Page 5

Florence, her cheeks glowing red from the cold, was impatient to join the other children on the rink.

Her younger sister, Zora, was silent and leery. She seemed far from sure that strapping huge razors to her feet and stepping onto a frozen pond would be fun. Or a good idea.

“Dad,” came a shout from the Gamache home.

“Oui?”

Daniel, tall, solid, stood on their front porch in his jeans and plaid flannel shirt. He was holding up a cell phone. “You have a call. Work.”

“Can you take a message, s’il te plaît?”

“I tried, but apparently it’s important.”

Armand stood up, slipping slightly on his own skates. “Do they sound panicked?”

“Non.”

“Can you let them know I’m doing something important myself, and will get back to them in twenty minutes?”

“D’accord.” Daniel disappeared inside.

“Maybe Jean-Guy should take the call?” suggested Reine-Marie, also standing up and far steadier on her skates than her husband.

They looked up the hill that led out of the village. Their son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and his son were trudging back up to the top of the slope. Jean-Guy was pulling the new toboggan, a gift for Honoré from Père Noël.

On his very first sled run, the boy had clung to his father and screamed the whole way down. A shriek of delight, as Henri, the Gamaches’ German shepherd, bounded after them.

They’d hurtled down the hill, past the New Forest, past St. Thomas’s church, past the fieldstone and brick and clapboard homes. To tumble, laughing, into the soft snow on the village green.

“Some lungs your grandson has,” said Clara Morrow. She and her best friend, Myrna Landers, were standing outside Myrna’s bookstore, rum toddies warming their hands.

“Is it me, or was he actually screaming a word?” asked Myrna.

“Non,” said Reine-Marie quickly, not meeting her friends’ eyes. “Just a scream.”

Just then a piercing shout filled the air as Honoré and his father took off again.

“That’s my boy,” said the old poet Ruth, sitting on the bench between Florence and Zora, her duck Rosa muttering in her arms.

“What’s Honoré saying, Papa?” asked Florence.

“He sounds like Rosa,” said Zora. “What does ‘fu—’ ”

“I’ll tell you later,” Armand said and glowered at Ruth, who chuckled, while Rosa muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck” and looked smug. But then ducks often did.

Rosa and Armand had a brief staring match, before Armand blinked.

For the next few minutes, he and Reine-Marie supported their granddaughters as they slid and stumbled on the ice. These were the first steps of what would become a lifetime of skating. And one day they’d teach their own granddaughters.

“Look, look!” Florence shouted. “Look at me. Fffu—”

“Oui,” her grandfather interrupted and saw Ruth on the bench not even trying to hide her delight.

It was midday, and they’d all been invited back to Clara’s for a lunch of pea soup, bread warm from the oven, an assortment of Québec cheeses, and pie from Sarah’s boulangerie.

“And hot chocolate,” said Clara.

“That better be code for booze,” said Ruth, as she hauled herself to her feet.