A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #15)

by Louise Penny

“Merde.” “Merde?” Myrna Landers looked over her bowl of café au lait at her friend. “I’m sorry,” said Clara Morrow. “I meant to say fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.”

Noli timere. It’s Latin. Do you know what it means?” He looked around the room. “Neither did I,” he admitted when no one spoke. “I had to look it up. It means ‘Be Not Afraid.’”

Hearing her laughter as she imagined her husband in suit, tie, and pink swan around his waist, directing emergency operations, went some way to healing his heart.

“Maybe Monsieur Godin’s right. Sometimes we have to do something stupid.” It did not seem to Isabelle Lacoste a great addition to the Sûreté motto. Service, integrity, justice, and, occasionally, stupidity.

“Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said?”

When does a cucumber become a pickle? It was the question Gamache sometimes asked when contemplating human behavior.

A self-fulfilling prophecy, thought Gamache. How often we made our worst fears come true, by behaving as though they already were.

“Pour yourself a vat of wine, cut a huge slice of chocolate cake, sit by the fire, and know you’re loved.

It was a familiar bit of mutual self-mockery. Dear God, thought Isabelle. How’re they going to live without each other?