“Why would Peter go to LaPorte?” Myrna asked, sitting back down. She was disappointed. It was hardly a breakthrough.

“Why did Vincent Gilbert?” asked Jean-Guy, joining the conversation.

Myrna thought about that. “He’d had a successful career,” she said, remembering her conversations with the asshole saint. “But then his marriage fell apart.”

Gamache nodded. “Go on.”

Myrna thought some more.

“It wasn’t just the end of his marriage that did it,” she said, thinking out loud. “Lots of people get separated or divorced without having to hare off to a commune in France.”

Myrna lapsed into silence and thought about the missing piece. What would prompt a successful middle-aged man to give up his career and live in a community created by a humble priest, to serve children and adults with Down’s syndrome?

That was LaPorte’s vocation. It was to open a door for these people, after so many doors had been shut in their unusual faces. Frère Albert’s LaPorte offered not simply, though crucially, a place to live, but mostly it offered dignity. Equality. Belonging.

Frère Albert’s brilliance was in knowing that a community created to help others would never thrive. But one created for equal benefit would. He knew he too was flawed. Perhaps not in ways as obvious as someone with Down’s syndrome. But in ways more subtle, yet equally challenging.

The great genius of LaPorte was the absolute knowledge that everyone there had something to learn from, something to give to, the other. There was no distinction between the Down’s syndrome member and anyone else.

“Dr. Gilbert went there to volunteer as the community’s medical director,” said Myrna. “Not because he could heal them, but because he needed to be healed.”

“Exactly,” said Gamache. “We all need to be healed at some time in our lives. We’ve all been deeply hurt. His hurt was, I think, the same as Peter’s. Not physical, but spiritual. They both had a hole. A tear.”

This was met with silence.

Everyone around that table knew how that felt. The horror of realizing all the toys, all the success, all the powerful boards and new cars and accolades hadn’t filled the hole. They’d actually made it bigger. Deeper.

There was nothing wrong with success, but it had to have meaning.

“Vincent Gilbert knocked on LaPorte hoping to find himself,” said Gamache.

“And you think Peter did too?” asked Clara.

“Do you?” he asked her.

“I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” Clara said.

“I will pray you find a way to be useful,” Gamache completed the quote.

Reine-Marie dropped her eyes to her hands and saw the paper napkin twisted and shredded there.

Clara nodded slowly. “I think you might be right. Peter went to Paris not to find a new artistic voice. It was simpler than that. He wanted to find a way to be useful.”