“The only reason we put these paintings up this way around,” she said as Myrna and Armand went to help, “is because it’s how Bean had them on the bedroom wall. But suppose Bean was wrong? There’s no signature to tell which way is up.”

She nailed it back into place. Upside down. And all three stepped back. To examine it.

Not upside down at all, but finally the right way around.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Myrna.

The slashes of vivid color had become a wide and turbulent river. The bold red lips had become waves. What had appeared to be trees now became cliff faces.

The three of them stood in front of what Peter had really created. The smiles weren’t smiles at all. There was nothing giddy, nothing joyous about this picture. Peter had painted a vast and endless river of sorrow.

“I know this place,” said Gamache.

Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

“Armand.” Reine-Marie appeared in Clara’s kitchen with a sheet of paper. “Constable Stuart wrote back.”

She looked perplexed and handed him the email she’d printed out.

He took it and in turn pointed her to the wall of paintings. She walked over as he read, his brows drawing together as he got further and further into the message.

He handed the paper to Clara and joined Reine-Marie at the wall of paintings.

“All right?” he asked, noticing her pale face.

“Oui. Peter finally figures out how to paint emotions, and he paints this.” She paused. “Poor one.”

“Come with me,” he said.

They left the sad painting on the wall and returned to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation on the pine table.

Clara finished reading and passed the page on to Myrna.

“You don’t believe it, do you?” asked Reine-Marie, looking from Clara to Armand and nodding toward the letter now in Myrna’s hands.

“One impossible thing before breakfast?” Armand asked.

He placed his hand, splayed, in the center of one of the paintings on the table. And turned it.

Only then did they see what Peter had done.

He hadn’t created something with these paintings. He’d captured something. A moment in a garden at dusk.

What had looked like a circle of stones in the painting when it was the other way around was indeed a circle of stones. Tall, solid, gray.

But now they saw something else. Long, strong slashes of color off the top of the stones.

Rabbit ears.

“Peter would never have believed such a thing,” said Clara. But in her heart she knew she had to stop saying that. If they had a hope of finding out what had happened to him, she had to accept that the man she’d known was indeed gone.

Down the rabbit hole. Where impossible things happened.

Where hares turned to rune stones.

Where giddy smiles turned into vast sorrow. And back again. Depending on your perspective.