Page 51

“Yes. I stayed here, as you suggested. But she hasn’t called.” Monsieur Godin searched Gamache’s face for reassurance. That she would.

But Armand Gamache was silent.

Homer looked down. At the dog. His shoulders rose and fell. And there was a gasp. A sob. His hands covered his face, and through the fingers came the muffled words.

“This’s all my fault.”

“No, no, that’s not true, Homer,” said Lysette Cloutier, reaching out to touch his arm.

But he didn’t seem to notice. Then he finally dropped his hands, and wiped his face with his sleeve.

“I’m sorry. I’m better now.” He pulled himself up, rigid. Then noticed the third person.

Gamache introduced Superintendent Lacoste.

“Thank you for coming. Thank you, thank you,” said Godin, composed. Of stone and wishful thinking.

He was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. Gray stubble was beginning to form a beard. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were weary and bloodshot. And moist.

Homer Godin was tall, solidly built. A man clearly used to physical labor. He spoke with the broad country accent of someone who’d left school early to work on the land.

Lacoste knew this man. Not personally, but her own grandfather was just such a Québécois. Still vigorous at ninety-one, he liked nothing better than getting into the forest, even in winter, and chopping wood.

“I thought you couldn’t come,” Godin said, turning to Gamache. “That there were more important things—”

He stopped here. Unable to go on.

“There’s nothing more important to us, Monsieur Godin,” said Gamache, “than finding your daughter. There is, though, that state of emergency I mentioned. We are, for now, the only ones assigned to the search.”

Godin looked at the three of them, with new eyes. An accountant. A woman with a cane. A man covered in mud and smelling like—“You’re not needed?”

“Non.”

With some surprise Gamache realized he had become part of the refuse he’d spent his career salvaging.

But that didn’t mean he was useless. Just, maybe, repurposed.

“Come inside, out of the weather,” said Godin. “I’m sure this’s nothing. I’m sure Vivienne’s off with girlfriends, having fun, and I’m worrying for nothing. She’ll call soon.”

He searched their faces. Trying to find some reason to hope that what he’d just said could possibly be true. A patient in a doctor’s office, self-diagnosing the lump as a cyst. The confusion as exhaustion. The numbness as a pinched nerve.

The missing daughter on holiday. Soon to call. Full of apologies.

Gamache recognized the natural, and probably necessary, delusion. That allowed parents, children, spouses, to go on. At least temporarily.

“I’m sure that’s true,” said Cloutier, as they followed Homer through the neat house and into the kitchen.

But Vivienne’s father was watching Gamache.

“What do you think has happened to her?” Homer asked, sitting at the kitchen table.

Gamache, taking a seat across from Homer, could hear the fear creeping back into his voice. The dread. A frost quake, approaching.

“We don’t know. We’ve just come from her home—”

“That was never her home. This’s her home.”

And it felt like a home. Smelled like a home. It was modest in size, comfortable and welcoming, with slightly worn furniture. A La-Z-Boy was close to the woodstove, positioned perfectly to see the television.