It took a moment or two for their eyes to adjust as they stepped into the dim barn. Then the shadow became solid, firm. Human. Before them appeared a tall, slender, graceful older man.
“You’ve kept me waiting,” the darkness said.
Marc, whose vision wasn’t quite as good as he pretended, could only just see the outline of the man. But the words, the voice, told him more than enough. He felt light-headed and reached out. His mother, standing next to him, took his hand and held him steady.
“Mother?” he whispered.
“It’s all right, Marc,” the man said.
But Marc knew it wasn’t all right. He’d heard the rumors about the old Hadley house, the ghouls that lived there. He’d loved the stories because it meant no one else had wanted the house, and they could get it dirt cheap.
Dirt to dirt. Something filthy had indeed risen. The old Hadley house had produced one more ghost.
“Dad?”
SEVENTEEN
“Dad?”
Marc stared from the shadow, darker than the shade, to his mother. The voice was unmistakable, indelible. The deep, calm voice that carried censure with a slight smile, so that the child, the boy, the man, had never really known where he stood. But he’d suspected.
“Hello, Marc.”
The voice held a hint of humor, as though this was in any way close to funny. As though Marc’s staggering shock was reason for mirth.
Dr. Vincent Gilbert walked out of the shed and out of the dead, into the light.
“Mom?” Marc turned to the woman beside him.
“I’m sorry, Marc. Come with me.” She tugged her only child out into the sun and sat him on a bale of hay. He felt it pricking into his bottom, uncomfortable.
“Can you get him something to drink?” Carole asked her daughter-in-law, but Dominique, hand to her face, seemed almost as stunned as her husband.
“Marc?” Dominique said.
Beauvoir looked at Gamache. This was going to be a long day if all they said was each other’s names.
Dominique recovered and walked quickly, breaking into a run, back to the house.
“I’m sorry, have I surprised you?”
“Of course you surprised him, Vincent,” snapped Carole. “How did you think he’d feel?”
“I thought he’d be happier than this.”
“You never think.”
Marc stared at his father, then he turned to his mother. “You told me he was dead.”
“I might have exaggerated.”
“Dead? You told him I was dead?”
She turned on her husband again. “We agreed that’s what I’d say. Are you senile?”
“Me? Me? Do you have any idea what I’ve done with my life while you played bridge?”
“Yes, you abandoned your family—”
“Enough,” said Gamache, and raised a hand. With an effort the two broke off and looked at him. “Let me be absolutely clear about this,” said Gamache. “Is he your father?”
Marc finally took a long hard look at the man standing beside his mother. He was older, thinner. It’d been almost twenty years, after all. Since he’d gone missing in India. Or at least that’s what his mother had told him. A few years later she said she’d had him declared dead, and did Marc think they should hold a memorial for him?
Marc had given it absolutely no thought. No. He had better things to do than help plan a memorial for a man missing all his life.
And so that had ended that. The Great Man, for that was what Marc’s father was, was forgotten. Marc never spoke of him, never thought of him. When he’d met Dominique and she’d asked if his father had been “that” Vincent Gilbert he’d agreed that, yes, he had. But he was dead. Fallen into some dark hole in Calcutta or Bombay or Madras.
“Isn’t he a saint?” Dominique had asked.
“That’s right. St. Vincent. Who raised the dead and buried the living.”
She hadn’t asked any more.
“Here.” Dominique had returned with a tray of glasses and bottles, not sure what the occasion called for. Never, in all the board meetings she’d chaired, all the client dinners she’d hosted, all the arbitrations she’d attended, had anything quite like this arisen. A father. Risen. But obviously not revered.
She put the drinks tray on a log and brought her hands to her face, softly inhaling the musky scent of horse, and felt herself relax. She dropped her hands, though not her guard. She had an instinct for trouble, and this was it.
“Yes, he’s my father,” said Marc, then turned to his mother again. “He isn’t dead?”
It was, thought Gamache, an interesting question. Not, He’s alive? but rather, He isn’t dead? There seemed a difference.
“I’m afraid not.”
“I’m standing right here, you know,” said Dr. Gilbert. “I can hear.”
But he didn’t seem put off by any of this, just amused. Gamache knew Dr. Vincent Gilbert would be a formidable opponent. And he hoped this Great Man, for that was what Gamache knew him to be, wasn’t also a wicked man.
Carole handed Marc a glass of water and took one herself, sitting on the hay beside him. “Your father and I agreed our marriage was over a long time ago. He went off to India as you know.”
“Why did you say he was dead?” Marc asked. If he hadn’t Beauvoir would have. He’d always thought his own family more than a little odd. Never a whisper, never a calm conversation. Everything was charged, kinetic. Voices raised, shouting, yelling. Always in each other’s faces, in each other’s lives. It was a mess. He’d yearned for calm, for peace, and had found it in Enid. Their lives were relaxed, soothing, never going too far, or getting too close.
He really should call her.
But odd as his family might be, they were nothing compared to this. In fact, that was one of the great comforts of his job. At least his family compared well to people who actually killed each other, rather than just thought about it.
“It seemed easier,” Carole said. “I was happier being a widow than a divorcee.”
“But what about me?” Marc asked.
“I thought it would be easier for you too. Easier to think your father had died.”
“How could you think that?”
“I’m sorry. I was wrong,” said his mother. “But you were twenty-five, and never close to your father. I really thought you wouldn’t care.”
“So you killed him?”
Vincent Gilbert, silent until now, laughed. “Well put.”
“Fuck off,” said Marc. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” He shifted on the prickly hay bale. His father really was a pain in the ass.
“He agreed, no matter how he’s rewritten it now. I couldn’t have done it without his cooperation. In exchange for his freedom he agreed to be dead.”
Marc turned to his father. “Is that right?”
Now Vincent Gilbert looked less regal, less certain. “I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t well. I’d gone to India to find myself and felt the best way to do that was to shed the old life completely. Become a new man.”
“So I just didn’t exist anymore?” Marc asked. “What a fucking great family. Where have you been?”