That’s what the end so often looked like, Gamache knew. Not the smile, not even the stone, but the crevice in between.

“Let’s get some fresh air,” said Myrna, opening the back door into the garden. She joined them a few minutes later with a platter of sandwiches and a pitcher of iced tea.

They sat in the shade of a grove of maples, their four Adirondack chairs like the points of a compass, Gamache realized.

The Chief leaned forward and chose a sandwich, then slid back in his chair.

“You asked Peter to leave shortly after your solo show opened last year,” he said, chasing the bite with a sip of iced tea.

“After an argument that lasted all day and night,” Clara said. “I was exhausted and finally fell asleep at about three in the morning. When I woke up Peter wasn’t in bed anymore.”

“He’d left?” asked Beauvoir. He’d already finished most of his baguette, filled with paté and chutney. The iced tea perspired on the arm of his chair.

“No. He was against the wall of our bedroom, his knees up to his chin. Staring. I thought he’d had a breakdown.”

“Had he?” asked Myrna.

“I guess, of sorts. Maybe more a breakthrough. He said it came to him in the middle of the night that he’d never been jealous of my art.”

Myrna snorted into her glass, sending tea onto her nose.

“I know,” said Clara. “I didn’t believe him either. And then we fought some more.” She sounded weary to the bone as she described it.

Gamache had been listening closely. “If he wasn’t jealous of your art, then what did he say was the problem?”

“Me, I was the problem,” said Clara. “He was jealous of me. Not that I painted friendship and love and hope, but that I felt them.”

“And he didn’t,” said Myrna. Clara nodded.

“He realized in the night that he’d been pretending all his life and that deep down there was nothing. Just a hole. Which was why his paintings had no substance.”

“Because he had no substance,” said Gamache.

Their little circle fell silent. Bees buzzed in and out of the roses and tall foxglove. Flies tried to drag crispy baguette shards off the empty plates. The Rivière Bella Bella bubbled by.

And they considered a man who had a hole where his core should have been.

“Is that why he left?” asked Myrna, finally.

“He left because I told him to. But…”

They waited.

Clara looked across the garden so that they could only see her in profile.

“I expected him back.” She smiled suddenly and looked at them. “I thought he’d miss me. I thought he’d be lonely and lost without me. And he’d realize what he had, with me. I thought he’d come home.”

“What did you say to him exactly?” asked Beauvoir. “The morning he left?”

His notebook had replaced the empty plate on the arm of the chair.

“I told him he had to go, but that he should come back in a year and we could see where we were each at.”