“This is you?” Mercier watched as each of them nodded. He cleared his throat and prepared to read.
“Wait a minute,” said Myrna. “This’s crazy. Some stranger picks us at random and makes us liquidators? Can she do that?”
“Oh yes,” said the notary. “You can name the pope if you want.”
“Really? That’s pretty cool,” said Benedict, his mind whirring at the possibilities.
Gamache didn’t completely agree with Myrna. He doubted it was random. He looked down at the names in Bertha Baumgartner’s will. Their names. Very clear. There for a reason, he suspected. Though that reason was anything but clear.
A cop, a bookstore owner, a builder. Two men, one woman. Different ages. Two lived in the country, one in the city.
There was no pattern. They had nothing in common except their names on this document. And the fact none of them knew Bertha Baumgartner.
“And whoever is named has to do it?” asked Myrna. “We have to do it?”
“Of course not,” said Mercier. “Can you imagine the Holy Father liquidating this estate?”
They tried. Only Benedict seemed, by the smile on his face, to be succeeding.
“So we can refuse?” asked Myrna.
“Oui. Would you like to refuse?”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t had a chance to think about it. I had no idea why you wanted me here.”
“What did you think?” asked Mercier.
Myrna sat back in her chair, trying to remember.
She’d been in her bookstore the morning before when the mail arrived.
She’d poured a mug of strong tea and sat in the comfortable armchair with the indentation that fit her body like a mold.
The woodstove was on, and beyond her window was a brilliant winter day. The sky was a deep perfect blue, and the sun bounced off the snow-covered lawns, the road, the ice rink, and the snowmen on the village green. The whole village gleamed.
It was the sort of day that drew you outside. Even though you knew better. And once you were outside, the cold gripped you, burning your lungs, soldering your nostrils together with every breath. It brought tears to your eyes. Freezing the lashes so that you had to pry your lids apart.
And yet, gasping for breath, you still stood there. Just a little longer. To be part of such a day. Before retreating back inside to the hearth and hot chocolate, or tea, or strong, rich café au lait.
And the mail.
She’d read and reread the letter, then called the number to ask why this notary wanted to meet her.
Getting no answer, she took the letter with her to meet her friends and neighbors, Clara Morrow and Gabri Dubeau, for lunch in the bistro.
As Clara and Gabri discussed the snow-sculpture themes, the ball-hockey tournament, the tuque judging, and the refreshments for the upcoming winter carnival, Myrna found her attention wandering.
“Hello,” said Gabri. “Anybody home?”
“Huh?”
“We need your help,” said Clara. “The snowshoe race around the village green. Should it be one circuit or two?”
“One for the under-eights,” said Myrna. “One and a half for the under-twelves, and two for everyone else.”
“Well, that was decisive,” said Gabri. “Now, teams for the snowball fight…”
Myrna’s mind drifted again. She vaguely noted Gabri getting up and tossing more logs onto the fires in the open hearths at either end of the bistro. He paused to chat with customers as more villagers came in from the cold, stamping their feet and rubbing their freezing hands.
They were met with warmth and the scent of maplewood smoke, tourtières just out of the oven, and the permanent aroma of coffee embedded into the beams and wide-plank floors.
“I have something I need to show you,” Myrna whispered to Clara while Gabri was occupied.
“Why’re you whispering?” Clara also lowered her voice. “Is it dirty?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course?” said Clara, raising her brows. “I know you too well for the ‘of course.’”
Myrna laughed. Clara did know her. But then she also knew Clara.
Her friend’s brown hair stuck out from her head, as though she’d had a mild shock. She looked a little like a middle-aged Sputnik. Which would also explain her art.
Clara Morrow’s paintings were otherworldly. And yet they were also achingly, profoundly human.
She painted what appeared to be portraits, but that was only on the surface. The beautifully rendered flesh stretched, and sometimes sagged, over wounds, over celebrations. Over chasms of loss and rushes of joy. She painted peace and despair. All in one portrait.
With brush and canvas and oils, Clara both captured and freed her subject.
She also managed to get paint all over herself. On her cheeks, in her hair, under her nails. She was herself a work in progress.
“I’ll show you later,” said Myrna as Gabri arrived back at their table.
“Better be dirty, after that buildup,” said Clara.
“Dirty?” said Gabri. “Spill.”
“Myrna thinks the adults should do their snowshoe race naked.”
“Naked?” asked Gabri, looking at Myrna. “Not that I’m a prude, but the children…”
“Oh for God’s sake,” said Myrna. “I didn’t say that at all. Clara’s making it up.”
“Of course, if we held it at night, after the kids were asleep,” said Gabri. “Put torches around the village green, it could work. We’d certainly set some speed records.”
Myrna glared at Clara. Gabri, the president of the Carnaval d’hiver, was taking it seriously.
“Or maybe, instead of naked, because—” Gabri looked around at the bistro crowd, imagining them without clothing. “Maybe they have to wear bathing suits.”
Clara frowned, not in disapproval but in surprise. It actually wasn’t a bad idea. Especially given that most of the conversation in the bistro through the long, long, dark, dark Québec winter was about escaping to the sun. Lying on some beach, roasting.
“We can call it Running Away to the Caribbean,” she said.
Myrna let out a sigh.
Across the bistro an elderly woman saw this and thought the dismissive look had been directed at her.
Ruth Zardo glared back.
Myrna caught this and thought of the unfairness of nature, that the old poet should be wizened without being wise.
Though there was wisdom there, if you could get beyond the haze of scotch.
Ruth returned to her lunch of booze and potato chips. Her notebook, on the table, contained neither rhymes nor reason but held, between the worn pages, the lump in the throat.
She looked out the window, then wrote:
Sharp as thin ice
the clear cries of children pierce the sky …
Rosa, on the sofa beside Ruth, muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Or it might have been, “Duck, duck, duck.” Though it seemed silly that a duck would actually say “duck.” And those who knew Rosa felt that “fuck” was much more likely.
Rosa leaned her long neck over and delicately took a potato chip out of the bowl while Ruth watched the children tobogganing down from the chapel to the village green. She scribbled:
Or in the snow-lapped country church,
kneeling at last to pray
for what we could not have.
Lunch arrived. Clara and Myrna had both ordered the halibut, with mustard seeds, curry leaves, and grilled tomato. And for Gabri, his partner, Olivier, had made grouse with roasted figs and cauliflower puree.
“I’m going to invite the Prime Minister,” said Gabri. “He could open the carnaval.”
He invited Justin Trudeau every year. And never heard back.
“And maybe he could take part in the race?” asked Clara.
Gabri’s eyes widened.
Justin Trudeau. Racing around the village green. In a Speedo.