“I’ll do my best. What’s the problem with David?” Beauvoir looked down at his half-eaten burger, as though it had suddenly done something fascinating.
“She won’t be specific.”
“Are they separating?” he asked, hoping he sounded politely disinterested.
“I’m not sure,” said Gamache. “There’s so much happening in her life, so many changes. She’s taken another job, as you know. In the Family Court office.”
“But Annie hates children.”
“Well, she’s not very good with them, but I don’t think she hates them. She adores Florence and Zora.”
“She has to,” said Beauvoir. “They’re family. She’s probably depending on them, in her old age. She’ll be bitter Auntie Annie, with the stale chocolates and the doorknob collection. And they’ll have to look after her. So she can’t drop them on their heads now.”
Gamache laughed while Beauvoir remembered Annie with the Chief’s first granddaughter, Florence. Three years ago. When Florence had been an infant. It might have been the first time his feelings for Annie had breached the surface. Shocking him with their size and ferocity. Crashing down. Swamping in. Capsizing him.
But the moment itself had been so tiny, so delicate.
There was Annie. Smiling, cradling her niece. Whispering to the tiny little girl.
And Beauvoir had suddenly realized he wanted children. And he wanted them with Annie. No one else.
Annie. Holding their own daughter or son.
Annie. Holding him.
He felt his heart tug, as tethers he never knew existed were released.
“We suggested she try to work it out with David.”
“What?” asked Beauvoir, shocked back to the present.
“We just don’t want to see her make a mistake.”
“But,” said Beauvoir, his mind racing. “Maybe she’s already made the mistake. Maybe David’s the mistake.”
“Maybe. But she has to be sure.”
“So what did you suggest?”
“We told her we’d support whatever she decided, but we did gently suggest couple’s counseling,” said the Chief, putting his large, expressive hands on the wooden table and trying to hold Beauvoir’s eyes. But all he saw was his daughter, his little girl, in their living room Sunday night.
She’d swung from sobbing to raging. From hating David, to hating herself, to hating her parents for suggesting counseling.
“Is there something you’re not telling us?” Gamache had finally asked.
“Like what?” Annie had demanded.
Her father had been quiet for a moment. Reine-Marie sat beside him on the sofa, looking from him to their daughter.
“Has he hurt you?” Gamache had asked. Clearly. His eyes firmly on his daughter. Searching for the truth.
“Physically?” Annie asked. “Has he hit me, do you mean?”
“I do.”
“Never. David would never do that.”
“Has he hurt you in other ways? Emotionally? Is he abusive?”
Annie shook her head. Gamache held his daughter’s eyes. He’d peered into the faces of so many suspects trying to glean the truth. But never did anything feel so important.
If David had abused his daughter—
He could feel the rage roil up, just at the thought. What would he do if he found out the man had actually—
Gamache had pulled himself back from that precipice and nodded. Accepting her answer. He’d sat beside her then, and folded her into his arms. Rocking her. Feeling her head in the hollow by his shoulder. Her tears through his shirt. Just as he’d done when she’d cried for Humpty Dumpty. But this time she was the one who’d had a great fall.
Eventually Annie pulled away and Reine-Marie handed her some tissues.
“Would you like me to shoot David?” Gamache had asked as she blew her nose with a mighty honk.
Annie laughed, catching her breath in snags. “Maybe just knee cap him.”
“I’ll move it to the very top of my to-do list,” said her father. Then he bent down so that they were eye to eye, his face serious now. “Whatever you decide to do, we’re behind you. Understand?”
She nodded, and wiped her face. “I know.”
Like Reine-Marie, he wasn’t necessarily shocked, but he was perplexed. There seemed something Annie wasn’t telling them. Something that didn’t quite add up. Every couple had difficult periods. He and Reine-Marie argued at times. Hurt each other’s feelings, at times. Never intentionally, but when people lived that close it was bound to happen.
