One table was listening as a passionate man told them about Area 51, and the irrefutable evidence that aliens had landed decades ago in New Mexico. And, according to him, Québec.

“Mark my words, it’s an alien spacecraft in there,” he said. “Wasn’t the kid always warning us about an invasion?”

Incredibly, the others at the table, whom Clara knew to be sensible and thoughtful people, were nodding. It seemed a more comforting explanation than that one of them had suddenly become alien, and killed a little boy.

Clara sat down next to Myrna, grim-faced.

“Have you been listening to what people are saying?” Clara asked.

“Yes. It’s getting ugly. That table is ordering more and more drinks and talking about going into the woods and forcing their way into that thing we found.”

Myrna pushed her glass of red wine away. Nature, she knew, abhorred a vacuum, and these people, faced with an information vacuum, had filled it with their fears.

The line between fact and fiction, between real and imagined, was blurring. The tether holding people to civil behavior was fraying. They could see it, and hear it, and feel it coming apart.

Most of these people knew Laurent. Had children of their own. Were tired, and cold, and filled with fear and booze and not enough facts. These were good people, frightened people. Justifiably so.

Olivier bent down and placed a bowl of mixed nuts on the table. He whispered to them, “I’m going to start cutting people off.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” said Myrna.

Clara got up. “I think Armand needs to come over. I think he’s stayed away because he doesn’t want to create a difficult situation, but it’s beyond that now.”

Voices were raised at a table in the corner, where Gabri was explaining that they could not have more drinks.

Clara went to the bar and called the Gamache home.

*   *   *

“Is it true what I’m hearing, Clément?” Ruth asked, as the old grocer took a seat in her living room.

“What are you hearing?” he asked.

“That the child was murdered.”

She said the word as though it had no emotional load, contained nothing more than any other word. But her thin hands trembled and she made small, powerful fists.

“Yes.”

“And that they found something in the woods, where Laurent was killed.”

“Yes. I showed them the way in,” he said. “The path. No one else could see it, of course. It was overgrown.”

Ruth nodded. She’d thought the memories had also been obscured, hidden under so many other events. Poems written, books published, awards won. Dinners and discussions. New neighbors. New friends. Rosa.

Years and years of rich and fertile topsoil.

But now it was back, clawing its way to the surface. The dark thing.

“What’s in there, Clément? What did they do?”

*   *   *

The moment Armand and Reine-Marie stepped into the bistro, the turmoil died out.