The Long Way Home Read online

  She could see the imposing façade of the Royal York up ahead. A massive anachronism at the foot of the modern city. And she could almost taste the beer she’d soon be drinking.

  “Who knows why the Morrows say anything,” said Clara, pausing just outside the door of the old hotel. The doorman, perspiring in his uniform, had one hand on the handle, ready to yank it open.

  “I guess it was a swipe at Peter,” said Myrna. “Saying he was more interested in art than in his brother.”

  “And he’d have been right,” said Clara.

  “Let’s get a beer,” said Myrna, and headed straight for the bar.

  TEN

  Reine-Marie tucked the heavy book under her arm and stepped into the glare of the day.

  “Inside or out, ma belle?” Olivier asked.

  She looked around and decided a table on the terrasse, under one of the large Campari umbrellas, would be perfect.

  Olivier returned a few minutes later with a tall ginger beer, already beading in the heat, and a bowl of assorted nuts.

  “Parfait,” said Reine-Marie. “Merci.”

  She took a sip and opened the book, only looking up twenty minutes later when a head dropped into her lap.

  Henri.

  She kneaded his extravagant ears, and felt a kiss on the top of her head.

  “I hope that’s you, Sergio.”

  “Sorry, only me,” said Armand with a laugh.

  He pulled up a chair and nodded to Olivier, who disappeared inside.

  “The History of Scotland,” Gamache read the cover of Reine-Marie’s book. “A sudden passion?”

  “Why Dumfries, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out as well. Went on the Internet to look it up.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Not really,” he admitted. “I printed out some of what I found.” He put the sheets on the table. “You?”

  “I’ve just started reading.”

  “Where’d you get it?” he asked. “Ruth?”

  He looked over at Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore.

  “Rosa. Ruth was asleep in the philosophy section.”

  “Asleep or passed out or …”

  “Dead?” asked Reine-Marie. “No, I checked.”

  “No farmhouse on top of her?” Olivier asked, placing Gamache’s ginger beer on the table.

  “Merci, patron,” Armand said.

  They sipped their drinks, absentmindedly ate the nuts, and read about a town in Scotland.

  * * *

  “Oh, my God,” said Myrna, looking around.

  She was stopped dead in the doorway of the Royal York bar, causing a bit of a jam behind her.

  “How many?” the young woman asked.

  “Three,” said Clara, looking around the stationary bulk of Myrna.

  “Follow me.”

  The two perspiring women followed the cool, slender maitre d’.” Myrna felt like a giant. All big and galumping, disheveled, and fictional. Not really there at all. Invisible behind the siren showing them to their table.

  “Merci,” said Clara out of force of habit, forgetting she was in English Ontario and not French Québec.

  “Oh, my God,” Myrna whispered again as she dropped into the plush wing chair, upholstered in rose-colored crushed velvet.

  The bar was, in fact, a library. A place Dickens would have been comfortable in. Where Conan Doyle might have found a useful volume. Where Jane Austen could sit and read. And get drunk, if she wanted.

  “A beer, thank you,” said Myrna.

  “Two,” said Clara.

  It felt like they’d stepped out of the glare and throbbing heat of twenty-first-century Toronto into a cool nineteenth-century country house.

  They might be giants, but this was their natural habitat.

  “Do you think Peter had an appointment in Samarra?” asked Clara.

  Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane.

  But Clara’s eyes betrayed her. Begging Myrna for reassurance.

  Peter was alive. Painting. He’d simply lost track of time.

  There was nothing to worry about. He was nowhere near Samarra.

  “I’m sorry I said that,” said Myrna, smiling at the waiter who brought their drinks. Everyone else in the bar seemed to be having some sort of smart cocktail.

  “But did you mean it?” Clara asked.

  Myrna considered for a moment, looking at her friend. “I think the story isn’t so much about death as fate. We all have an appointment in Samarra.”

  She put down her beer and leaned across the mahogany table, lowering her voice so that Clara had to lean forward to hear her.

  “What I do know for sure is that Peter’s life is his. Stay in the marketplace. Go to Samarra. His fate. Not yours. Would you take credit for anything wonderful Peter’s done in this past year?”

  Clara shook her head.

  “And yet you think it’s your fault if something bad happens.”

  “Do you think something bad has happened?”

  Myrna was about to say, slightly exasperated, that that wasn’t her point. But looking at Clara she knew it wouldn’t matter. Clara needed only one thing, and it wasn’t logic.

  “No.” Myrna took her hand. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Clara took a deep breath, squeezed Myrna’s hand, then leaned back in the wing chair.

  “Really?” She searched Myrna’s eyes, but not too deeply and not long.

  “Really.”

  They both knew Myrna had just lied.

  “Is that her?” Myrna asked, and Clara turned in her chair to see Marianna Morrow approaching.

  Clara had first met Marianna when Peter’s sister was living a bohemian life in Cabbagetown, an artist enclave in Toronto. She was pretending to be a poet and trying to catch the attention of her disinterested parents. Her weapon of choice was worry.

  The young woman of equal parts abandon and desperation had so imprinted herself on Clara’s brain that she still expected to see that Marianna. It took a few moments to realize there was gray in Marianna’s hair, and while she still looked like a poet, she was in fact a successful designer. With a child. And the only one of Peter’s family Clara could stomach. And that only barely.

  “Marianna.” Clara rose, and after introducing Myrna, all three sat. Marianna ordered a martini, then looked from one to the other.

  “So,” she said. “Where’s Peter?”

  * * *

  “Why Dumfries?” asked Gamache, looking up from his sheaf of papers. “It seems an attractive enough place, but why would Peter leave Venice to go there?”

  Reine-Marie lowered her heavy book. “There’s nothing obvious here. A nice Scottish town. Druid at one time, then the Romans appeared, then the Scots took it back.”

  “Any prominent artists?”

  “No prominent citizens at all, from what I can see.”

  Gamache leaned back and sipped his ginger beer, watching the children on the village green. Watching his friends and neighbors go about their business this warm day in August. Watching the cars drive slowly into and out of Three Pines.

  Then he leaned forward.

  “Dumfries might not have been where Peter was actually going.” He pulled her book toward him. “Maybe it’s on the way to somewhere else.”

  * * *

  “What do you mean?” asked Clara.

  “You and Peter are always together,” said Marianna Morrow. “I just assumed he’d be joining us for drinks.”

  Clara’s heart sank. “I came to ask you the same question.”

  Marianna turned in her chair to look squarely at Clara. “You wanted to ask me where Peter is? You don’t know?”

  Myrna tried to read the expression, the inflection. There was, on the surface at least, concern. But there was a lso something else swirling around under that.

  Excitement. Myrna leaned slightly away from Marianna Morrow.

  At least Thomas, with his splayed legs and knowing smile, didn’t really try to hide his contempt. This one did. Though what she hid wasn’t contempt, Myrna felt, so much as a sort of hunger.

  Peter’s sister looked as though Clara was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and Marianna was starving. Ravenous for the bad news Clara was offering.

  “He’s missing,” said Clara.

  And Myrna watched Marianna’s eyes grow even brighter.

  “That’s terrible.”

  “When did you last see him?” Clara asked.

  Marianna thought. “He had dinner with us this past winter, but I can’t remember when exactly.”

  “You invited him over?”

  “He invited himself.”

  “Why?” asked Clara.

  “Why?” Marianna repeated. “Because I’m his sister. And he wanted to see me.”

  She appeared to be insulted, but they all knew she wasn’t.

  “No, really,” said Clara. “Why?”

  “I have no idea,” Marianna Morrow admitted. “Maybe he wanted to see Bean.”

  “Bean?” asked Myrna.

  “Marianna’s …” Clara hesitated, and hoped the woman across from her would jump in with an answer. But Marianna Morrow just watched. And smiled.

  “Marianna’s child,” said Clara at last.

  “Ahhh,” said Myrna, though the hesitation puzzled her.

  Marianna examined Clara. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  To Myrna’s surprise, Clara didn’t hesitate to tell her. “We’ve been separated for more than a year. I haven’t seen or heard from him since last summer. It was supposed to be a trial separation. He was supposed to come back a year after leaving.”

  Myrna was watching Clara closely. There was little hint of the load those words carried. Of the weight, as Clara lugged them around, all day. All night.

  “But he didn’t.” Marianna still clung to the shreds of concern, but her satisfaction was all too obvious now.

  Myrna wondered why Clara didn’t just shut up.

  “But please don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t,” said Marianna. “I know he visited the art college while he was here. He told us that when he came for dinner.”

  “Where we went to school,” Clara told Myrna.

  “I think he also visited some galleries.”

  Now Marianna Morrow was voluble and Myrna understood why Clara had told her so much. She was feeding Marianna, stuffing her. And Marianna ate it up, a glutton at a bad news banquet. Overstuffed, sleepy, her guard down. Drooling information.

  “I have an idea. Why don’t you two come over for dinner tonight?”

  Myrna saw Clara smile for a moment, and then it was gone. And Myrna looked at her friend with renewed awe.

  * * *

  “Find anything?” Armand looked up from the book on Scotland.

  Reine-Marie shook her head and put down the printouts.

  They’d exchanged material, in hopes the other would find something they’d missed.

  “You?” she asked.

  He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. But there’s something else that puzzles me about Peter’s travels.” Gamache sat forward at their table outside the bistro. “He went almost directly from here to Paris.”

  Reine-Marie nodded. “Oui.”

  “And found a place in the 15th arrondissement.”

  Now Reine-Marie understood why Armand was perplexed. “Not exactly a haunt of artists.”

  “We need a detailed map of Paris,” he said, getting up. “There’s one at home, but I bet the bookstore has one.”

  He returned a few minutes later with an old map, an old guidebook, and an old poet.

  Ruth sat in Gamache’s chair, grabbing his ginger beer with one hand and the last of the nuts with the other.

  “Peter was last heard from in Quebec City,” she said. “So what does Clouseau here come looking for? A map of Paris. Christ. How many people did you have to poison to become Chief Inspector?”

  “So many that one more wouldn’t matter,” he said, and Ruth snorted.

  She shoved his drink back to him with a wince and flagged down Olivier.

  “Pills,” she ordered. “Alcohol.”

  Reine-Marie told her about Peter’s choice of neighborhood, and Ruth shook her head. “Crazy. But then, anyone who’d leave Clara must be. Don’t tell her I said that.”

  The three of them went over the map and guidebook, scouring the 15th arrondissement for anything that would explain why Peter would stay there.

  “Planning a trip?” asked Gabri. He put a small platter of pickles, cold cuts, and olives on their table, then joined them. “Can I come?”

  When told what they were doing, he made a face. “The 15th? What was he thinking?”

  Twenty minutes later they stared at each other. None the wiser.

  What had Peter Morrow been thinking?

  * * *

  “And this is Bean,” said Marianna.

  Standing in front of Clara and Myrna was a child of twelve or thirteen. In jeans and a bulky shirt, with shoulder-length hair.

  “Hello,” said Myrna.

  “Hi.”

  “Bean, you remember Aunt Clara.”

  “Sure. How’s Uncle Peter?”

  “Well, he’s off painting,” said Clara, and felt the sharp eyes of Bean watching her.

  There was a lot that was obvious about Bean. The child was polite, quiet, clever. Observant.

  What was not clear was whether Bean was a boy or a girl.

  Marianna Morrow, finding she couldn’t worry her parents into noticing her, had taken another route. She’d produced, out of wedlock, a child. She’d named that child Bean. And in a coup de grâce, had not told her family if Bean was a boy or a girl. Marianna had produced both a child and a biological weapon.

  Clara had assumed Bean’s sex would become obvious after a while. Marianna would either tire of the charade, or Bean her/himself would give it away. Or it would be clear as Bean matured.

  None of those things had happened. Bean remained androgynous and the Morrows remained in the dark.

  They ate dinner in near silence, Marianna apparently regretting her invitation almost as soon as it was issued. After dinner, Bean took them upstairs to show them the color wheel Uncle Peter had taught Bean how to make.

  “Are you interested in art?” Myrna asked, following the child up the stairs.

  “Not really.”

  The door to Bean’s bedroom opened and Myrna’s eyebrows rose. “Good thing,” she whispered to Clara.

  Bean’s walls, instead of being covered with posters of the latest pop idol or sports star, were covered with paintings, tacked up. It looked, and felt, like a neolithic cave in downtown Toronto.

  “Nice paintings,” Aunt Clara said. Myrna shot her a warning look.

  “What?” Clara whispered. “I’m trying to be encouraging.”

  “You really want to encourage that?” Myrna jabbed a thick finger at the walls.

  “They’re crap,” said Bean, sitting on the bed and looking around. “But I like them.”

  Clara tried to suppress a smile. It was pretty much how she’d felt about all her early works. She knew they were crap. But she liked them. Though no one else did.

  She looked around at the bedroom walls again, this time with an open mind. Determined to find something good in what Bean had done.

  She moved from painting to painting. To painting. To painting.

  She stood back. She stood close. She tipped her head from side to side.

  No matter how she looked at them, they were awful.

  “That’s okay, you don’t have to like them,” said Bean. “I don’t care.”

  It was also what the young Clara had said, when watching the all-too-familiar sight of people struggling to say something nice about her early wo rks. People whose opinions she valued. Whose approval she longed for. I don’t care, she’d said.

  But she did. And she suspected Bean did too.

  “Do you have a favorite?” Aunt Clara asked, side-stepping her own feelings.

  “That one.”

  Bean pointed to the open door. Aunt Clara closed the door to reveal a painting there. It was, if such a thing was possible, more horrible than the rest. If the others were neolithic, this one was a large evolutionary step backward. Whoever painted this almost certainly had a tail, and knuckles that dragged on the ground. And through the paint.

  If Peter had taught Bean the color wheel, he was a very, very bad teacher. This painting flaunted all the rules of art and most of the rules of common courtesy. It was a bad smell tacked to the wall.

  “What do you like about it?” Myrna asked, her voice strained from keeping some strong emotion, or her dinner, inside.

  “Those.”

  From the bed, Bean waved a finger toward the painting. Clara realized that with the door closed Bean would see this painting last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

  What was so special about it?

  She looked over at Myrna and saw her friend examining it. And smiling. Just a grin at first, that grew.

  “Do you see it?” Myrna asked.

  Clara looked more closely. And then something clicked. Those funny red squiggles were smiles. The painting was filled with them. Lips.

  It didn’t make the painting good. But it made it fun.

  Clara looked back at Bean and saw a large smile on the earnest face.

  “Clearly the artistic gene hasn’t been passed to Bean,” said Myrna as they sat in the cab back to the hotel.

  “I’d give a lot of money for Peter to see what his lesson has produced,” Clara said, and heard Myrna grunt with laughter beside her.

  * * *

  “What did you two get up to today?” Reine-Marie asked Annie and Jean-Guy as they ate dinner on the terrace in their back garden.

  “Dominique and I took the horses through the woods,” said Annie, helping herself to watermelon, mint, and feta salad.

  “And you?” Armand asked Jean-Guy. “I know for sure you didn’t go horseback riding.”

  “Horse?” said Beauvoir. “Horse? Dominique says they’re horses but we all know there’s at least one moose in there.”

  Reine-Marie laughed. None of Dominique’s horses could be considered show-worthy. Abused and neglected and finally sent to the slaughterhouse, Dominique had saved them.