would stay the night, as would Ruth. She and Rosa were put on the mattress closest to the woodstove in the kitchen.
In the early-morning hours, after stoking the fire, Armand bent down and tucked the duvet closer around Reine-Marie.
Man hands on happiness to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Oddly enough, Benedict’s version of the famous poem now pushed the original to the back of his mind.
Then he heard a stirring in the other bed. And a voice came to him out of the darkness.
“I think I know who Bertha Baumgartner was,” said Ruth.
CHAPTER 9
Reine-Marie, eyes half open, half asleep and half awake, slid her hand along the bedding toward Armand, feeling the curved ridges of the blow-up mattress.
But that side of the bed was cold. Not simply cooling. Cold.
She opened her eyes and saw soft early-morning light through the windows.
Flames were roiling in the woodstove. It had been stoked recently.
She got up onto one elbow. The kitchen was empty. Not even Ruth and Rosa. Or Henri and Gracie.
Putting on her dressing gown and slippers, she tried the light switch. The power was still out. Then she noticed a note on the pine kitchen table.
Ma Chère,
Ruth, Rosa, Henri and Gracie and I have gone to the bistro to talk to Olivier and Gabri. Join us if you can.
Love, Armand
(6:50 a.m.)
Reine-Marie looked at her watch. It was now 7:12.
She went over to the window. Snow had climbed halfway up, blocking most of the light and almost all the view. But Reine-Marie could see that the blizzard had blown itself out and left in its wake, as the worst storms often did, a luminous day.
Though it was, as any good Quebecker knew, an illusion. The sun was gleaming off its fangs.
* * *
“My God,” Reine-Marie gasped as the warmth of the bistro enveloped her. “Why do we live here?”
Her cheeks were bright red and her eyes, tearing up, took time to adjust to the dim light. The short walk over to the bistro through the brilliant sunshine had rendered her almost snow-blind. It wasn’t enough that the bitter winter wanted to kill them, first it had to blind.
“Minus thirty-five,” said Olivier proudly, as though he were responsible.
“But it’s a dry cold,” said Gabri. “And no wind.”
It was their refrain when trying to comfort themselves as they looked out on a day so inviting and so brutal.
“I smell something,” said Reine-Marie after taking off her coat and hat and mitts.
“It’s not me,” said Ruth. But Rosa was looking a little sheepish. Though ducks often did.
“I was wondering why you two braved the cold to come here,” said Reine-Marie, following her nose, and the aroma, to the table and the empty plates smeared with maple syrup.
Armand shrugged in an exaggerated Gallic manner. “Some things are worth risking life and limb.”
Olivier came out of the kitchen with a plate of warm blueberry crêpes, sausages, and maple syrup, and a café au lait.
“We left some for you,” said Gabri.
“Armand made us,” said Ruth.
“Oh heaven,” she said, sitting down and putting her hands around the mug. “Merci.” Then a thought struck her. “Do you have power?”
“Non. A generator.”
“Hooked up to the espresso machine?”
“And the oven and fridge,” said Gabri.
“But not the lights?”
“Priorities,” said Olivier. “Are you complaining?”
“Mon Dieu, no,” she said.
Her eyes settled on Armand. For all the kidding, she knew her husband would not bring an elderly woman into the bitter cold without a good reason.
“You came here with Ruth for more than crêpes.”
“Oui,” he said. “Ruth knows who Bertha Baumgartner was.”
“Why didn’t you tell us last night?”
“Because it only came to me this morning. But I wasn’t really sure.”
Reine-Marie raised her brows. It was unlike Ruth to be anything other than absolutely sure of herself. It was others she doubted.
“I needed to speak to Gabri and Olivier, to see what they thought,” said Ruth.
“And?”
“Did you ever hear of the Baroness?” asked Gabri, taking a seat beside Reine-Marie.
It did sound vaguely familiar. Like a memory of a memory. But it was so removed that Reine-Marie knew she would never get it.
She shook her head.
“We were introduced to her when we first moved here,” said Olivier. “Years ago. By Timmer Hadley.”
“The woman who used to own the old Hadley house,” said Reine-Marie.
She gestured in the direction of the fine house on the hill, overlooking the little village. The house where the “rich” family had once lived and had, a century ago, lorded it over the great unwashed below.
“I met the Baroness at Timmer’s home,” said Ruth.
“And she came