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Dragging Jean-Guy with him.

Time seemed to stand still.

Jean-Guy felt, for a moment, as though he were hanging in midair. Neither flying nor falling.

He’d let go of Homer. The man was gone. Vivienne’s father was gone, into the river. And Jean-Guy was turned to the bridge. Reaching for it. But it was just beyond his grasp.

He was falling.

Annie. Annie. Honoré.

And then he fell.

It all happened so fast it seemed in slow motion.

Gamache leaped off after him. Following Beauvoir over the edge.

With one hand, he grasped the post. With the other, he reached out.

Reaching, reaching.

Jean-Guy’s hand was stretching out toward him. Jean-Guy’s eyes, pleading.

Then their hands touched, and gripped.

There was a yank, as Jean-Guy’s fall was stopped. But not for long, Gamache knew. His arm and shoulder had been wrenched. Slivers from the rotten wood were pushing into his palm. Making it slippery with blood. He was losing his grip, on the post. On Jean-Guy.

Jean-Guy was staring up at him. Eyes wide with terror.

Neither spoke. Neither could.

In a moment they’d both be in the river. The freezing water closing over them. Not able to breathe for the shock, the cold, the turbulence. The roiling. Turning them over and over. Their bodies hitting rocks and tree trunks.

Until all struggle left them. All breath left them. And finally all life left them, as their bodies bobbed and thumped down the Bella Bella. Past St. Thomas’s Chapel. Past Miss Jane Neal’s home. Past Clara’s. Past the old railway station.

Under the stone bridge they’d go. And come to rest at the bend in the river.

He held Jean-Guy’s frantic eyes and saw his lips move. Annie.

And Armand could see what Jean-Guy was about to do.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “You. Dare.”

But Jean-Guy did.

Knowing Armand could not hold him and keep a grip on the bridge, Jean-Guy opened his grip. Released his hand.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir let go.

But Armand did not. He closed his hand even tighter, even as he felt Jean-Guy’s fingers squeezing through his own.

All this took just moments but felt like an eternity.

Just as his hold slipped completely, Armand twisted and heaved. Throwing Jean-Guy as far as he could. Toward the shore.

The effort pulled his hand from the bridge and turned his body onto its back, so that for a moment Armand was looking up. At the sky. Into the April sunshine.

Reine-Marie. Reine-Marie.