A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15) - Louise Penny Page 0,140

being a parent changes you.”

Cameron nodded. Remembering his own mounting terror as his first child grew in his wife’s womb. That maybe he’d be his father. Maybe he’d be impatient. Cruel. Violent.

Maybe he’d lash out. With fists. With a belt. With a baseball bat.

“She needed to face her abuser,” said Cameron. “Look him in the eye. Confront him.”

As he’d confronted his own father. Before his son was born.

Only then did he know, in his heart, that he would love his children, protect his children. He would never hit them. And he had not.

“Yes,” said Beauvoir. “Vivienne met her father on the bridge for one reason. To look him in the eye and tell him what he’d done to her. She had to do it for her own sake, but also for her daughter’s.”

“It wasn’t about the money,” said Lacoste. “That was the excuse to get him there.”

There was silence as some looked down at the floor, some stared into the fire, and others looked out the window, at the bright, cheerful day. At the three huge trees, swaying, playing in the breeze.

“Do you think her plan was to kill him?” asked Cameron.

“No,” said Gamache. “If it was, she’d have taken Tracey’s rifle. She had no weapon. I think it was as Chief Inspector Beauvoir says. She wanted her freedom. Not another burden. Killing her father would’ve bound him to her for the rest of her life.”

But oh, thought Armand, the courage it must have taken to face him. And in doing that, turn her back on all the justified rage. All that had maddened and tormented her her entire life.

To rid herself of all the subtle demonisms of life and thought, Vivienne had to stand on that bridge and face them. Face him.

Her courage was almost unimaginable.

And once free …

“Something went wrong,” Beauvoir said quietly. “Maybe she tripped. Maybe he pushed her away. If he did, I don’t think he meant to kill her.”

But maybe that was wishful thinking.

“I realize now that he almost told me what happened,” said Armand. “That afternoon, when the case was thrown out. We stood out there”—he nodded toward the path along the Bella Bella—“and I told him how sorry I was. He talked about forgiveness and asked if some things were too horrible to forgive. I thought he was talking about Tracey’s acquittal. He asked if a sincere apology really helped.” Armand looked into the fire, remembering Homer’s worn face. The exhaustion in those eyes. “I think he told her, on the bridge that night, how sorry he was. And asked forgiveness.”

“Do you think he meant it?” Reine-Marie asked.

“I want to believe he did. Yes.”

Mostly, though, Armand hoped and prayed that the last thing Vivienne Godin saw wasn’t the monster, coming at her out of the dark again. But her father, reaching out. Trying to save her.

They’d never know the full truth. But they could hope.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

“So I’m confused,” said Gabri.

“We know you are,” said Ruth, patting his hand. “And so’s Olivier. Gays and confused.”

“Homer killed his own daughter?” said Gabri, ignoring her.

“It looks like it,” said Olivier.

They were sitting in the bistro over after-dinner drinks.

Gabri was shaking his head. “It’s all so sad.”

“And confusing?” asked Ruth.

“Yes. Why would he do it?”

“Those cops explained it all,” said Ruth. “Weren’t you listening?”

“By ‘those cops,’ you mean Armand, Jean-Guy, and Isabelle?” asked Olivier.

“Whoever. But yes, that’s what they said. Homer did it.”

They, of course, had said slightly more than that.

The villagers had seen Armand and Jean-Guy, Isabelle and the other officers return to Three Pines that morning.

Jean-Guy, wet, cold, bruised, had gone straight to the Gamache home.

While Armand, disheveled, slightly wild-eyed, hand wrapped in a scarf, had walked with Isabelle and the others to the path through the woods. That took them to the bend in the river, where the Bella Bella left Three Pines.

A few minutes later, an ambulance, Sûreté cars, the coroner returned.

Homer was discovered exactly where Vivienne had been found. Knocking gently up against a huge tree trunk.

Only then did Armand and Isabelle return home, watched by Clara, Gabri, Olivier. By Billy Williams and Myrna. By Ruth, with Rosa, who was silent for once. Though she did watch Armand with sad eyes. But then, ducks were often sad.

By that afternoon the sun was out in full force. Snowdrops and fragrant, delicate lily of the valley were beginning to appear. Crocuses broke through the grass of the village green.

Life had not just been restored, it had burst forth, as Isabelle and Jean-Guy, Armand and