TWENTY-TWO

“Dinner!” Clara called.

They’d watched to the end of the DVD. After the NFB footage and the newsreels, there were more clips of the Quints. At First Communion, meeting the young Queen, curtsying to the Prime Minister.

In unison, of course. And the great man laughing, delighted.

It was odd, thought Clara, as she took the casserole from the oven, to see someone she only knew as an elderly woman as an infant. It was odder still to see her grow up. To see so much of her, and so many of her.

Seeing those films one after the other went from charming, to disconcerting, to devastating. It was made even odder by not being able to tell which one was Constance. They were all her. And none were.

The films ended suddenly when the girls reached their late teens.

“Can I help?” asked Myrna, prying the warm bread from Clara’s hand.

“What did you think of the film?” Clara asked, putting the baguette Myrna sliced into a basket. Olivier was placing plates on the long pine table while Gabri tossed the salad.

Ruth was either trying to light the candles or set the house on fire. Armand was nowhere to be seen, and neither were Thérèse or her husband Jérôme.

“I keep seeing that first sister, Virginie, I think, looking at the camera.” Myrna paused in her slicing and stared ahead.

“You mean when their mother wouldn’t let them back into the house?” Clara asked.

Myrna nodded and thought how strange it was that, when talking with Gamache, she’d used the house analogy, saying that Constance was locked and barricaded inside her emotional home.

What was worse, Myrna wondered. To be locked in, or locked out?

“They were so young,” Clara said, as she took the knife from Myrna’s suspended hand. “Maybe Constance didn’t remember.”

“Oh, she’d have remembered,” said Myrna. “They all would. If not the specific event, they’d remember how it felt.”

“And they couldn’t tell anyone,” said Clara. “Not even their parents. Especially not their parents. I wonder what that does to a person.”

“I know what it does.”

They turned to Ruth, who’d struck another match. She stared, cross-eyed, as it burned down. Just before it singed her yellowed nails she blew it out.

“What does it do?” Clara asked. The room was quiet, all eyes on the old poet.

“It turns a little girl into an ancient mariner.”

There was a collective sigh. They’d actually thought maybe Ruth had the answer. They should have known better than to look for wisdom in a drunken old pyro.

“The albatross?” asked Gamache.

He was standing just inside the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. Myrna wondered how long he’d been listening.

Ruth struck another match and Gamache held her blazing eyes, looking beyond the flame to the charred core.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gilles broke the silence. “An old sailor and a tuna?”

“That’s albacore,” said Olivier.

“Oh, for chrissake,” snapped Ruth, and flicked her hand so that the flame went out. “One day I’ll be dead and then what’ll you do for cultured conversation, you stupid shits?”

“Touché,” said Myrna.

Ruth gave Gamache one final, stern look, then turned to the rest of the room.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?” When that was met with blank stares she went on. “Epic poem. Coleridge?”

Gilles leaned toward Olivier and whispered, “She’s not going to recite it, is she? I get enough poetry at home.”

“Right,” said Ruth. “People are always confusing Odile’s work with Coleridge.”

“At least they both rhyme,” said Gabri.

“Not always,” Gilles confided. “In her latest, Odile has ‘turnip’ rhyming with ‘cowshed.’”

Ruth sighed so violently her latest match blew out.

“OK, I’ll bite,” said Olivier. “Why does any of this remind you of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”

Ruth looked around. “Don’t tell me Clouseau and I are the only ones with classical educations?”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabri. “I remember now. Didn’t the ancient mariner and Ellen DeGeneres save Nemo from a fish tank in Australia?”

“I think that was the Little Mermaid,” said Clara.

“Really?” Gabri turned to her. “Because I seem to remember—”