Page 59 of A Better Man

“Are you all right?”

“Just fine.” Now Cloutier sounded insulted. “I thought you’d be pleased about this.”

Now she sounded hurt and a little irritated.

“I am. Look, it’s been a long, difficult day. You’ve done well. Leave it and start fresh in the morning. And for God’s sake, don’t contact this woman, right? We don’t want Tracey to know we’re interested in his private Instagram. Right?”

“Right.”

Lysette Cloutier hung up but did not take that advice.

She should have.

Clara put on the outdoor lights at the back of her home.

On warm summer evenings, she and her friends would sit in the garden having drinks and dinner. The lights were placed to illuminate the perennial beds of delphiniums and phlox and old garden roses.

Beds that had been first planted more than a century ago.

But on this cold April evening, Clara had climbed the ladder and repositioned the lights so that they pointed into the night, to where her garden met the river.

Now the lights illuminated an expanse of mud and the wall of sandbags.

“Floodlights,” said Gabri, standing beside Myrna in the kitchen and staring out the window.

They’d gathered in Clara’s home, partly out of habit, partly out of a need to be together, partly because it was the best vantage point to monitor the Bella Bella and still be protected.

And privately out of fear that this would be the last time.

The neighbors put the food they’d brought onto the kitchen island, buffet style. And now they gathered around the window, to see if they could see anything.

But Clara herself had left them and gone back to the doorway into her studio, where Reine-Marie joined her.

“You okay?”

“I’m well in body,” said Clara. “But considerably rumpled up in spirit.”

Reine-Marie laughed. Easily recognizing the lines from the Anne of Green Gables books she, her daughter, and now her granddaughters loved so much.