The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)

by Louise Penny

In Beauvoir’s experience Darwin was way wrong. The fittest didn’t survive. They were killed by the idiocy of their neighbors, who continued to bumble along oblivious.

“Do you have a gun?” Beauvoir whispered as they ran, crouched, to the corner of the house. Gamache shook his head. Really, thought Beauvoir. There were times he just felt like shooting the Chief himself.

“They’re dangerous,” said Gamache. “Which is why he,” Beauvoir jerked his head toward the back of the property, “probably has one.”

And what a tale those eyes told Gamache. In them he saw the infant, the boy, the young man, afraid. Never certain what he would find in his father. Would he be loving and kind and warm today? Or would he sizzle the skin off his son? With a look, a word. Leaving the boy naked and ashamed. Knowing himself to be weak and needy, stupid and selfish. So that the boy grew an outer hull to withstand assault. But while those skins saved tender young souls, Gamache knew, they soon stopped protecting and became the problem. Because while the hard outer shell kept the hurt at bay, it also kept out the light. And inside the frightened little soul became something else entirely, nurtured only in darkness.

Branches snapped back so that it felt as though they were being spanked by nature. Beauvoir, instructed to keep his heels down and his hands steady, quickly lost both stirrups and clung to the gray mane. Regaining the stirrups he straightened up in time to catch another branch in the face. After that it was an inelegant, inglorious exercise in holding on. “Tabarnac, Merde. Duck.”

All his life he’d been afraid, and all his life it had marred his judgment.

“Most unhappiness comes from not being able to sit quietly in a room.”

Every surface of the kitchen was packed with colorful jars filled with jams and jellies, pickles and chutneys. And it looked as though Gabri would keep this up forever. Silently preserving everything he could.

“Did you know he’s gay?” “He’s probably straight and isn’t telling us.”

She rose up into the air and the jilted earth let out a sigh. She rose up past telephone poles and rooftops of houses where the earthbound hid. She rose up but remembered to politely wave good-bye

Clara was a fault-magnet. Criticisms, critiques, blame flew through the air and clung to her.

Well, she’d had enough. She sat up straighter in her seat. Fuck him. But, then again, maybe she should apologize and stand up for herself after the solo show.

In the letter she said that her father had said something to her. Something horrible and unforgivable.” “The brutal telling.”

It’s because we’re sickened by what people can do. People goaded by others, emboldened. Infected by cynicism and fear and suspicion. By jealousy and greed. They turn on each other. I want nothing to do with them. Let me work quietly in a garden, in the woods. People are horrible creatures. You must know that, Chief Inspector. You’ve seen what they can do to each other.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

“Pardon?” “It’s a Buddhist belief. One of the states of man from the Wheel of Life. The more you eat the hungrier you get. It’s considered the very worst of the lives. Trying to fill a hole that only gets deeper. Fill it with food or money or power. With the admiration of others. Whatever.” “The Hungry Ghost,”

She rose up into the air and the jilted earth let out a sigh. She rose up past telephone poles and rooftops of houses where the earthbound hid. She rose up sleeker than the sparrows that swirled around her like a jubilant cyclone She rose up, past satellites and every cell phone down on earth rang at once.

But there was no hiding from Conscience. Not in new homes and new cars. In travel. In meditation or frantic activity. In children, in good works. On tiptoes or bended knee. In a big career. Or a small cabin. It would find you. The past always did. Which was why, Gamache knew, it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.

And found you.