The Long Way Home

“This way.” Jean-Guy pointed and led them down a slight hill, along a narrow side street, taking them further and further away from the tourist hubbub.

These streets, not much more than alleyways, were lined with row homes and old-fashioned, unfashionable businesses. Hardware stores, family-run drugstores, dépanneurs selling cigarettes and lottery tickets and soft, white POM bakery bread. Every now and then they caught a glimpse of grayish blue between the bright clapboard and fieldstone buildings. The river. So vast, so wide it looked like the ocean. Jean-Guy Beauvoir led them away from the tourist crush, into an area only locals knew.

“Over here.”

They followed Beauvoir to a shabby inn.

“But we’ve already asked here,” said Clara. “Haven’t we?”

She turned around. Beauvoir’s serpentine route had disoriented her.

“Oui,” he said. “But we came in the front way. This is the back.”

“And you expect a different answer depending on which door we go through?” asked Myrna. “I suspect Peter still isn’t here, even if we climb in through the window.”

Which, she thought, they might have to do if they didn’t find a place for the night soon.

“We’re asking a different question.” Beauvoir now looked like his hair was on fire. “Through here.”

He led them through a small archway, and suddenly they were confronted with the thing only hinted at through the cracks between buildings. Like catching glimpses of a huge creature, but just its tail, or nose, or teeth.

But here it was before them, exploding into view as they walked through the archway.

The St. Lawrence River. Magnificent, wild, eternal. Fought over, painted, turned into poetry and music. It stretched into infinity before them.

“Where’re the toilets?” Beauvoir asked a server who came out onto the hidden terrace. Not waiting for an answer, Jean-Guy disappeared inside.

Only one other table was occupied in this small fieldstone courtyard. Two locals drank beer, smoked pungent Gitanes and played backgammon. They looked at the newcomers with vague interest, then went back to their game.

Clara chose a table right up against the wooden railing. On the other side was a sheer drop. And uninterrupted views of the baie of Baie-Saint-Paul.

They ordered iced teas and nachos.

Clara looked down at the place mat in front of her. As in many restaurants and brasseries across Québec, the place mat had a schematic of the village, not to scale, showing its history, as well as spots of interest and businesses. Inns, restaurants, galleries, and boutiques that had paid to be placed on the tourist map.

Peter had been here. Perhaps not to this very terrasse, but to this area.

“I’d forgotten that Cirque du Soleil started in Baie-Saint-Paul,” said Myrna, reading her place mat. “Some places are like that.”

“Like what?” asked Jean-Guy, returning from the toilet.

“Hot spots,” said Myrna. “Of creativity. Of creation. Three Pines is one. Charlevoix is obviously another.”

“I see there was a syphilis epidemic in the late seventeen hundreds,” said Jean-Guy, reading the place mat. “Called the Evil of Baie-Saint-Paul. Quite a little hot spot.”

He helped himself to nachos.

“How’d you know this terrasse was here?” Clara asked.

“It’s my superpower.”

“Jean-Guy Beauvoir,” said Gamache. “Boy Wonder.”

“They think we’re the sidekicks,” Beauvoir whispered to Myrna.

“Oh, how I’d love to get you on my couch,” she replied.

“Get in line, sister.”

Myrna laughed.

“I have an uncanny ability to find bathrooms,” he said.

“Seems a limited sort of superpower,” said Myrna.

“Yeah, well, if you really had to go, which power would you rather have? Flight? Invisibility? Or the ability to find a toilet?”

“Invisibility might be useful, but point taken, Kato.”

“I told you, I’m not the sidekick.” He gestured surreptitiously toward Gamache.

“Have you been here before?” Clara asked. “Is that how you knew?”

“Non.” He looked out across the ravine and seemed momentarily caught by the view. Then he returned his eyes to Clara. And in them she saw trees on the shoreline desperate for root. And an endless river.

“It’s not magic, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I could tell there was a drop-off, and when we first came here I suspected no innkeeper would have access to this view and not take advantage of it.”