chief stared at his haggard deputy. “I think AA works because no one, no matter how well-meaning, understands what an experience is like except someone who’s been through the same thing,” Gamache said, quietly. He was careful not to lean forward, not to get into his Inspector’s space. “Like the factory. The raid. No one knows what it was like except those of us who were there. The therapists help, a lot. But it’s not the same as talking to one of us.” Gamache looked at Beauvoir. Who seemed to be collapsing into himself. “Do you often think about what happened in the factory?”

Now it was Beauvoir’s turn to pause. “Sometimes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What good would it do? I’ve already told the investigators, the therapists. You and I’ve been over it. I think it’s time to stop talking about it and just get on with it, don’t you?”

Gamache cocked his head to one side and examined Jean Guy. “No, I don’t. I think we need to keep talking until it’s all out, until there’s no unfinished business.”

“What happened in the factory’s over,” snapped Beauvoir, then restrained himself. “I’m sorry. I just think it’s self-indulgent. I just want to get on with my life. The only unfinished business, the only thing still bothering me, if you really want to know, is who leaked the video of the raid. How’d it get onto the Internet?”

“The internal investigation said it was a hacker.”

“I know. I read the report. But you don’t really believe it, do you?”

“I have no choice,” said Gamache. “And neither do you.”

There was no mistaking the warning in the Chief’s voice. A warning Beauvoir chose not to hear, or to heed.

“It wasn’t a hacker,” he said. “No one even knows those tapes exist except other Sûreté officers. A hacker didn’t pirate that recording.”

“That’s enough, Jean Guy.” They’d been down this road before. The video of the raid on the factory had been uploaded onto the Internet, where it had gone viral. Millions around the world had watched the edited video.

Seen what had happened.

To them. And to others. Millions had watched as though it was a TV show. Entertainment.

The Sûreté, after months of investigation, had concluded it was a hacker.

“Why didn’t they find the guy?” Beauvoir persisted. “We have an entire department that only investigates cyber crime. And they couldn’t find an asshole who, by their own report, just got lucky?”

“Let it be, Jean Guy,” said Gamache, sternly.

“We have to find the truth, sir,” said Beauvoir, leaning forward.

“We know the truth,” said Gamache. “What we have to do is learn to live with it.”

“You’re not going to look further? You’re just going to accept it?”

“I am. And so are you. Promise me, Jean Guy. This is someone else’s problem. Not ours.”

The two men stared at each other for a moment until Beauvoir gave one curt nod.

“Bon,” said Gamache, emptying his glass and walking with it into the kitchen. “Time to go. We need to be back in Three Pines early.”

Armand Gamache said good night and walked slowly through the night streets. It was chilly and he was glad for his coat. He’d planned to wave down a cab, but found himself walking all the way up Ste-Urbain to avenue Laurier.

And as he walked he thought about AA, and Lillian, and Suzanne. About the Chief Justice. About the artists and dealers, asleep in their beds in Three Pines.

But mostly he thought about the corrosive effect of secrets. Including his own.

He’d lied to Beauvoir. It wasn’t over. And he hadn’t let it go.

Jean Guy Beauvoir washed the beer glass then headed toward his bedroom.

Keep going, just keep going, he begged himself. Just a few more steps.

But he stopped, of course. As he’d done every night since that video had appeared.

Once on the Net it could never, ever be taken off. It was there forever. Forgotten, perhaps, but still there, waiting to be found again. To surface again.

Like a secret. Never really hidden completely. Never totally forgotten.

And this video was far from forgotten. Not yet.

Beauvoir sat heavily into the chair and brought his computer out of sleep. The link was on his favorites list, but intentionally mislabeled.

His eyes heavy with sleep and his body aching, Jean Guy clicked on it.

And up came the video.

He hit play. Then play again. And again.

Over and over he watched the video. The picture was clear, as were the sounds. The explosions, the shooting, the shouting, “Officer down, officer down.”

And Gamache’s voice, steady, commanding. Issuing clear orders, holding them together, keeping the chaos at bay as the tactical team had pressed deeper and deeper into the factory. Cornering the gunmen. So many more gunmen than they’d expected.

And over and over and over Beauvoir watched himself get shot in the abdomen. And over and over and over he watched something worse. Chief Inspector Gamache. Arms thrown out, back arching. Lifting off, then falling. Hitting the ground. Still.

And then the chaos closing in.

Finally exhausted, he pushed himself away from the screen and got ready for bed. Washing, brushing his teeth. Taking out the prescription medication he popped an OxyContin.

Then he slipped the other small bottle of pills under his pillow. In case he needed it in the night. It was safe there. Out of sight. Like a weapon. A last resort.

A bottle of Percocet.

In case the OxyContin wasn’t enough.

In his bed, in the dark, he waited for the painkiller to kick in. He could feel the day slip away. The worries, the anxieties, the images receded. As he hugged his stuffed lion and drifted toward oblivion one image drifted along with him. Not of himself being shot. Not even of seeing the Chief hit, and fall.

All that had faded, gobbled up by the OxyContin.

But one thought remained. Followed him to the edge.

Restaurant Milos. The phone number, now hidden in the desk drawer. Every week for the past three months he’d called the Restaurant Milos and made a reservation. For two. For Saturday night. The table at the back, by the whitewashed wall.

And every Saturday afternoon he canceled it. He wondered if they even bothered to take down his name anymore. Maybe they just pretended. As he did.

But tomorrow, he felt certain, would be different.

He’d definitely call her then. And she’d say yes. And he’d take Annie Gamache to Milos, with its crystal and white linen. She’d have the Dover sole, he’d have the lobster.

And she’d listen to him, and look at him with those intense eyes. He’d ask her all about her day, her life, her likes, her feelings. Everything. He wanted to know everything.

Every night he drifted off to sleep with the same image. Annie looking at him across the table. And then, he’d reach out and place his hand on hers. And she’d let him.

As he sank into sleep he placed one hand over the other. That was how it would feel.

And then, the OxyContin took everything. And Jean Guy Beauvoir had no more feelings.