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

by Louise Penny

All his professional life Chief Inspector Gamache had asked questions and hunted answers. And not just answers, but facts. But, much more elusive and dangerous than facts, what he really looked for were feelings. Because they would lead him to the truth.

Armand Gamache considered himself more an explorer than a hunter. The goal was to discover. And what he discovered could still surprise him.

no one was as bad as the worst thing they’d done.

Armand Gamache had seen the worst. But he’d also seen the best. Often in the same person.

The village had the rhythm, the cadence, of a piece of music.

His life had never had a rhythm. Each day had been unpredictable and he had seemed to thrive on that. He’d thought that was part of his nature. He’d never known routine. Until now.

Turmoil shook loose all sorts of unpleasant truths. But it took peace to examine them.

Not to hide from the sorrow, but to stop collecting more. And in this peaceful place to look at his own burdens. And to begin to let them go.

We love life, thought Reine-Marie as she watched Ruth and Rosa sitting side by side, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. Nietzsche.

The moth still fluttered around the light, butting and bumping against the bulb. Was it warmth it wanted, Reine-Marie wondered, was it light the moth sought? Does it hurt? Reine-Marie wondered. The singeing of the wings, the little legs, like threads, landing on the white-hot glass, then pushing away. Does it hurt that the light doesn’t give the moth what it so desperately desires?

It had found its light. It would never give up. It couldn’t.

It was in the moth’s nature to do what it was doing. And Reine-Marie could not stop it, no matter how much she might want to.

often questions that were more complex and human. About uncertainties, about insecurities. About her fears. Gamache listened and sometimes talked about his own experiences. Reassuring her that what she felt was natural, and normal, and healthy. He’d felt all those things almost every day of his career. Not that he was a fraud, but that he was afraid. When the phone rang, or there was a knock on the door, he worried there would be a life-and-death issue he could not resolve.

Clara Morrow painted portraits. And in the process, she often painted herself.

Clara Morrow didn’t actually paint faces, she painted emotions, feelings, hidden, disguised, locked and guarded behind a pleasant façade.

“I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.”

Armand Gamache did not want to have to be brave. Not anymore. Now all he wanted was to be at peace. But, like Clara, he knew he could not have one without the other.

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.

He was a good man with bad news.

His deep brown eyes glowed. It was unmistakable. Not that he was enjoying this, but that he was good at it. He was like a miner, carrying a torch. Illuminating dark passages. Digging deep, often dangerously deep. To get at what was buried there.

He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other.

Myrna Landers stood at the window of her loft, looking between the panes. The glass was so old it had imperfections, distortions, but she’d gotten used to seeing the world that way, and made allowances.

But the wounds that seemed to hurt him the most weren’t even his own.

They’d all come here to begin again.

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.

Each morning she saw Armand read. And then she watched him put down the mysterious book and stare into space. And each morning she saw the demons approach, and swarm and surround him until they found their way in. Through his head, through his thoughts. And from there they gripped his heart. She saw the terror possess him. And she saw him fight it off.

But Peter Morrow wasn’t Lucifer, the fallen angel. He was just a troubled man who lived in his head, not realizing that Paradise was only ever found in the heart. Unfortunately for Peter, feelings lived there too. And they were almost always messy. Peter Morrow did not like messes.

It was messy. Unruly. Risky. Scary. So much could go wrong. Failure was always close at hand. But so was brilliance.

Peter Morrow took no risks. He neither failed nor succeeded. There were no valleys, but neither were there mountains. Peter’s landscape was flat. An endless, predictable desert.

How shattering it must have been, then, to have played it safe all his life and been expelled anyway...

Sometimes the only way up is down. Sometimes the only way forward is to back up.

“No heart, no art,”

After pursuing many people over many decades, he recognized the difference between fleeing and seeking.

Noli timere.”

Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.”