The Long Way Home Read online

  “Clara’s in charge. She knows what she’s doing.”

  “She once ate potpourri thinking it was chips,” said Jean-Guy. “She took a bath in soup, thinking it was bath salts. She turned a vacuum cleaner into a sculpture. She has no idea what she’s doing.”

  Gamache smiled. “At least if it all goes south, we have someone else to blame for once.”

  “You do,” mumbled Beauvoir, tossing his bag into the back of the van. “I always blamed you anyway. I’m no further ahead.”

  Twenty minutes later, Chartrand turned into the tiny airport at La Malbaie and pulled up to the shack.

  “Is that it?” asked Myrna, eyeing the small plane on the tarmac.

  “I guess so,” Gamache said, and tried not to think about it. He was used to taking tiny planes into remote villages and landing on what most pilots would not consider a runway. But it was never fun.

  “Dibs on the exit row,” said Myrna.

  A young man came out of the shack and looked at them, assessing them like cargo. “I’m Marc Brossard, the pilot. You the ones who emailed last night?”

  “That’s right,” said Jean-Guy. “Four to go to Tabaquen.”

  “Five,” Chartrand said.

  Beauvoir turned to face him. “You dropped us off. That’s far enough. You can’t come with us.”

  “But I can. All I have to do is buy a ticket.” He handed over his credit card to the young pilot. “There. Easy. I can fly.”

  He said it in such a Peter Pan way that Myrna laughed. Beauvoir did not. He scowled at the gallery owner and turned to Gamache.

  “Nothing we can do, Jean-Guy.”

  “Not if we don’t try,” he said. “Sir.”

  Gamache leaned in to Beauvoir and said, “We can’t stop him. And do we want to?”

  But Beauvoir hadn’t given up. “Is there even room?”

  “Always room for one more, my mother says,” said the pilot, returning Chartrand’s card to him and looking to the east. “Better hurry.”

  “Why?” Myrna asked, and wished she hadn’t. Sometimes it was best not to know.

  “Red sky in the morning.” The pilot gestured to the violent red sky. “Sailors take warning.”

  “Something else your mother says?” asked Beauvoir.

  “No. My uncle.”

  “But you’re a pilot, and this isn’t a boat,” said Clara.

  “Same difference. Means bad weather. We’d be better off in a boat.” He looked from Myrna to Gamache. “Ballast. Good in a bateau. Not so good in the air.”

  “Maybe he should stay behind.” Jean-Guy gestured toward Chartrand.

  The gallery owner was staring into the gaudy sunrise, his back to them.

  “No,” said Clara. “He was kind to us. If he wants to come, he can.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Beauvoir hissed at Gamache. “She’s making decisions based on what’s ‘nice’?”

  “It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” Gamache watched Beauvoir’s face flush with frustration.

  Myrna approached, saw his red face and, taking warning, turned around.

  “You coming?” The pilot had loaded their bags and was standing by the door of the plane.

  They squeezed in, the pilot directing them where to sit so that the weight was fairly evenly distributed. Even so, the plane waddled into the air, one wing dipping dangerously and almost hitting the runway. Gamache and Clara, on that side, leaned toward the middle. Like mariners, after all, heaving ho.

  And then they were airborne, and on their way. The plane circled, and Gamache, his face forced against the window as Jean-Guy’s body shifted in the turn, could see what was only visible from above.

  The crater. The giant, and perfect, circle where the meteor had struck hundreds of millions of years ago. The cosmic catastrophe that had wiped out all life. And then had created life.

  The plane banked again and headed east. Away from there. And into the red sky.

  “Have you been flying this route for a while?” Clara shouted above the drone of the engines.

  She’d finally stopped praying and felt it was safe to open her mouth without shrieking.

  “A few years,” he called back. “Started when I was eighteen. Family business.”

  “Flying?” asked Clara, feeling slightly more confident.

  “Fruit.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Myrna shouted. “Leave well enough alone and let him concentrate on flying.”

  “Oui, fruit. Not much fresh fruit along the coast, and the bateau can take too long, so we fly it in. Mostly bananas.”

  What followed was a monologue on how long various fruit takes to rot. By the time he stopped talking they felt fairly certain they’d all gone bad.

  “How often do you get passengers?” Jean-Guy asked, desperate to change the subject.

  “A lot lately, but that’s unusual. Most people who want to go to the coast take the ship. Takes longer, but it’s safer.”

  No one pursued that, and Clara went back to praying. Bless, oh Lord, this food to our use …

  “Did you fly Luc Vachon recently?” Jean-Guy asked.

  “The owner of La Muse? Oui. Few days ago. A bit early, but his annual trip to the coast.”

  “Where’d he go?” Gamache asked.

  “Tabaquen. To paint. Like he does every summer. This year I took him all the way there, but most summers I drop him in Sept-Îles, to catch the boat. All the artists prefer the boat. It’s—”

  “—safer, yes, we know,” said Beauvoir.

  The pilot laughed. “I was going to say prettier. I think artists like pretty. Mais, franchement, it’s not really safer. There’s no safe way to get to the Lower North Shore. We have turbulence and the ship has the Graves. So it’s all a crapshoot.”

  “Do not open your mouths,” hissed Myrna, catching their eyes with a searing look.

  The small plane lurched in an air current. Dipping and falling, and climbing again. The pilot quickly turned his attention to flying. In the back, their eyes widened and Clara grabbed Myrna’s hand.

  Jean-Guy, seeing this, envied the women, and he wondered how the Chief would take it if he held on to his.

  The plane pitched again and Beauvoir grabbed, then let go of, Gamache’s hand when the plane righted itself.

  Gamache looked at him, but said nothing. It was not, they both knew, the first time one had held on to the other, for dear life. And the way things were going it might not be the last.

  “Peter,” Clara yelled with such force Beauvoir was tempted to look around in case the man had joined them.

  Clara leaned forward. “Did you fly my husband? Peter Morrow?”

  “Désolé, lady,” said the pilot, who was perfectly bilingual and seemed to speak in a mixture of both languages. Frenglish. “I don’t remember names. Just luggage. And fruit. Now, lemons—”

  “He’d have gone to Tabaquen,” Clara quickly cut in. “Tall guy. English.”

  The pilot shook his head. “Means nothing to me.”

  Myrna pulled out her device and after a few clicks she handed it to Clara, who hesitated for a moment.

  “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “We’re all going to die anyway.”

  She showed the photo to the pilot, and when he stopped laughing he pointed. “Is that you?”

  “That’s not important. You recognize the man?”

  “Yeah. Tall, old. English.”

  “Old?” said Clara.

  “That might not be the most important thing he’s said,” said Myrna. “We all look old to him. He’s barely begun to rot.”

  The plane gave a little shudder, as though nudged.

  “Oh, Christ, here it comes,” said Jean-Guy.

  “What’s that?” asked Clara.

  “What?” demanded Myrna, looking frantically out the window where Clara was pointing.

  “That’s the supply ship,” said the pilot.

  “The one the artists take?” Clara asked.

  Belo
w them was the river, and on it they saw a ship. From above it looked like a cigar.

  “Oui.”

  “How long does it take for the ship to get to Tabaquen?” she asked.

  “From Sept-Îles?” The pilot considered. “About a day, maybe two. Depends on the weather.”

  “Take us there.”

  “Where?”

  “Sept-Îles.”

  “Clara?” asked Myrna.

  “Clara?” asked Gamache.

  “If Peter took the boat, we will too.”

  “Clara?” asked Jean-Guy.

  “But Peter’s not still on it,” said Myrna.

  “I know that. But there’s a reason he took it.”

  “Maybe,” said Myrna. “But there’s a reason we shouldn’t. Wouldn’t it be best to get to Tabaquen as fast as we can?”

  “Why?” asked Clara.

  “To find Peter.”

  “And suppose he got off the ship?” asked Clara. “Suppose he never made it? No. We need to retrace his steps, as closely as we can.”

  Beauvoir turned to Gamache. Their noses almost touched, so tight was the squeeze. And there was no mistaking the glare in Beauvoir’s eyes. The desperation.

  The joke was over. They’d had their fun. They’d let Clara lead them around.

  But now it was time to take charge.

  “Patron.” Beauvoir’s voice was filled with warning.

  “Clara’s in charge, Jean-Guy,” said Gamache, his voice barely heard above the wail of the engines.

  “We can fly to this village, find out what happened to Peter, and be home before the ship gets halfway there,” said Beauvoir. “Don’t you want that?”

  Gamache looked down at the ship, so small in the huge river. “We gave Clara our word.” He turned back to Jean-Guy. “Besides, she might be right. She has been so far.”

  Beauvoir took in the Chief’s deep brown eyes, the lines of his face. The deep scar by his temple. The hair almost completely gray now.

  “Are you afraid?” Beauvoir asked.

  “Of what?”

  “Of being in charge again? Of being responsible?”

  There is a balm in Gilead … The book in Gamache’s pocket dug into his side. A thorn. Not letting him forget.… to cure a sin-sick soul.

  “We’re here to support Clara, nothing more,” Gamache repeated. “If I have to step in, I will. But not before.”

  As Jean-Guy turned away, Gamache saw in those familiar eyes something unfamiliar.

  Doubt.

  * * *

  The plane didn’t so much land as run out of air. It hit the tarmac with a thump and skidded to a stop.

  “Phew,” said the immortal pilot with a grin. “Almost bruised the bananas.”

  Myrna laughed, the heady amusement of one spared from certain death.

  They climbed out of the tin can and stood on the runway. And looked at the river. The plane had come to a halt within meters of the St. Lawrence.

  “Tabarnac,” said Chartrand, then turned to the women. “Sorry.”

  “Merde,” said Myrna, then turned to Chartrand. “Sorry.”

  “This isn’t the airport,” said Gamache, looking around.

  Their pilot was dumping their bags on the tarmac.

  “The airport’s big,” said Gamache. “It lands jets. This’s…”

  He turned around. River, forest, river.

  “This’s…”

  “You’re welcome,” said the pilot, tossing the last bag onto the pile.

  “Seriously,” said Gamache. “Where are we?”

  The pilot pointed. There, on the horizon, was a dot. And as they watched, it grew. And took shape. Ship shape.

  “The Loup de Mer. She docks there.” He pointed to a pier half a kilometer away. “This’s an old cargo runway. Better hurry.”

  “Tabarnac,” said Myrna, as she picked up her bag.

  “Merde,” said Chartrand.

  They hurried across the rough landing strip, pausing to watch the plane rumble down the runway and lift off. From the ground it looked strangely graceful, as though something awkward was freed.

  The plane, and the boy inside, seemed made for the skies and not really of this earth.

  The plane bobbed and banked and flew into the sun. And disappeared.

  Then they turned their backs on it and walked toward the pier, where the Loup de Mer was just arriving.

  The Seawolf.

  Gamache, who knew the coast well, wondered if Clara had any idea what they were in for.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  There were two cabins left. The Admiral’s Suite and the Captain’s Suite.

  It was decided the women would take the Captain’s Suite, while the three men would stay together in the Admiral’s Suite, since it would be the larger of the cabins.

  They showed Peter’s photo to the harbormaster, to the ticket agent, to the head steward, to some woman they thought was an employee but turned out to be a fellow passenger.

  None of them recognized Peter.

  “Maybe he didn’t take the boat,” said Myrna. “I don’t think we specifically asked that pilot if he did.”

  Clara thought about that, holding her bag in one hand and Peter’s now quite worn photo in the other. Myrna had promised not to show the old photograph from the yearbook anymore.

  “Still, the pilot recognized him from that,” said Myrna. “Though I don’t know how. Most of his face is hidden by smoke.”

  Except, thought Gamache, that one sharp eye. Not an artist’s eye, but a cunning, assessing eye. His mother’s eye.

  Something was bothering Gamache about that whole exchange with the young pilot. And maybe Myrna had hit upon it. It seemed strange that this kid, who admitted to considering his passengers produce, should recognize Peter from that old yearbook photo.

  Still, he’d also recognized Clara, so maybe the young man had an eye for faces.

  “I think if anyone’s going to recognize him”—Clara held up the recent photograph of Peter—“it’ll be an employee who saw him wandering the ship every day. Not the captain, and not the harbormaster.”

  “Good point,” said Gamache.

  And Clara was right. While the steward who showed the women to the Captain’s Suite didn’t recognize it, the fellow with the men did.

  “He had a single berth,” the steward said. “Kept to himself.”

  “How come you remember him?” Jean-Guy asked as they followed him down the dim, narrow corridor. This was definitely not the Queen Mary.

  “I watched him.”

  “Why?” asked Beauvoir.

  “Afraid he’d jump.”

  That stopped them in the middle of the corridor.

  “What do you mean?” Gamache asked.

  “People do,” explained the young steward. He was small, lithe. With a thick Spanish accent. “Especially the quiet ones. He was quiet. Stuck to himself.”

  They continued on their way along the corridor, and then, to their surprise, down two flights of stairs.

  “Most passengers are excited to be under way. They talk to each other. Get to know each other. There isn’t a lot to do so they start hanging out together. Your guy didn’t. He was different.”

  “Do you think he was considering jumping?” asked Gamache.

  “Naw. He was okay. Just different.”

  That word, over and over. Peter Morrow, who’d struggled to conform all his life, was different after all.

  “Where did he get off?” Jean-Guy asked.

  “Can’t remember.”

  They’d arrived at the Admiral’s Suite. The steward opened the door, his hand resting, palm up.

  Beauvoir ignored him, but Gamache gave him a twenty.

  “Twenty, patron? Really?” Beauvoir asked, his voice low.

  “Who do you think’ll be handing out places in the lifeboat?”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh,” said Gamache.

  They stepped inside. Almost. The three of them could barely get in standing up, and it wasn
’t clear how they’d all manage to lie down.

  “This’s the Admiral’s Suite? There must be a mistake,” said Chartrand, trying to turn around without getting engaged to either man.

  “There must’ve been a mutiny,” said Beauvoir.

  Gamache raised his brows. This did look more like the brig. And smelled like a latrine. They were indeed in the bowels of the ship.

  The Loup de Mer lurched, and left the dock.

  “Bon voyage,” said the steward as he shut the door.

  Out of the slimy porthole the men saw the land recede.

  * * *

  Myrna turned off the taps and swished the water, making sure it was the right temperature. The aroma of lavender, from the bubble bath, filled the mahogany bathroom.

  Candles were lit, and their steward had brought two strong cappuccinos and a basket of warm croissants and jams.

  Armand had called to tell them that their steward had definitely recognized Peter. Clara was relieved and felt she could finally relax.

  She tore the tip off a flaky croissant and sat back on the sofa in their cabin.

  They were under way.

  Across the suite, in the bathroom, Clara saw Myrna sink deeper into the copper tub, the bubbles forming foaming mountains and valleys over her body.

  “I see your ship has finally come in,” said Clara, as Myrna hummed “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?”

  “I’m a born mariner,” she said.

  While Myrna bathed, Clara took a sip of cappuccino and gazed through the large window, watching the thick old forests and bays slip by as the Loup de Mer headed east.

  * * *

  Jean-Guy and Armand leaned on the railing of the Loup de Mer. The ship was pointed directly into the waves, and both men stared over the side, almost hypnotized by the rhythm. The ship’s bow rose and fell, cutting the waves, sending light spray into their faces.

  It was both refreshing and lulling.

  Had Gamache been humming an old Québécois lullaby, Jean-Guy knew he’d have dropped off to sleep right there and then.

  C’est un grand mystère

  Depuis trois nuit que le loup, hurle la nouvelle

  Just remembering the tune, Jean-Guy felt his eyelids beginning to droop. Then fluttering open. Heavier, heavier. C’est un grand mystère. It’s a big mystery. The voice of his mother sang to him. About the wilderness. The wolves and foxes. About being afraid. And being saved. Being safe.