Brutal Telling

“You pathetic piece of legal crap.”

Reine-Marie gestured toward the back door of the kitchen that gave onto a small metal balcony and fire escape. “Shall we?”

“Escape?” Gamache whispered, hoping she was serious, but suspecting she wasn’t.

“Maybe you could just try shooting them, Armand?” David asked.

“I’m afraid Jean Guy is a faster draw,” said the Chief Inspector. “He’d get me first.”

“Still,” said his wife, “it’s worth a try.”

“Legal crap?” said Annie, her voice dripping disdain. “Brilliant. Fascist moron.”

“I suppose I could use a taser,” said Gamache.

“Fascist? Fascist?” Jean Guy Beauvoir almost squealed. In the kitchen Gamache’s German shepherd, Henri, sat up in his bed and cocked his head. He had huge oversized ears which made Gamache think he wasn’t purebred but a cross between a shepherd and a satellite dish.

“Uh-oh,” said David. Henri curled into a ball in his bed and it was clear David would join him if he could.

All three looked wistfully out the door at the rainy, cool early September day. Labor Day weekend in Montreal. Annie said something unintelligible. But Beauvoir’s response was perfectly clear.

“Screw you.”

“Well, I think this debate’s just about over,” said Reine-Marie. “More coffee?” She pointed to their espresso maker.

“Non, pas pour moi, merci,” said David, with a smile. “And please, no more for Annie.”

“Stupid woman,” muttered Jean Guy as he entered the kitchen. He grabbed a dish towel from the rack and began furiously drying a plate. Gamache figured that was the last they’d see of the India Tree design. “Tell me she’s adopted.”

“No, homemade.” Reine-Marie handed the next plate to her husband.

“Screw you.” Annie’s dark head shot into the kitchen then disappeared.

“Bless her heart,” said Reine-Marie.

Of their two children, Daniel was the more like his father. Large, thoughtful, academic. He was kind and gentle and strong. When Annie had been born Reine-Marie thought, perhaps naturally, this would be the child most like her. Warm, intelligent, bright. With a love of books so strong Reine-Marie Gamache had become a librarian, finally taking over a department at the Bibliotheque nationale in Montreal.

But Annie had surprised them both. She was smart, competitive, funny. She was fierce, in everything she did and felt.

They should have had an inkling about this. As a newborn Armand would take her for endless rides in the car, trying to soothe her as she howled. He’d sing, in his deep baritone, Beatles songs, and Jacques Brel songs. “La Complainte du phoque en Alaska” by Beau Dommage. That was Daniel’s favorite. It was a soulful lament. But it did nothing for Annie.

One day, as he’d strapped the shrieking child into the car seat and turned on the ignition, an old Weavers tape had been in.

As they sang, in falsetto, she’d settled.

At first it had seemed a miracle. But after the hundredth trip around the block listening to the laughing child and the Weavers singing “Wimoweh, a-wimoweh,” Gamache yearned for the old days and felt like shrieking himself. But as they sang the little lion slept.

Annie Gamache became their cub. And grew into a lioness. But sometimes, on quiet walks together, she’d tell her father about her fears and her disappointments and the everyday sorrows of her young life. And Chief Inspector Gamache would be seized with a desire to hold her to him, so that she needn’t pretend to be so brave all the time.

She was fierce because she was afraid. Of everything.

The rest of the world saw a strong, noble lioness. He looked at his daughter and saw Bert Lahr, though he’d never tell her that. Or her husband.

“Can we talk?” Annie asked her father, ignoring Beauvoir. Gamache nodded and handed the dish towel to David. They walked down the hall and into the warm living room where books were ranged on shelves in orderly rows, and stacked under tables and beside the sofa in not-so-orderly piles. Le Devoir and the New York Times were on the coffee table and a gentle fire burned in the grate. Not the roaring flames of a bitter winter fire, but a soft almost liquid flame of early autumn.

They talked for a few minutes about Daniel, living in Paris with his wife and daughter, and another daughter due before the end of the month. They talked about her husband David and his hockey team, about to start up for another winter season.

Mostly Gamache listened. He wasn’t sure if Annie had something specific to say, or just wanted to talk. Henri jogged into the room and plunked his head on Annie’s lap. She kneaded his ears, to his grunts and moans. Eventually he lay down by the fire.

Just then the phone rang. Gamache ignored it.

“It’s the one in your office, I think,” said Annie. She could see it on the old wooden desk with the computer and the notebook, in the room that was filled with books, and smelled of sandalwood and rosewater and had three chairs.

She and Daniel would sit in their wooden swivel chairs and spin each other around until they were almost sick, while their father sat in his armchair, steady. And read. Or sometimes just stared.