The Long Way Home

“But the website doesn’t show a stone circle, by the stairs,” said Clara.

*   *   *

“And then they turned back into rabbits,” said Alphonse. “They came alive again.”

His eyes shone, not with fear, but with wonderment. The astonishment of an elderly man, closer to death than life.

“Did you ever go back?” Stuart asked.

“Every night. I go back every night. But I don’t take my rifle anymore.”

Alphonse smiled. Constable Stuart smiled.

*   *   *

When the others left to get dressed, Gamache stayed behind.

“Do you mind?” he asked Clara, and she shook her head.

“Make some more coffee,” she waved toward the old electric perk. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

While the coffee perked, Gamache carried a chair over, to face the wall of paintings. He sat and stared.

“Oh, God,” came the familiar voice. “Am I walking in on something I shouldn’t know about?”

Gamache stood up. Myrna was in the doorway holding a loaf of what he could smell was fresh banana bread.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She waved her hand up and down to indicate both his attire and his very presence.

He looked down and realized he was still in his dressing gown and slippers. He pulled the gown more securely around him.

“Did you and Clara have a slumber party?” Myrna asked, putting the warm loaf on the kitchen counter.

“This is Clara’s house?” he asked, apparently bewildered. “Damn. Not again.”

Myrna laughed and, walking to the counter, she cut and buttered thick slices of the loaf while Gamache poured coffees.

“What’s up?” Myrna asked.

He brought her up to speed on the Garden of Cosmic Speculation.

She peppered him with questions, all of which started with why and none of which he could answer.

“That’s better,” said Clara, returning to the kitchen and pouring herself a coffee. All three took their seats and stared at the latest paintings as though waiting for the show to begin.

If the works Peter painted in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation looked like his head had exploded onto the paper, these later ones looked like his guts had exploded.

“Something happened to Peter in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation,” said Gamache. He found he liked saying the name and pledged to say it every morning while in his own garden, speculating. “He left and came back to Canada. And painted these.”

“How do we know these weren’t painted in the garden too?” asked Myrna, indicating with her banana bread the three canvases nailed to the wall.

“Because Peter gave those three”—Gamache pointed with his slice to the paintings on the table—“to Bean in the winter. When he’d returned from Dumfries. He only mailed these bigger ones later.”

“Ergo, he painted them on his return to Canada,” said Clara.

“Ergo?” asked Myrna.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to use it,” said Clara.

“Not now that I hear how it really sounds.”

They fell silent, staring at the works.

“Do you think they’re landscapes too?” Myrna finally asked.

“I do,” said Armand, though he sounded not completely convinced. It didn’t look like any landscape he’d ever seen. Besides the flying lips, nothing really even looked like anything.

“Clara,” said Gamache slowly, elongating her name. Buying time to sort his thoughts. “What did you say you do with your failed paintings?”

“I keep them and bring them out when I’m between projects.”

Gamache nodded slowly. “And what do you do with them?”

“I told you before,” said Clara, confused by the question. “I look at them.”

Gamache said nothing and Clara wondered what he was getting at, and then her eyes widened. She’d remembered what she did with her old paintings.

She got to her feet and, pulling the nails out of the wall, she took down Peter’s lip painting.

“The only reason we put these paintings up this way around,” she said as Myrna and Armand went to help, “is because it’s how Bean had them on the bedroom wall. But suppose Bean was wrong? There’s no signature to tell which way is up.”

She nailed it back into place. Upside down. And all three stepped back. To examine it.

Not upside down at all, but finally the right way around.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Myrna.