Daddy. Going out for dinner with friends. Expected back to kiss him good night.
“It could be her name,” said Armand.
“But you doubt it. You think it’s something else.”
“Oh God,” said Olivier, coming over to check on them and looking out the window. “I don’t think I’m ready.”
“Neither are we,” admitted Reine-Marie, following his gaze to the snowy village green, now white. “You think you are, but it always comes as an unpleasant surprise.”
“And arrives earlier and earlier,” said Armand.
“Exactly. And seems more and more bitter,” said Olivier.
“Still, there’s beauty,” said Armand, and received a stern look from Olivier.
“Beauty? You’re kidding, right?” he said.
“No, it’s there. Of course, it can stick around far too long,” said Armand.
“You’re telling me,” said Olivier.
“It gets old,” said Reine-Marie.
“Gets old?” asked Olivier.
“But having the right tires helps,” she said.
Olivier put the empty croissant basket back down on the table. “What’re you talking about?”
“Winter, of course,” said Reine-Marie. “The first snow.”
“What’re you talking about?” asked Armand.
“Ruth,” said Olivier, pointing out the window at the elderly woman with a cane, and a duck, approaching the bistro. Old, cold and bitter.
She stepped inside and scanned the room.
“Yes,” said Olivier. “The right tires would solve that problem.”
“Fag,” muttered Ruth as she limped by them.
“Hag,” muttered Olivier as they watched the elderly poet take her usual seat by the fireplace. She opened the pine blanket box used as a coffee table and took out a handful of papers.
“She’s helping me sort through the stuff we found in the walls when we renovated,” said Olivier. “You remember?”
Armand nodded. Olivier and his partner, Gabri, had turned an abandoned hardware store into the bistro many years ago, and in updating the electricity and plumbing, they’d opened the walls and found all sorts of things. Mummified squirrels, clothing. But mostly they’d found papers. Newspapers, magazines, advertisements, catalogues used as insulation as though words could keep winter at bay.
Enough heated words had been hurled at the Québec winter, but all had failed to stop the snow.
In the chaos of the renovations, the papers had simply been dumped in the pine blanket box and forgotten. The box had sat in front of the hearth for years, unopened. Countless cafés au lait, and glasses of wine, and plates of regional cheese and paté and baguette, and feet, had rested on top of it, until the papers had been rediscovered a few months earlier.
“I doubt there’s anything valuable,” said Olivier, returning to the Gamaches’ table after taking Ruth her breakfast of Irish coffee and bacon.
“How is that woman still alive?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Bile,” said Olivier. “She’s pure bile. It never dies.” He looked at Reine-Marie. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help her?”
“Well, who wouldn’t want to work with pure bile?” she said.
“Once she gets a few drinks in her, she becomes simply nasty, as you know,” said Olivier. “Please. Please. It’s taken Ruth two months to get the pile down an inch. The problem is, she doesn’t just scan, she reads everything. Yesterday she spent the whole day on one National Geographic from 1920.”
“I would too, mon beau,” said Reine-Marie. “But I tell you what. If Ruth accepts the help, I’d love to do it.”
After breakfast, she joined Ruth on the sofa and started on the blanket box, while Armand and Henri walked home.
“Armand,” shouted Olivier, and when Gamache turned he saw the owner of the bistro at the door waving something.
It was the dossier.
Armand jogged back to get it.
“Did you read it?” he asked. His voice was just sharp enough for Olivier to hesitate.
“Non.”
But under the steady stare, Olivier cracked.
“Maybe. Okay, yes. I glanced at it. Just her picture. And her name. And a bit about her background.”
“Merci,” said Armand, taking the file and turning away.
As he walked home, Armand wondered why he’d snapped at Olivier. The file was marked “Confidential” but he’d shown it to Reine-Marie, and it wasn’t exactly a state secret. And who wouldn’t be tempted to look at something marked “Confidential”?
If they knew anything about Olivier, it was that he had no immunity to temptation.
Gamache also wondered why he’d left it behind. Had he really forgotten it?
Was it a mistake, or was it on purpose?
* * *
The snow returned by early afternoon, blowing in over the hills and swirling around, trapped there. Turning Three Pines into a snow globe.
Reine-Marie called and said she was having lunch at the bistro. Clara and Myrna had joined the excavation of the blanket box, and they’d be spending the afternoon eating and reading.
It sounded to Armand