Clara Morrow had become one of their closest friends and she knew him better than that.Īrmand Gamache had grown increasingly curious. Was it because she'd noticed him alone up here, once Reine-Marie and Henri had left, and thought he might be lonely? Thought he might like company?īut he doubted that. Head tilted, a slightly goofy expression on his face, Henri listened, while Armand and Reine-Marie fetched.Īll was right with the world, thought Gamache as he sat quietly in the early August sunshine.Įxcept for Clara, who'd taken to joining him on the bench each morning. It was, Gamache recognized, the way most people listened when they heard on the wind the wisps of a particularly beloved piece of music. The dog would race after the ball, then stop and stare into thin air, moving his gigantic satellite ears this way and that. Tossing the tennis ball ahead of them, they ended up chasing it down themselves when Henri became distracted by a fluttering leaf, or a black fly, or the voices in his head. Not a wound, but a wonder.Įvery morning he went for a walk with his wife, Reine-Marie, and their German shepherd Henri. Then his eyes dropped to the village in the valley below them, as though held in the palm of an ancient hand. Though that didn't mean she had to heed it.Īrmand Gamache looked across to the deep green midsummer forest and the mountains that rolled into eternity. Instead, he'd let her be, but had taken a step back himself. No, thought Clara, as she watched him in profile now. It was a small shove from a man who rarely pushed people away. She'd even asked him about it, a week or so earlier, when she'd first joined him on the new bench overlooking the old village.Īrmand Gamache had smiled as he said it, softening his blunt answer. She'd become slightly obsessed with this book. Getting closer and closer to the bookmark, but always stopping before he arrived.Īnd each morning Armand Gamache placed the slim volume into the pocket of his light summer coat before she could see the title. It was as though it didn't really matter. No old receipt, no used plane or train or bus ticket to guide him back to where he'd left the story. With nothing, Clara noticed, to mark his spot. Instead he let it fall, with gravity, closed. A place he approached, but never reached.Īrmand didn't snap the book shut. It remained where it was like a stone, marking a place near the end. There was a bookmark, but he never moved it. He took off his half-moon reading glasses, then closed the book and slipped it into his pocket. Reading.Īs she got closer, Clara Morrow saw Gamache do it again. Instead, each morning the large man sat on the wooden bench, his head bent over a book.
The Rivière Bella Bella wound between the mountains, a silver thread in the sunlight.Īnd, so easy to overlook when faced with such grandeur, the modest little village of Three Pines lay in the valley.Īrmand was not hiding from view.
Stretched out before Gamache were the mountains, rolling from Québec to Vermont, covered in thick forests.
Places in a long way home by louise penny full#
A benign act that seemed to yearn for a shadow to hide in.Īnd yet here he was in the full light of the new day, sitting on the bench Gilles Sandon had recently made and placed on the brow of the hill. How could it matter? But for a man not given to secrets, this gesture had begun to look not simply secretive, but furtive.
The first time.īut why did Armand Gamache keep doing it?Ĭlara felt silly for even wondering. As Clara Morrow approached, she wondered if he'd repeat the same small gesture he'd done every morning.
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