Page 200 of A Better Man

And then, that first time she’d caught him looking at her with tenderness. That first small smile.

“What happened, Lysette?” Lacoste asked.

Even though she knew it was a trap, Lysette was too tired to avoid it. And she realized she wanted to talk. About Homer. About Vivienne. About what happened.

“You know how it started,” said Cameron.

“And you know you need to tell me yourself,” said Gamache.

Cameron, more used to action than talk, put up his hands in an instinctive defensive maneuver, then lowered them. He searched his vocabulary for unaccustomed words. Some way to describe feelings. Overwhelming. Unexpected. Unwanted.

From the moment she’d opened the door and he’d looked into Vivienne’s eyes, he’d been branded. The emotions painful and permanent.

Gamache looked into that broken face and felt his pain. It was, Gamache knew, a hurt that went far back. Deep into Bob Cameron’s earliest memories.

Here was a man born into chaos. Into abuse. Forged by it. Molded and shaped, literally, by it.

Some with similar upbringings grew up to be abusive themselves.

But some found the space between the bridge and the water.

Gamache had seen this man play football. Had seen his almost maniacal need to protect his quarterback. Even taking penalty after penalty to hold off those who’d hurt his teammate.

It had cost him his job.

But Bob Cameron couldn’t help it, Gamache suspected. It was ingrained, as surely as those scars and smashed bones.

The need to protect. First his mother and siblings. Then his teammates.

And now he was a Sûreté officer. Protecting the population.

And Vivienne Godin?

“How did it start?” Gamache asked again.

“The moment she opened the door that first time,” said Cameron. “She was polite. Dignified, even. She thanked me for coming but asked me not to arrest her husband. That it would only make things worse.”

He paused, to remember. It seemed so long ago. And he was getting confused now, with images of his sister’s face. His mother’s. His own, in the mirror. Damage that could never, ever be repaired.

Gamache waited, giving the man the space he needed.

“She smiled then. And her lip split open, where he’d hit her.” Cameron raised his finger to his own lip and touched it. “It bled. It caused her pain, but she still smiled. At me. I knew then.”

“What did you know?”

“That I loved her.”

“But you didn’t know her.”

“I knew enough.”

Gamache paused. And believed him. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, not then. I gave her my card and asked her to call.”

“Did she?”

“Not me. But she did call 911 again. I went out, and again she refused to let me into the house. I could see him. I could smell the booze. But there was nothing I could do. I asked her to meet me that night, after he went to bed. At the bridge.”