The Long Way Home

The other man shook his head and clicked his tongue.

“You said the place was strange. What did you mean?” Gamache asked again.

“Where it was, for one thing. Is that where you’d choose to live, if you could’ve had that?”

He waved at the river.

“Most of the other artist retreats or communities or whatever you call them take advantage of the view. And why not?”

Gamache considered that. “Why not?” he asked.

The elderly man shrugged. “Privacy, I guess.”

“Or secrecy,” said the other man, his head bowed, studying the board. He looked across at his friend. “For orgies.”

They laughed and Gamache returned to the table, and considered what a fine line it was, between privacy and secrecy.

Their drinks had arrived by then.

“What were you talking about?” Myrna nodded toward the backgammon players.

“They knew No Man,” said Gamache. “And recognized the place from Peter’s painting.”

“Did they know Peter?” asked Clara.

“No.” He told them what the players had said, then he pulled his notebook and pen from his pocket and set them on the table. “Where’re we at?”

He looked for his pen, but Clara had taken it and turned her paper place mat over.

Gamache remembered then who was in charge. And who wasn’t.

THIRTY

“Did Peter ever talk to you about Scotland?” Clara asked Chartrand.

“Scotland?”

“Dumfries, actually,” said Myrna.

“The Garden of Cosmic Speculation,” said Gamache.

Chartrand looked momentarily startled, as though his companions had turned into lunatics.

“Or hares,” said Clara.

“Hair hair?” Chartrand touched his head. “Or the musical?”

“The rabbit,” said Myrna, and could see it wasn’t really a clarification.

“What’re you talking about?”

“None of this sounds familiar?” asked Gamache.

“No, it doesn’t sound familiar,” said Chartrand, exasperated. “It doesn’t even sound sensible.” He turned to Clara. “What did you mean about Scotland?”

“He was there last winter. Visited a garden.”

Clara explained what they’d learned about Peter and the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, expecting any moment to hear Chartrand laugh.

But he didn’t. He listened and nodded.

“The rabbit turned from flesh to stone, and back again,” said Chartrand, as though that was a perfectly reasonable thing for a rabbit to do. “Peter’s river turns from sorrow to joy, and back again. He’s learned the miracle of transformation. He can turn his pain into paint. And his painting into ecstasy.”

“It’s what makes a great artist,” said Clara.

“Not many get there,” said Chartrand. “But I think if Peter’s courage holds and he keeps exploring, he’ll be like few others. Van Gogh, Picasso, Vermeer, Gagnon. Clara Morrow. Creating a whole new form, one that doesn’t distinguish between thought and emotion. Between natural and manufactured. Water, and stone, and living tissue. All one. Peter will be among the greats.”

“It took a hare in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation for him to see it,” said Myrna.

“It took Peter growing into a brave man,” said Gamache. “Brave enough not to explain it away.”

“If we find No Man, we find Peter,” said Myrna.

“And maybe the tenth muse,” said Clara. “I’d like to meet her.”

“You already have,” said Chartrand. “You might not know who she is, but she’s someone in your life.”

“Ruth?” Clara mouthed to Myrna, and opened her eyes wide in mock-horror.

“Rosa?” Myrna mouthed back.

Clara chuckled at the thought and looked over the railing, to the woods and the rocks and the river. She wondered if the tenth muse could be a place. Like Charlevoix was for Gagnon. Home.

“I don’t understand why the Greeks would erase the tenth muse,” Myrna said. “You’d think she’d be more important than the other nine Muses, since the Greeks revered art.”

“Maybe that’s why,” said Gamache.

Across the terrasse, the backgammon players stopped rolling the dice and looked at him.

“Power,” he said. “Maybe the tenth muse was too powerful. Maybe she was banished because she was a threat. And what could be more threatening than freedom? Isn’t that what inspiration is? It can’t be locked up, or even channeled. It can’t be contained or controlled. And that’s what the tenth muse was offering.”