The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #10)

by Louise Penny

he’d come to agree with Sister Prejean that no one was as bad as the worst thing they’d done.

It was rare for any of them to lock their doors, though they knew from some experience that it would be a good idea. But the villagers also knew that what kept them safe in their beds wasn’t a lock. And what would wound them wasn’t an open door.

There was a world out there. A world filled with beauty and love and goodness. And cruelty and killers, and vile acts contemplated and being committed at this very moment. Peter had left and been gobbled up by that world. And it was coming closer. Coming here. Nibbling at the edges of the village. He felt his skin tingle, and the sudden, overwhelming need to get up. To go. To do something. To stop it. It was like an out-of-body experience, so powerful was the urge to act. He gripped the edge of the bench, closed his eyes, and did as Myrna had taught him. Deep breath. In. And out. “And don’t just breathe,” he heard her calm, melodic voice. “Inhale. Take in the smells. Listen to the sounds. The real world. Not the one you’re conjuring.” He breathed in, and smelled the pine forest, smelled the damp earth. Felt the cool, fresh morning air on his cheeks. He heard, far off, the excited yapping of a puppy. And he followed that back. The puppy led him through the howls and shrieks and alarms in his head. He held on to the sound. To the scents. As Myrna had taught him. “Follow anything you can,” she’d advised. “Back to reality. Back from the edge.” And he did. Deep breath in. The cut grass, the sweet hay by the side of the road. Deep breath out. And finally, when the alarms were dulled and his heart stopped pounding, pounding, he thought he could hear the forest itself. The leaves not rustling, but murmuring to him. Telling him he’d made it. Home. He was safe. Gamache let go of the...

He wasn’t addicted to pain, to panic, but he might be addicted to the bliss of having them stop. The mind, he knew, really was its own place. Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat. A sense of wrong,” Gamache continued the quote. “A homesickness, a lovesickness.”

“Sometimes the magic works?”

“Muses work all day long,” said Ruth. “And then at night get together and dance.”