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Turning on the lights, she stood directly in front of her easel. Arms at her sides. Shoulders back. Almost at attention. A coward caught. Called out. And facing what was coming.

She lifted her chin in defiance and stared at her works. Daring them to do their worst.

And they did.

As she watched with growing dismay, the tiny paintings shifted before her eyes and went from something brilliant to something less than brilliant. And another shift.

My God, Clara thought. They were right.

The critics.

The gallery owners.

Dominica Oddly.

The assholes on social media. So filled with bile they were easily dismissed. One described her as a painter whose art began with an f. That juvenile comment got hundreds of retweets. Someone else said she was an artist who painted only in brown.

And she saw now that it was true.

The miniatures were shit.

It wasn’t that she’d tried to be bold and failed, it was that she hadn’t tried. Exactly as Oddly had said. She’d whipped them off without thought. Without feeling. Without caring. Fooling herself into believing that because it was a new medium, new territory for her, it was a brave experiment.

It was not.

She had betrayed the gift. Cheapened it.

Sitting down on the stool, she felt the lump forming in her throat.

When she was able to move, she took the miniatures off the easel, got out a hammer. And went to work.

Then she placed a clean canvas in front of her. And stared at it. White. White. It grew larger and larger. Huge. It was taunting her, daring her to approach.

“You’d better sit down,” said Gamache.

And Bob Cameron did.

He felt the holster on his belt push into him. As though reminding him it was there.

There’d been something in Chief Inspector Beauvoir’s tone when he’d called and invited him to the Gamache home. Not the incident room, as he’d expected. And it was put in the form of an invitation. As though he weren’t an agent to be ordered but a civilian to be invited.

He’d suspected then, but now, looking at Chief Inspector Gamache, Cameron knew. That they knew.

“Does your wife know?” Gamache asked.

“Non. How did you…?”

“The phone number. Your personal cell phone. Not your home number, not your work number. But you have another cell phone. When I looked up your file this morning, to call you, there it was. It’s a single number off the one Vivienne was calling over and over on the day she died. She was calling you. You must’ve known we’d find out.”

“Why would you? You were so focused on Carl Tracey, I thought you wouldn’t get there.”

What Cameron said was true. With, Gamache recognized, a touch of malice.

“Yes,” said Gamache. “That was a mistake. Being corrected now.” He put out his hand. “Your weapon, please.”

“You know I didn’t kill Vivienne, don’t you?”

“I know you lied. I know you were her lover. I know you were on that bridge.”