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

by Louise Penny

Peter had been pleased for his wife, accompanying her to the vernissage. A smile on his handsome face. And a stone in his heart. That’s what the end so often looked like, Gamache knew. Not the smile, not even the stone, but the crevice in between.

For Myrna’s generation the smells that calmed were manufactured. Melting asphalt meant summer.

There were Tang and gas fumes and long-gone photocopy ink. All comforted her, for reasons that beggared understanding, because they had nothing to do with understanding.

Her voice was flat, in a way Myrna recognized from years of listening to people trying to rein in their emotions. To squash them down, flatten them, and with them their words and their voices. Desperately trying to make the horrific sound mundane. But Clara’s eyes betrayed her. Begging Myrna for reassurance. Peter was alive. Painting. He’d simply lost track of time. There was nothing to worry about. He was nowhere near Samarra.

Sometimes the only way up is down. Sometimes the only way forward is to back up. It seemed that was what Peter had done. Thrown out all he knew and started again. In his mid-fifties.

Some of the dirt turned out to be bruises and he stopped scrubbing. He gripped the porcelain sink and leaned toward the mirror, staring into his wide eyes. He knew that lawyers were taught never to ask a question unless they were prepared for the answer. They did not like surprises. But cops were the opposite. They were almost always surprised. And rarely in a good way. Robert Stuart wondered if he was prepared for the answer that awaited him.