Page 53 of The Grey Wolf
CHAPTER14
It was almost midnight by the time Armand stepped onto the veranda of their home in Three Pines.
The fieldstone, clapboard, and brick homes around the village green were in darkness, but visible against the splash of stars in the night sky. The only light in the village came from his home, like a beacon. He stood on the porch and watched the fireflies lighting up here and there. At random. Impossible to predict where the next one might appear.
The bulb on the porch was attracting moths. They flapped around, bumping into it. Repeatedly.
Armand often wondered what they hoped would happen after that first bump. Why keep trying?
Though he understood the compulsion. He sometimes felt like a moth. Butting his head against something that looked promising but was an illusion. Even a delusion.
The door opened before he reached it, and Henri bounded out, curling around Armand’s legs. He’d have tripped had he not been prepared for it.
Reine-Marie was just a step behind the shepherd and had Armand in her arms before he’d made it across the threshold. She hugged him tight, and he buried his face in her sweater, smelling the scent of old garden rose.
And she inhaled the scent of sandalwood. Then she held him at arm’s length to study his face. “Are you all right?”
“I am. Now.”
She smiled and in her best Clouseau said, “You have a ‘bimp,’monsieur.” Bending his head down, she kissed the bruise on his forehead.
He laughed. And just like that, his headache disappeared.
“Better?”
“Always.”
They sat on the two-seater porch swing, rocking gently, back and forth, back and forth. Henri, Fred, and little Gracie asleep at their feet.
There had been no question that Armand would tell Reine-Marie everything. And he had, to the accompaniment of the crickets and frogs and the far-off howl of a wolf, down from the mountains to hunt.
The night was cool, verging on cold, but they were warm under the striped Hudson’s Bay blanket across their knees. Reine-Marie brewed a pot of tea while Armand got into fresh flannel pajamas. He didn’t often wear them in summer, but he felt the need for the comfort they provided. Besides, Reine-Marie was in hers.
It was, as he sat beside her and sipped the tea, possible to forget for a moment, a blessed moment, his suspicions. His fears. The size of the monster he suspected was there.
He felt Reine-Marie’s hand in his, her thumb softly, softly caressing the back of his hand, where Charles’s whipped cream had been. As though it were still there. Always there.
And then, not looking at her but staring up at the night sky, he’d begun.
When he finished, he looked at her. They had turned the porch light off, and her face was lit softly by the light from their living room. She looked tired. Drained. Older than her fifty-seven years. Older than she’d looked just minutes earlier. Before he told her.
And he suspected he looked ancient.
How different their lives might have been had he become a professor or lawyer. Carpenter or farmer. Had he studied anything else besides the ways and whys people killed each other.
But then they’d never have found this village. These friends. Thisrambling old home. Their daughter, Annie, would not have met and married Jean-Guy and had Honoré and Idola.
Was it a fair trade? After days like this, on nights like this when his job weighed heavy on them both, Armand was far from sure.
“It might be a toxic spill,” she said. “Up north.”
“True.”
She was quiet for a minute or so. “But you don’t think so?”
“A toxic spill is an accident. Whatever is happening has been planned.”
“You really think this is an attack on our drinking water.”
