Page 116 of The Grey Wolf
“I am.”
“You care about him.”
“I do.”
“So do I. I think these might help.” He dug into the pocket of his cardigan and brought out some letters. “When you called and asked about him, I went looking. These were from Yves, years ago, after we’d left the Grand Séminaire but before we’d taken up our missions.”
“Have you heard from him again? Recently?” Gamache watched him closely.
Dom Philippe, as Armand still thought of him, must have gone to someone when he left the monastery. He’d need help getting to Rome to meet Sébastien. Why not his former best friend?
“Non.If you find him, please ask him to get in touch. I’ve returned to my childhood home. Funny how clerics often do.” His smile was almost whimsical. “We were so young, so innocent, when we left.”
Armand picked up the yellowed letters. As he did, a black-and-white photo fell out.
It was of a very young man, with a young woman on one side of him and a little girl on the other. Almost certainly, Armand thought, a copy of the same photo Frère Simon had mentioned. The only personal item Dom Philippe had kept from his old life.
Armand turned it over. Nothing.
“Who are these people?”
“It’s Yves with his sister and her daughter, his niece. It was taken outside their home.”
The trio looked relaxed. Happy. Armand thought the little girl might’ve just said something funny because her uncle looked on the verge of laughing and was in the process of turning toward her when this moment was captured.
It was the image of a happy family. Though Armand knew that images could lie. And that no family was completely happy.
Frère Simon wasn’t wrong when he’d described the background as desolate. It also looked vaguely familiar.
Armand opened the first letter.
My dearest David,
How strange it is to call you that. I wonder how long it will be, if ever, before I stop thinking of you as Jean. I’ve decided to take the name Philippe and join the Gilbertines. What? I can hear you mutter. Are you scratching that full head of hair I so envy?
Armand looked up at the bald priest, who was watching him. Then he went back to reading.
I haven’t told the family. They’ll be upset. I’ve tried to fight it. I sit on the rock (God knows I have my choice of rocks here, but I do have a favorite) and stare out at the water. In the relentless waves I hear the voice of God. Day and night. It’s a sort of chant. A calming but inexorable calling. And I know I belong in that monastery. In that little lost order. To spend my life singing the word of God in the voice of God. To spend the rest of my days, and nights, in silent contemplation. In simplicity.
I am not looking forward to telling Mama and Papa, never mind the others. I will miss them terribly. I’ll even miss the rock.
Pray for me, as I pray for you, my dear David.
Armand thought to ask his companion about their relationship, but realized it didn’t matter. There was love there, and love was never wrong.
He looked at what did matter. The return address.
“Dom Philippe was from Blanc-Sablon?”
“Oui.” Now Father David laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Yves’s accent was so thick when he first arrived, his vocabulary such an odd mix of old French and old English, that few of us could understand him. But he had such a calm about him. A certainty. I was drawn to him. As the weeks went by, he adjusted his speech when around others, but in private Yves reverted.”
“To who he really was.”
Armand picked up the photo again and stared into the amused eyes of the young man who would come to lead the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Who would become the grey wolf. Leaving his sanctuary to track down the other one.
